The Relationship Between Visuality, the Body, and Knowledge in the Film Memento
The film Memento offers an interesting yet ambiguous insight into the relationship between visuality, the body, and knowledge. Through the use of clever, complex cinematography, director Christopher Nolan explores this relationship, which leaves both the protagonist, and the audience constantly challenged, constantly searching for the truth. We come to realize that there is no single and absolute truth, every story has many colours and the black and whites of truth are personally constructed.
The elements of visuality are not only used to create Leonard’s truth, but ultimately shape the way the audience view and
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The colour sequences depict Leonard, confused on his mission to avenge his wife’s death, illuminating his problem with memory. The truth is not certain for Leonard when out on the streets. Not only must he decide whether his information is accurate but he is also wary of the other characters around him and their motives.
In between each scene, a black and white scene depicts Leonard sitting in his hotel room sorting through police documents, and speaking on the phone. The director uses the colour/black and white sequences to represent Leonard’s reality and truth. This is the time where Leonard is safe in his constructed perception of truth.
The body is another important theme used to explore the truth. In our commercial and consumerist society, people are often judged by their appearance and status symbols. An individual’s truth and worth is often constructed through their body, the way they look. An interesting example of this human failing is in ‘The races of man’ by John Beddoe, Beddoe argued that there was a difference both physically and intellectually between those in Britain with protruding jaws and those with less prominent jaws. The Irish, Welsh and the lower classes were among those with protruding jaws, he argued, whereas all men of genius has less prominent jaws.[1]
This human misjudgement of character through appearance is not accurate
When you see colors what do you feel? Different colors have the ability to convey different emotions. For example, red can commonly be associated with anger and blue is often associated with sadness. In the book, Of Mice and Men, many emotions are conveyed, especially by Lennie. Lennie is like a child, trapped in the body of a big, strong man and he experiences many emotions throughout the book, ranging from innocence to loyalty, which are represented by the color, yellow. Yellow is representative of innocence, loyalty, and helplessness, that Lenny experiences throughout the book, Of Mice and Men. From its childlike quality to its warm undertones, I’m going to tell you why.
The use of symbolism such as the physical and emotional meanings of blindness can describe different meanings behind elements of the story. In the critical essay, the author discusses why an author might choose to make a character bling and what it means. Diane Andrews Henningfeld, the author of the critical essay explains, “clearly the author wants to emphasize other levels of sight and blindness beyond physical.” Blindness can be more than just the levels of physical sight and the author wants that to be understood. The author wants to emphasize and make it very clear that other levels of sight and blindness exist like not seeing the beauty in life and being blind to it beyond just being able to see with your eyes. The quote can feel something about the characters traits and how they can be so opposite from their physical abilities. This quote Conveys the facts. People can see in different ways. It is stated that,“although he is blind, he ‘sees’ how to get along with others in profound and important ways. By contrast, the narrator, although sighted, does not see how his isolation damages himself, his wife, and their relationship. He is
Vision and the act of looking is an important and recurring theme in many horror films. In early gothic literature, such as in Guy de Maupassant 's Le Horla, the author presents vision as definitive and universal proof and stresses the importance of seeing as well as the act of showing gore. As a society, we are routinely told ‘seeing is believing ' in the wake of any paranormal or supernatural phenomena, placing weight on the tangible. However, as science and technology have progressed the faithfulness of visual representation is increasingly throw into question, which in turn has led to societal anxiety. A few years earlier, video footage of an event rarely had its validity questions, whereas now it is easy
A prominent visual motif Hitchcock utilised within the film was the characters eyes. The themes of voyeurism and surveillance were underlined throughout
Cinematic perception can be understood using the metaphor of cinema as a window and frame. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window is an concrete example of this metaphor from both a critical viewpoint as an audience member, and from the perspective of the protagonist, L.B. Jefferies. Thomas Elsaesser believes that the cinema of the window offers a “special, ocular access to an event” and the screen is transformed from a two dimensional narrative into a three-dimensional environment within which the audience is absorbed (14). Because the plot contains an actual window and also involves L.B Jefferies looking through a window, Rear Window is an exemplary illustration of this metaphor. The two observation points are similar in that they are both ocular-specular,
The novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse exemplifies the idea behind appearance. The novel is able – through dialogue, events, and descriptions – to show how appearance does not exemplify the world as a whole, yet how appearance does not symbolize nothing, but instead how appearance matters in the sense that it changes and tells a story. Appearance matters in a way that all objects of the world portray their story through their appearance. Appearance allows someone or something to see nooks and crannies within objects in order to see that objects past, present and future. For example how the scratches on rocks show weathering while wrinkles on a human show stress. Take that even further and see how deep those
People always say don’t judge a book by its cover, yet constantly, we all do it. We pick up a book and immediately, by instinct, we judge it by what we see. It is the same for all things in life. It is only human nature to judge things based on appearance. We look at how someone or something appears, and without even trying, we make assumptions or judge that thing, person, or situation. Throughout my semester in English 10A, I have come across many situations in which appearance affects the thoughts or lives of characters in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time-Indian, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Merchant of Venice, and our Holocaust Unit.
