The one thing I didn`t get was this. D`you remember that conversation after the rememory of Danny-Something, when Danny`s brother said he remembered the boat to be another color, and so on.
What happened? Why would Alan just change the color of the boat?
Thanks
Don't think he did change the color of the boat.
It was a parallel symbol for the way Alan mis-remembered the childhood accident.
It is rather simple - there were two guys on the boat. One of them remembers that the boat was green the other red - kind of normal life situation. The second guy watches the version of the first man and is suprised. Robin Williams says: Maybe it was green - to imply that the chip version isn't necessarily real one (daltonism, etc.)
shareMakes sense to me.
Thank you.
How does it make sense?
The chip cannot be wrong, because it is an actual recording (the dream sequence recording chips were rare malfunctions).
Alan actually uses the chip to find out what really happened in his own childhood, which didn't quite match his memory.
I don't know if he did change the color of the boat. The director's new, maybe he just screwed up. If he did change the color, maybe their trying to show that Alan may tamper with his cuttings just to beautify them, after all he is the sin-eater.
the roving eye
My theory: a common form of color-blindness is red-green color blindness, where the eye/brain relationship cannot differentiate between red and green. The chip records it as green as the eye saw it. It would be the deceased that has the color blindness, because the surviving brother can obviously differentiate the colors. This beats the "different people remember the same events differently" theory simply because the red-green colors were specifically used.
Along this theory, how can you really know somebody without looking through their eyes?
Further, how can we trust our own memory if it is filtered through panic, emotion, and all the subjectiveness of our conscience - such as Alan's guilty conscience "knowing" all his life he carried some responsibility of a boy's death and kept it quiet, and then tapping in to an objective recording in his memory to show the hurt boy very much alive? Alan's subconscience obviously enhanced the memory to add to the guilt - we as humans love to beat ourselves up over infractions of good and moral behavior.
I appreciate a film that doesn't spell things out directly, leaving room for the viewer to think, therefore be involved. Artistic movies can sometimes expect too much of the audience, though.
the red - green color blindness cannot be that common because people would jump lights and get get killed more often than one would think acceptable.
Another thing, how would you know that its the deceased that's colored blind and not the brother that's colored blind?? besides the chip would differentiate based on wavelength of light received and not on what the mind sees, because Alan uses it to correct errors in his memory, so it should see the actual color.
Again most people actually subdue their infractions in memory to reduce their guilt to get on with life, and you believe in just the opposite (I'm just stating the truth, don't judge me, dude!).
Also, you're getting way out of reach from the evidence as presented. A gross error of over assumption.
the roving eye
OMG!! You people are killing me! LOL
You are debating color blindness and light wavelength over a movie that is just a made up story! ROFL!!!
If you really want to think about it, people's memories can be distorted. Remember Alan thinking Louis was laying in a pool of blood when it was actually paint? Haven't you ever revisited a childhood memory and thought to yourself, "I thought this place was bigger."?
I can't believe you people are debating color blindness! LOL
"Haven't you ever revisited a childhood memory and thought to yourself, "I thought this place was bigger."? Yes. I sure have but I think that's because we were so much smaller.
shareNo debates here. Just my theory, people can take it for what it is, a free opinion.
However, I do feel that I could clarfy my statement.
Though color blindness itself is not common, among those who have color blindness, red-green is a common form. Color blind people with rgcb must learn to differentiate traffic signals based on position, with red being the top light, and green being the bottom one. My observation that these two colors were in that particular scene with that particular situation simply caused me to think it was not coincidence. There could be many explanations for the memory variance - I have merely thought of one.
Garvit, are you assuming the chip picks up visual cues before it enters the eye? Interesting, but I posit that the chip records memories of the individual, therefore would record events as the person saw it, not necessarily reality. Also. different parts of the brain perform different functions. What Alan thought he saw was his focus throughout life. However, there was an objective recording of the event in his brain as well. I would guess that there are many people who thought one way about an event, but after hypnosis brought on a different memory, were able to see it in a different light.
Obviously, the surviving brother has no color blindness because he can differentiate between red and green. The question is, did the deceased brother have it?
A lot of people do exaggerate their guilt in their minds - psychologists and priests would have little to do if people didn't feel overly guilty. Of course there are psychopaths and sociopaths who either feel no guilt or justify beyond what is reasonable their own bad actions. Most of us fall somewhere in between exaggerated guilt and unreasonable justification.
As for over-assuming - no one has ever accused me of thinking too shallow!
Best,
smith2505
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I've gotta hop on the symbol boat here. Everybody's got false memories. I don't think we're to read any further into the exchange than that the filmmaker wanted to impregnate us with the idea that our memories are not always true. I'm not sure it's connected to the later reference to errors in ZI's at all, since that interpretation has very little to do with plot points and overall themes, while the symbolism idea has much to do with it.
But I guess that regardless of whether or not a memory is true, it is the fact that it powerfully impacts us that really counts.
Well don't you remember that scene where he shows the footage where the chip can't distinguish from what the brain sees and what the eyes see? It is possible that for some reason the one person saw a red boat in his mind so that's what the chip recorded. But I think it's just a case of the fact that memory is never reliable. One person remembers it as green but another person saw it and it was recorded as red so it most likely was red.
shareYep. I buy the theory that the memory is not realiable, and that the chip records and the person thinks she saw. As I said, makes sense to me.
I believe the two guys remembered the same event in different ways. Completely reasonable.
the other guy was colorblind, so he saw a red boat when in fact the boat was green.
shareit's all about memory. you can't go into depth on color blind and all that. the Z.I. has to use the eyes to record actual fact, but like alan's memory, it can't be tainted by what he thought happened. i think it boils down to simply being polite.
alan rather than argue with this guy about what color a boat from how ever long ago it was, simply, politely implied that he was right.
to go deeper maybe alan subconsciously knew his memory of what happened to louis wasn't quite right, and is basing his self burden of guilt on (to adapt an old saying) 'i think, therefore it is.'
