Amarcord and \"Memento\" -- Memory

Amarcord and "Memento" -- Memory Films of the Past and Today

The contrast between Federico Fellini's 1973 "Amarcord" and Christopher Nolan's 2000 "Memento" highlights the increasing distrust of the human mind to remember things accurately. "Amarcord" is a kind of a cinematic valentine to Italy of the long past, very likely the filmmaker's own childhood. It begins with the townspeople of a village symbolically burning the witch of winter, in a joyful celebration of the springtime to come, and fertility. The film is a coming-of-age tale, and shows how a young person begins to better understand intimate relations between men and women in a positive fashion. This theme, conveyed in the life-giving atmosphere created early on in the film, is embodied in the quest for love of the central character, a young man named Titta from a boisterous Italian family, intent upon exploring his sexuality.

In contrast, "Memento" begins, not with an image of dandelions scattering their seeds, but with a Polaroid fading rather than developing. Instead of an image of production, it offers an image of destruction and forgetting. The central character, rather than engaged in an act of creating new memories, like the young boy in "Amarcord" is trying to avenge his wife, but he cannot remember the event because he has short-term memory loss. He is determined to remember what has happened, not because the memories are joyous, but so he can destroy the person who destroyed his wife -- and his life. "Memento" is not set in the long past, but it is characterized as a memory film because it is told backwards, eventually ending with Leonard misidentifying the killer, and misremembering the fact that he has already killed John G.

To some extent, one could argue that both films suggest that memory is not to be trusted, and can be imperfect. "Amarcord" presents a vision of village life that seems almost too nostalgic to be believed, just as the memory clues of "Memento" ultimately lead Leonard on a wrong path. There is also a similarity in the portrayal of women in both films. For example, Natalie in "Memento" manipulates Leonard, because of his faulty memory. Leonard is driven to avenge a wife whom he seems to regard in extremely idealistic terms. This suggests that a kind of virgin/whore complex attitude towards women is harbored by the main character. Although Fellini's film seems slightly more positive in the way that it views women, it also tends to portray women as either pristine, highly virginal women or mothers, or sexual, earthy goddesses. Women exist less as characters than as metaphorical or visual embodiments for how men see women, and how men remember the influence of women in their lives, as either children, or even in the short-term past.