Memento(2000)

"Do I lie to myself to be happy?"

Thats the moral of the story. Leonard lies to himself to make him happy because he can't remember the truth. Without anyone who can kill him, he strives continuously to regain a scrambled sense of reality, causing him to live in a rampage of chaos, hostility, and murder.

Leonard is based on a true character in the field of psychoscience widely known as "Patient H.M.". He was an epilepsy patient in the 50's that received surgical intervention(an excision of his hippocampus, a nucleous of the brain) to quell the seizures that plagued him. After the operation, his existing memory was intact, but like Leonard, was left with only short-term mentation. He was able to learn things over time -like the piano- with which he became impressively proficient, although each time he played felt like his first. Unlike in Memento; however, he remained in patient care as a case study for medical scientists well into his 80's and is alive even today.

What neurologists gained from him is simple anatomy: "When the hippocampus stops working, you stop creating new memories."

The condition is called "severe anterograde" or "anterior retrograde amnesia" as was called in Memento and is a fearsome prospect to me. With this kind of cranial damage, you are both physically and mentally alive and yet almost the same as the lifeless dead. While I have no problems remembering a face, I have problems recalling names(or maybe I just don't care for them), requiring repitition or even a Leonard style note-taking to commit it to memory, indicating a similar mental deficit. But the real take home message is this: Don't get hit in the head and for christ sake stop boxing before you get stupid.