...post-modernistic crap, but alan (possibly) is of the persuasion that his truth is his truth (ha) and that if the guy thinks the boat was green who's to argue.
but again seeing as how the Z.I. recorded the boat as red, i would say that's more correct than some guy at a funeral/rememories vague sense of what happenned well over probably 30 years ago.
In one sentence, Alan said "some [implants] are defective, they can't distinguish between what the eyes saw or what the mind saw"
share[deleted]
I think it is as simple as this.
The memory chip records reality not what your brain THOUGHT things were, thus why Alan went back later to look at his chip to see how it REALLY went down with Louis and the fall when they were kids and not how HE REMEMBERED it.
He probably did, it's plausible, since this movie makes no sense at all.
It's left/right, up/down, north/east etc., no obvious "angle of approach" or plot. IMO. We get served up a lot of stories that never evolve and therefore are utterly pointless.
This movie confused me, and somewhere, someone probably said "We have som script issues, but I think we can pull it off"
Like Kramer said in some episode of Seinfeld:
"Yeah, went straight to video. That makes me the premiere"
I'm going to reply to the overall view all at the same time.
Since certain chips can be defective and unable to distinguish between what the eyes say and what the mind saw, it is most reasonable to assume that the ZI records information as it is fed into the brain. Or, in other words, the same image that you end up "seeing" at every moment of every day is what is recorded in the movie. This also holds true for the fact that we most often don't "see" our blinking. Our mind automatically interpolates that 1/10th of a second into imagery.
Having said that, I turn to another debate I've read: the changes in memory. Once the ZI has recorded a memory, that's it. Signed, sealed, completed. That does not, however, mean that the memory is not innacurate. Taking from some of the defective chips' steam, it is mostly safe to say that if you somehow saw something "wrong" the first time, that the memory may be wrong. This is hard to say, however, but it seems to be the case. You can go back and think about a memory from yesterday, discuss it with someone else, and realize that you "saw" wrong. However, who's saying that you didn't SEE right but only REMEMBER wrong? It is somewhat of a Catch 22. Our evidence to prove the later comes in the form of Hakman's own memory. When he sees his ZOE file of the footage, we hear him say "I remember now." This leads to the conclusion that at the very instant the event occured, Hakman saw everything for what it was, but by repeatedly going over it (he likely repeatedly that memory 1000 times just in the few minutes after it happened), the memory changed before he could even analyze what it meant. Thus, to him, to offered no help to Hunt, and he left him dead and bleeding.
Finally, as posted by a couple of people, concerning the color of the boat. I'm sure everyone here has had a memory of, say, a line in a movie. You loved it and you'd quote it aloud or in your head all the time. Then you go back and watch the movie again, but the line is different. You could SWEAR that your memory is exactly what was said the first time, yet there it is, the proof that you are wrong.
When Alan is asked if he changed the color of the boat, he replies, "I would never do that," and it seems in keeping with his character that he would not change memories, only edit out the bad ones.
As far as the color blindness, if the dead brother had been color blind, it would be evident in the entire rememory, not just the scene with the boat. On the other hand, if the live brother were color blind, he would still see the boat in the original color that he remembered, because he is still color blind.
It is more likely that the live brother is simply remembering wrong, and that is a clever point to bring up early in the film where the mis-remembering doesn't really make a big difference.
On the other hand, Alan says, "maybe it WAS green," which to me suggested that the boat might have been different colors at different times, assuming more than one boating expedition was made.
Semper Contendere Propter Amoram et Formam
Rarely have I seen a thread where so many people got something so obvious so wrong.
It was a plot point to make sure we the audience understood that people don't always remember things exactly how they happened. The antagonist then "put a lampshade" on it by mentioning that people mis-remember so often it was tiresome to him.
This helped us the audience accept the twist later on in the film when we find out the first thing we saw in the film didn't happen that way.
As for the validity, it's completely valid. Eye witnesses are statistically worthless, witnesses to crimes, victims who pick people out in line ups, they are wrong very often.
The guy remembered the wrong color, for any number of reasons. The rememory wasn't flawed. The boat might have been painted at some point, and he's remembering that different color, or perhaps he's remembering another boat, or he actually forgot the color and then later supplanted his memory with something that might logically fit.
It's amazing how much we are designed psychologically to lie to ourselves. Even the things we see are often lies. If you look at a complex pattern your brain actually doesn't bother processing all of the details, it just starts with a base line and fills the rest in. This, and other ways our brain lies to us is why optical illusions work.
Yep, I get it now!
I didn't get it back then (6 years ago) but what you said makes perfect sense to me!
Thanks
In the DVD commentary the director explains that he and his brother remember the same events differently, like the brothers in the movie did regarding the boat (false memories).
To the rest of the thread;
Whether the dead brother's chip or vision was defect or the living brother remembers wrong doesn't matter - either explanation is plausible (although the other video bits don't seem wrong colourwise - the blue tint of Zoe-footage is intentional by the director).
The director also mentions that someone asked him after the movie was finished how Alan can be sure that what he saw on his own chip was correct? He or the audience can't know, but nothing else in the movie points towards it (for example, he acknowledges (subvertly) that he remembers the girl kissing him like in the recoring).
nice, thanks!
"Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts." -Guy Pearce in Memento, first thing I thought when the boat scene came up.
www.youtube.com/nintendocaprisun
It begins...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101235897/page/2
$279 stocking stuffer. If history serves, eventually they'll whittle down to implant size and we're off to the races!
"If people like you don't learn from what happened to people like me..." -Professor Rohl
I think i remember the record was in black and white
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