For a moment, if you want to know what amnesia is like, go to Nolan's "Fragments of Memory."
If you haven't seen a movie yet, I recommend going to the movie first, and then watching me pick up the details. ▼
It's a movie worth watching three times. The first time you massage, go and feel it, experience the feeling of amnesia. Look at the story a second time, how the gentle woman defeated the control man. The third time to appreciate Nolan's craftsmanship spirit.
I'll just cut two of them and you'll know what "harshness" is.
In order to create a blue fantasy atmosphere, the male protagonist's shirt, door frame, and even the cement pillar next to it are all dark gray and blue of the same color system, which expresses stability and order, which happens to be what the hero Lanna pursues. ▼
Even on a sunny morning, the small decorations in the room of the heroine Natalie (in order to type less, plus I still like her more, I call her The Little Tower later) are dotted with the same color blue. ▼
The director's approach to storytelling is novel. Color flashbacks plus black and white narration, fine cuts, tense atmosphere, are telling an ancient story, why do people live?
No one wants to be a sinner
Lanna is extremely strong and extremely fragile.
He can do everything well, injecting his wife with insulin every day, and finding blood vessels is more professional than nurses.
Familiar with the psychology of expression, a look, a subtle movement, can not escape his eyes.
Easily put down two gangsters, a policeman, drag racing, unlocking, jumping out of the window is even more pediatric.
Even taking pictures is a master. Teddy commented on the photo taken by Little Tower, praising him as Anne Leibowitz (one of the world's highest paid photographers). ▼
But no matter how good it was, it didn't matter, he didn't remember.
His wife could not stand such a life. In the past long days, his wife was suffering from diabetes and had to carry the bill with him, but he didn't remember anything. ▼
The wife gambled her life to awaken his memories. At three o'clock in the afternoon, it was the time for the wife to take insulin, and the first injection was on the arm. After 15 minutes, his wife asked him to get another injection, and the second injection was on his stomach. After another 15 minutes, the wife gave one last try, and he hit the third needle in the leg like no one else. Soon, the wife stopped breathing.
In fact, his wife's death did awaken his memory.
Amnesia killed his wife, and he could not accept the fact. Whenever he thought about it, he trained himself to imagine a thousand times, and that time he just pinched it, not a needle. ▼
Withdraw from guilt in order to survive.
In order to convince himself, he transferred what had really happened to another person named Sami.
The Bible appears many times in the film, and his favorite chapter in it, "The Way to Salvation", is the bright line. A dark line is a necklace. ▼
A necklace of redemption
Those buried memories always crawl out of the cave.
Little Tower settled him in the house for a few days, he couldn't remember how long it had been since he was lying on the couch like this, he had just picked up the remote control, and remembered the time he had helped his wife with an injection. ▼
How to distinguish which is his real memory and which is an imaginary memory? There is a detail, the necklace.
The wife's necklace was always blurred in the front, and on the eve of revenge, the wife's necklace became clear. ▼
In his imaginary memory, Sami's wife's necklace had also been blurred, even deliberately not in the camera. It wasn't until she remembered, when she died for her wife, that the cross necklace was particularly clear. ▼
Earlier mentioned in the Bible's "way to salvation," Sami's wife died wearing a cross necklace, which meant Lanna's redemption of herself. He hopes to be able to modify his memory through repeated imagination.
Inner order
Relying on imaginary memory, it is very hard, and there are still people who use language violence to destroy the life that is not easy.
Policeman Teddy said that he wanted to invite Lanna to dinner, because Lanna did not remember, he ordered the cheapest vegetable soup, which shows that he has no feelings for Lanna at all.
He knew that Lanna did not want to mention his wife's death, but he always did. ▼
The hard-won memories were destroyed, and in his imaginary memory, his wife had died the night she was attacked, not by injecting her own insulin to death.
To deepen this memory, Lanna repeated the night his wife was attacked.
He found a prostitute and did nothing but scatter his wife's belongings in the bedroom, as if she had just left him. ▼
Survival instinct
People who are hungry need to find food, people who have no memory need pockets.
At the beginning of the film, he said to himself that the coat should have six pockets for photos and notes.
That's why, after he knocked down the drug dealer Jimmy, he undressed as soon as he got rid of his clothes, because Jimmy had a lot of pockets on his clothes. ▼
I saw some netizens say that it was because Jimmy's suit was very high-end, and I thought there was another reason.
