Product: 50 First Dates (Widescreen Special Edition) (2004)
Rating: 4.0
Another cinematic confusion about what short--term memory is
Like MEMENTO, this is a movie that deals with a person with "short-term memory" loss. I put the term I just used in quotes, because, although it is standard psychological term, it is clearly a confusing misnomer. "Short-term memory" is clearly NOT the shortest term memory that we have. If it were, a person who had lost all short-term memory could not complete an intelligible sentence. He or she would have no memory from one syllable to the next what he or she were talking about. But both the main character in MEMENTO and Lucy in this movie can carry on seemingly "normal" converstions with people over certain periods of time. Perhaps that is one reason why their disability is all the more troublesome. It can appear to be no disability at all for a while to any observer. Lucy in this movie could appear entirely to have a "normal" memory as long as she is awake during a given day. But after she had slept, one could observe that she retained no memory of the previous day. The guy in MEMENTO had a shorter period over which he could remember "new" memories, but still over a sufficiently short period, he remembered things "normally" so as to completely baffle somebody as to why he would have to write down the simplest of directions or he would promptly forget them. Neither movie paints any clear picture of what "short-term memory" is that concurs with or can build upon what little I learned about the term in the psychology course that I took. Allegedly, according to fans of one or both of these movies, losing "short-term memory" means no longer being able to form new memories. The paradox here is that these subjects efinitely DO remember new things, but only for short terms, It is said that their "long-term memories" ae intact, but in a literal sense of speaking, long-term memory of anythig happening after the accident that deprived them of "short-term memory" is excactly what they DON"T have. So, when one loses "short-term" memory but retains "long-term" memory, memories of new events become troublesomely short-term. Shouldn't that mean that "long-term" memory is what is really impaired? Maybe it all makes sense if properly explained. Ardent fans of movies like this often insist that it is all perfectly clear and those of us who point out the confusing paradoxes are just dummies. That doesn't help. If more movies dealing with the subject are to be made, I hope some will really clarify it. By the way, subjects of movies do come to have long-term realization that they DO have "short-term memory loss. And that is something that they couldn't have learned before their accidents, because it wasn't the case until after the accidents. Gee, I wish clarification could be found somewhere.What redeems this movie somewhat, to make it worthy of four stars, is that it does tell a touching and OFTEN coherent story of Lucy and her disability, even though it only confuses in implying both that her condition can "never get better" but also that she can learn to know and accept her condition better from day to day and she can form a long-term relationship with someone she met since her accident. Overall though, it tells a more coherent story than MEMENTO, and injects enough humor and charm to make a movie that is highly watchable. Some have said that the humor clashes withe the movie's serious theme. I can see how it has that feeling at times. But if you consider where the movie would be without the humor, I think the humor more enhances than impairs the ability to make this a palatable story.