New Hollywood

1. New Hollywood Memento (dir. Nolan, 2000)

2. Fragmentation of Character

3. Leonard Shelby Booker: Film focuses on pathologically fragmented nature of the identity of Leonard. Pathological: involving or caused by a physical or mental disease

4. Fragmentation of Narrative

5. Booker: Radical (postmodern) disintegration of its narrative structure Narrative as reflection of Leonard’s mental state.

6. Applying Jameson’s views

7. Leonard has knowledge of his identity and personal history but he now lives in a perpetual present. He has no sense of temporal progression from one moment to the next. Symptomatic of the postmodern condition.

8. Jameson: Key marker of the postmodern ‘condition’ is psychic fragmentation. Fragmentation as a reflection of the character in late capitalist world. Amid increasing complexity and fragmentation of experience in postmodern world, the individual subject experiences a loss of temporal continuity…experience the world as a schizophrenic. As schizophrenic experience in postmodern world = isolation and disconnection. Person does not know their own personal identity.

9. Schizophrenic: 1. Psychiatry.. Also called dementia praecox. a severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation,disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations. 2. a state characterized by the coexistence of contradictory or incompatible elements.

10. Leonard’s Tattoos Leonard is an example of what Jameson is talking about: the fragmented and schizophrenic experience of time that he associates with POMO. Leonard’s whole being is fragmented and this is symbolised by the tattoos on his chest.

11. Shutter Island (dir. Scorsese, 2010)

12. The Soloist (dir. Wright, 2009)

13. Donnie Darko (dir. Kelly, 2001)

14. http://whatculture.com/film/10-fascinating-films-about-schizophrenia.phphttp://whatculture.com/film/10-fascinating-films-about-schizophrenia.php

15. Fragmentation in story & plot

16. Plot and Story ‘“The king died and then the queen died” is a story.’ But ‘“The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.’

17. Story & Plot Story as the chronological sequence of events and plot as the causal and logical structure which connects events.

18. Memento Plot & Story Plot is in reverse chronological order: this is a reflection of Leonard’s disjointed movement through time.

19. Role of the Audience in the story Detective work Experience parallels Leonard’s Piecing facts together Trying to make sense of the narrative World

20. Fragmentation in Editing

21. Editing in Memento Foregrounding the inherent fragmentation of film. Editing calling attention to itself

22. Fragmentation of Time

23. Treatment of Time Jameson (1991): subject has lost his active ability to create a sense of continuity between past and future and to organize his temporal existence into one coherent experience. He’s living in a perpetual present doing the same thing over and over again! Only reason he exists is to get revenge for his wife.

24. Recap:Fragmentation in Memento Fragmentation of narrative Fragmentation of character: Leonard Fragmentation of time Fragmentation of story and plot? Fragmentation of memory and mind? Fragmentation of scenes Fragmentation of editing