A detail, Teddy than the pair of high-end shoes, a little longer than his feet, indicating that it should fit Lanna, but Lanna changed his suit and shirt, completely did not expect to try on shoes, it can be seen that it is not because the clothes are high-end. ▼
Another theory is that Lanna wears other people's clothes to experience other people's lives. Once, he wore the wrong white shirt for the little tower.
I felt that wearing the wrong one was another temptation of the small tower. It was she who deliberately pressed her white shirt under her suit to see if he really didn't remember. This instinctive reaction in life is the least likely to disguise. Sure enough, Lanna wore the wrong clothes, and she decided to use Lanna against Teddy. ▼
Real or imaginary, Lanna just lives in self-consistency.
Both Teddy and Little Tower use him, Teddy is cruel, he uses it while shaking Lanna's reasons for living, and Little Tower is smart, she respects Lanna's way of life.
Time and time again, Teddy debunks Lanna's imagination, reminding him that it is your wife who has diabetes, not the person you imagine. ▼
Little Tower told Lanna that we were all survivors.
On the one hand, it is because Xiaota helped her boyfriend sell drugs, and after her boyfriend disappeared, she was chased and killed by gangsters and police. On the other hand, reflecting the philosophy of Nolan's films, everyone who is alive is a survivor. ▼
Counter-kill
People who have shortcomings are not weak. Teddy didn't figure this out before he was killed by The Little Tower.
He wants to use Lanna to kill the drug dealer, so that he can steal the drug dealer's car and make $200,000 in vain.
He carefully planned for a long time, first settling Lanna in Room 21, where he lived opposite Room 304. This allows you to monitor Lanna's every move. ▼
Lanna found the 5th clue and was preparing to tattoo it on her hand. Teddy called and said he had a new clue and that the killer was a drug dealer.
In line with the previous information, Lanna wrote it down and tattooed it on his arm. ▼
It can be said that Teddy has been very careful. In order not to leave a trace, when Lanna helped him take pictures, he deliberately avoided the hotel, choosing a background without markers. ▼
Teddy saw little Talyurana spending the night, and he knew she would definitely use Lanna against him, and he waited outside all night. Warn that the mother-in-law can't touch it, and must also write Lanna on the back of the photo of the small tower, don't believe her.
At the beginning of the film, Lanner said that you should learn to believe in your handwriting.
His handwriting is divided into two types, what he believes is written seriously, and what he does not believe is scrawled. When Teddy got out of the car, he crossed out the sentence that Teddy had asked him to write. ▼
In order to erase the traces of the past, Teddy arranged for Lanna to be transferred from room 21 to 304.
This has two advantages, both to go to Lanna's room to see if there are any notes or photos against him, and to make Lanna feel that he is staying in this hotel for the first time, so that he can't think of being used as a drug dealer.
Lanna's change of room shows that the hotel uncle is Teddy's accomplice.
Lanna couldn't find the hotel key anymore, and what Teddy said was the same as what the hotel uncle said, indicating that there was a passing gas among them.
The hotel uncle was not careful, or brought him back to the original 21st, after being discovered by Lanna, the uncle had to say that in order to take advantage of his amnesia, he opened an extra room for him. ▼
Teddy planned so much, but he couldn't catch up with the small tower's plan.
She was like a confidant, understanding that it was not easy to live by notes, and Lanna was willing to talk to her about his wife. ▼
She also said that she, like Lanna, had lost her lover. Lanna sympathized with her deeply and carefully wrote behind her picture that she could save me. ▼
Judging from this composition, Lanna covered Xiaota's boyfriend, subconsciously, to make the man disappear from the photo. ▼
In the way of "moisturizing and silent", Xiaota completely gained Lanna's trust.
As for providing the license plate number in the back and misleading Lanna to kill Teddy, it is all a matter of course.
Write at the end
I have a little sympathy for Teddy, who, though a little nasty, died unjustly. From Lanner's point of view, it can be understood that this is not the difference between truth and imagination, but a contest between life and death.
He destroys Lanna's drive to live, and whether he's that John.G or not, Lanna will kill him so as not to break himself.
The story is wonderful and the experience of amnesia is special. Find an afternoon and relive the movie.
Maybe everyone has a terrible memory that they don't want to keep, and later, some accept it, and some change it.
If change cannot be chosen, then we choose why we change.