Human jig-saw puzzle

Rating: Null/10 (19 April 2001)

The title of this film could be Socrates' motto, "Know Thyself." The main character suffers from a condition that allows him only the memories he had before a traumatic event in his life. Beyond that, he has practically no short-term memory and therefore must write notes to himself, take pictures, and mark his own body with clues.
But, as he is told several times in the film, he doesn't know who he really is. We are left with the questions of what the truth is, what memory is, and whether memory is merely interpretation of the truth. The film is thus a satire of the short-attention span of the modern world which makes us forget the past as well as the present.
To follow the story, the viewer must pay attention as the two main plotlines move toward each other from opposite directions and finally merge. The clues are deceiving and the only signals to the viewer of what is going on is the use of black & white film and color film to illustrate which plot segments are which.
Like the main character in the film, we too can never know anything for sure. We, like this wandering man, are caught in loops, replaying the past in the present and mistaking the present for the past. That is why we, like him, are such mixed up creatures as we try to assemble the strange pieces of our jig-saw puzzles without knowing what the finished pictures are supposed to look like.
The makings on the main character's body are clues, but not the clues that the viewer assumes they are. Without giving too much away, I will only say that the point is that you are the clue to yourself -- but the trick is to know who you are. Is that confusing enough? It's supposed to be because we are humans, and humans are confused beings.
We search for keys. We lie to ourselves. We remember only what we want to remember. We try to know who we are. It's an endless loop just like the colliding strands of this plot.