Alas and alack, I've now known far too many folks who have endured serious memory problems. As a consequence, I seem to have developed an interest in amnesia not only in real life but also in fiction and film. There are many many books on the subject and Wiki offers an astonishing list of 234 Hollywood amnesia films -- some of which, judging by their titles, do not appeal to my mature taste and which I promise never to view -- including such not doubt remarkable productions such as Raft of the Dead, Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City, and A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon.
I sometimes imagine that there are fewer actual cases of loss of memory than there are films on the subject.
Literary amnesia is a recent obsession; while the ancients had their Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, I can't recall amnesiacs wandering lost around Athens or Rome. Shakespeare never wrote an amnesia play, though at one point Lear, who's had a rough go of it, asks "Who is it that can tell me who I am?"
I suppose that we moderns put amnesia front and center because we are concerned with the integrity and the continuity of the self. Loss of memory threatens us; no memory, no identity. But let us not forget that amnesia is a cheap and easy all-purpose convenient and superficial no sweat plot device. The formula: loss of memory = mystery; restoration of memory = anagnorisis. Very little thinking required.
The Majestic is an eccentric unsatisfying fairy tale that provides the usual car crashes but also lost love, the FBI, HUAC, and an art deco movie theater -- all in the Capraesque context of small-town standards versus big-city corruption. Pete Appleton, played by an uncharacteristically subdued and expressionless Jim Carrey, falls into what is depicted as a total global amnesia. He lacks the least glimmer of his past life. In "real life," any human forced to cope with such an experience would suffer from anxiety, shock, disorientation, fear, and worry -- but not so in this slice of hollywoodiana. Amnesiac Pete is calm and patient, because he is rooted not in our communal vale of woe but in a movie tradition where amnesia is ordinary and effortless. Don't worry, folks, he'll recover his memory by the last reel. No big deal. And he does.
Once again, amnesia is a disease like none other.
Comments