Memento

The movie Memento is about a man who develops anterograde amnesia, which means new memories cannot be made. He develops this after an attack on his family that leaves his wife dead. This movie portrays this form of amnesia fairly well, because the main character cannot remember anything after a certain amount of time, even though he has pictures and tattoos of things he has to remember. These tattoos and notes he makes only tell him what happened--he doesn't actually remember the event.

Memento clearly portrays a very severe case of anterograde amnesia, given that he can't remember any of the things that happened since he developed the condition rather than being able to remember a portion of each event. People who suffer from anterograde amnesia always retain their memories prior to the event that triggered this ailment and only have memory problems after the event. According to many film critics and medical experts, as well, this film accurately represented the ailment and did a much better job than other movies that attempt to do the same thing. The way the film was made also helped to see how accurate the portrayal was. The film is broken into pieces that run both in chronological order and reverse chronological order. This creates confusion for the viewer that is very similar to the confusion of the character because of his lack of memories. Overall, I think that this movie represents the effects of anterograde amnesia as best a film can without seeming too over the top.