Human being have a lots of ways to feel the world and perceive information, such as smelling, hearing, touching, and seeing. However, the physical senses are not the only way for individuals to capture correct information, imagination also plays a very significant role while most individuals percept information. In the following article the two authors Oliver Sacks and Malcom Glad well show case how Cognitive association is of significance importance when it comes to sight. Another elaborate importance of cognitive association to sight is eyes of the mind concept ,whereby the writers explores the changes that human body adapts to after losing the eye sight. In the “Mind’s Eye’’, written by Oliver Sacks, the main leading character, John Hull gives a personal narration of the challenges he encountered after losing his sight, a condition he never at any point in his life imagined. He explains how he experienced relocation of some parts of his brain that later enabled him to have visual capabilities. In “The Power of Context’’ writer Malcom Glad well explores whether there is a cognitive relation of how ideas are shared by cultures. He also argues whether it’s possible restrain cultural changes. He points out whether there are chances that repetitive behaviors would result into habits change. Human perception is not only the physical product of the senses, but also the combination of human’s cognitive association and the physical feelings that causes various views from person
Another element that this film uses to portray the theme is color. Red, among other colors, are used a lot in different aspects of the film. For example, the color of Lola’s hair, the color of the phone, the color of the bag with the money in it. Red (and color in general) was also focused on in the film Pleasantville. The colors in that film are used to distinguish the different from the ordinary black and white.
For many people, the black and white colors shows emotions of sadness and despairs. The author may use black and white to point out those emotions. One must get into the tensions to see and know what the character were going through. The choices of the book had makes the words and descriptions and pictures more appealing to the eyes and heart. There were more meanings with these two colors provided.
Nolan uses mise en scene to further develop the audience’s understanding and view of the protagonist, Shelby and his psychological struggles in the opening scene of Memento. Followed by the non-linear editing, Nolan uses low key lighting to create a dark and dangerous atmosphere, which shows Shelby as being vulnerable and in danger. However, the dim lighting suggests that Shelby is a murderous man as he is holding the gun. This helps build tension felt by the audience by making them want to understand who Shelby is and to learn why he has killed a man. At the start of the film, the audience does not know his motive and become intrigued as they want to solve the mystery as to why Shelby has committed murder. To further emphasise this, the setting is an empty, isolated room that is low-key lit. this is immensely ominous as all the features carries connotations of death. Shelby is wearing a suit, which suggests that the film is set in modern society. As it is set in the modern society, it accentuates to sense of danger and the ominous feel to the audience as it is seen as illegal and beyond convention to murder. The sense of danger is elevated by the fact that the scene is directly after Shelby has committed murder. It shows Shelby’s unperturbed facial expression and a scratch on his cheek. The cut illustrates that he has endured some physical altercation with his victim. Shelby’s facial expression is rather confusing and rather concerning as he seems emotionless after a
to the human eye to give it a sense of realism and so the audience
When one looks upon something, they typically see only the most immediately visible aspects of the object. Take a painting for example. Let us say that this painting is a fairly faithful representation of the Hudson River. When the viewer gazes upon this work, that is what they will see (provided of course that they are familiar with the landmark). What the average observer might fail to realize however, are the influences upon the work, or how the political climate the artist experience might have be visible, or to take it a level deeper, the chemical composition of the paints and the technical limitations and techniques that contributed to the creation of the complete image. While an uninformed audience might judge the work based off of
I agree with Allegory, there is definitely a distinction between appearance and reality. Sometimes we see things like the men who were in the cave, we see them by how they look without really knowing that things are really not what they seem to be. Often we tend to judge things and people by their appearance such as books, they may look very interesting from the cover and once you read it, it is very boring, definitely not what you expected. For example, if one was to see a man coming out of a gas station with a plain white shirt, blue jeans, tennis shoes with tattoos all over his arms one could simply have the impression that he is a mean person a gangster or a delinquent for the fact that he has tattoos. When in reality this man is a doctor,
The innovative motion picture director Stanley Kubrick’s varied his genres from film to film: from comedy, action and all the way to horror. On the other side, the film’s themes remained the same throughout his body of work. They all explored the dark side of the human condition and human nature. The topics dealing with sexual desires, violent urges, corruption, morality vs immorality, the illogical, and personality disorders were all part of this dark human condition. It is almost as if Kubrick wanted to show the real atrocities of the world so that his films could work as wake-up call for the human race, so that his audience could learn and avoid the bad choices his protagonists couldn’t avoid. Kubrick shows us this through the character’s decisions, which tend to be in the immoral side. He also clues us in through his use of surveillance-like camera techniques. Most of his films, including The Shining, use this technique and it implies he wants us to stop being detached observers. He wants us to wake up and help out when we see something bad happening. Other techniques that he uses which help in proving this point, include the use of extreme camera angles, more specifically when the camera is very low in the ground and is looking up to the authoritative antagonist. Kubrick’s consistent use of one-point perspective support the idea as well, since it makes the characters look isolated and with no one nearby to help out. Ultimately, his use of duality, geometry, eerie