Reasons I think he's faking it

but I don't know if I buy all your arguments.

The first one is pretty good, but I'll have to see the context.

The second one sounds completely reasonable and I don't see how it's even evidence against his possible condition. And as for relearning things they could have easily been things that weren't like muscle memory. Photography is a lot more complicated than just point and click. If he forgot cricket he could forget that.

As for the cricket, I live in the UK and cricket only comes up in my group of almost exclusively british friends when their nations team is playing and only sometimes then. Again, not a convincing argument.

dunno, I need the context to even understand what you mean exactly

sounds sketchy

sounds really sketchy

I don't see how the filmmaker would be required in any sense to get the subect to prove his condition. Even if he's obviously faking I don't see why the filmaker would even be bothered. It's irrelevant.

Some convincing points tarnished by a few really poor ones.

Remember, the amnesia is probably caused by psychological factors, and thus - in some manner or another - "faked". If he's conscious of this himself, though, is a different question. I think not:

1. Look at his artwork after the accident, such as the clouds from the airplane. It reminds me of something out of Werner Herzog's Fata Morgana - it takes a seriously altered state of consciousness to create such art.

2. He was living in the midst of severe mental stress factors: He was a foreigner in the US and thus bicultural, he had (probably) just taken a trip to a Latin American country where he didn't understand the language, he had turned his life totally upside down moving from stock brokerage to photography, he was using lots of energy keeping his image tidy, he came to on a train - just like another amnesiac portrayed on Swedish television recently; and he was probably involved in drugs (as suggested by a "friend" in the movie and by the environment he hung out in) - for example cannabis can mess up people's brains to a disgraceful extent.

3. He's got to be one of the best actors in the world if this is fake!

4. The brain is complex, and "amnesia" doesn't necessarily work out the way we intuitively would think.

In sum, this isn't a fake. End of story.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/mind_reader/2007/12/11/unknown_white_male/index1.html

Even in patients with chronic amnesia resulting from severe brain injury, alcoholism or encephalitis, retrograde amnesia isn't total. More recent memories are affected more than remote memories. A patient might lose months or even years of his memory immediately preceding his brain insult, but memories from long ago -- greater than 10 to 20 years -- tend to be preserved. By the time retrograde memory loss is total and all personal identity is lost (as with the profoundly demented),patients have become completely helpless and unable to take care of their most basic needs. I'm not aware of a single well-documented case of a patient who suffered a complete loss of personal memory while able to accurately lay down new memories.

i completely agree with your points, especially about the phone number.. obvious to me when i first saw it before i had read anything about hoax controversy

I completely agree with bureau 203. I, too, smelled a rat from the beginning. My favorite fake narration was "I dove into the surf. I didn't know if I could swim . . ." What crap.





"Ain't life grand?" said Clyde Barrow.

Re: the girl he dated a few times: would he really go through that whole supposed ruse only to be dating someone else later in the film? It seems like he and the girl he dated a few times ended up just being close friends.

And some people do refer to their friends' parents by first and last name, esp. if the parent has a different last name or if say...he's only dated a girl a couple times. I don't really think that's proof of fakery. It's a personal preference.

As for the photography, why not? Why do we choose what we choose as a vocation? Certainly not because of memories (which he has lost), but b/c of who we are deep down. An artistic person is born, not made. Same w. an athletic person, etc. It's part of who we are.

Most of your reasoning is taken from what you would do in his position, with all your memory. Try looking from his perspective.

1. Maybe you don't recognise people you have seen in photos. But don't you think if you had lost his memory and you knew you were going to meet people you were formely best friends with you would make a conscious effort to learn their names. That if you lost your memory you wouldn't pour over any representation of your former life. We see in the film him looking at photos and videos of them. He wasn't just meeting one of his mate's mate who he'd seen the odd picture off around the place. And he wasn't picking them out from a crowd, he was being brought to them in a pub.

2. Again, he would have been told what he used to do and its only natural he would be curious experiment with the things people told him. Also this objection doesn't account for a deeper more unknown element of things we don't know about the human brain. Are people born with skill at a certain thing? Is creativity an innate thing? We don't know these things, either way I don't find it ridiculous that someone would try to rediscover things they knew about themselves from their previous life. Also you don't get muscle memory from doing complex tasks in a sequence, its very different to signing your name.

3. You're exaggerating. He is spending time with one British friend and he lived in America where there would have been no visual reminders of cricket. Not everyone in cricket nations loves cricket, I live in Australia and I wouldn't be surprised if their are people I know that I've never talked about cricket with because they have no interest. My girlfriends American and I know she likes basketball but I reckon I could count on one hand the amount of times we've talked about it. The actual phrase in the documentary was someone along the lines of 'I look forward to reintroducing you to the delights of West Indian Cricket'; even if his British friend had said 'oh and you like cricket' with all the other information he would have been taking in its not ridiculous he wouldn't automatically remember when he read this sentenced, it is pretty ambiguous. Also seeing that a cricket is an actual insect its not really that stupid.

4. Really? If you knew you were going to meet your family again for the first time, you wouldn't consider that a significant enough event to document. Maybe watch back to study their reactions to you' get any understandings of what they are like and how they react to you. You wouldn't do it if you were just picking them up any other day but meeting them again for the very first time is pretty significant. If he'd already lost all his memory once is it really that surprising that he started documenting everything after whatever happened. Why are you saying he filmed it anyway? In case someone wanted to make a documentary about him, even though according to you his motivation in faking was to pick up a chick

5. The only real legitimate point. I don't know the circumstances but you know either way its not impossible.

6. Think about how things happen in real life. Sometimes you need to write something down, a number an email and you don't have a pad- you know because most people don't walk round with them so you write it down on something that has another use. Sometimes you only need this once but you keep the thing its written on because you are using it for something else. I have plenty of school books, bank bills, letters etc that I have done this too. its much more plausible than your theory that he pretended to: not know who he was go to a police station, not give them any clues, go to the hospital not give any clues, go to the mental ward THEN they get in touch with the mother, who vaguely remembers his name and calls her daughter. Sounds like a plan where alot has to go right that is out of his control. Not to mention you made up the bit about her not taking his calls, not to mention if he had of just put her number down it wouldn't have been him calling her it would have been the hospital, not to mention the whole thing is ridiculous you really think he pretended to lose his memory to pick up a chick. One he didn't even up with, he turned his whole life on his head, why wouldn't he have pretended to get his memory back after the plot didn't work? seeing as that is something that happens to people with retrograde amnesia.

Not to mention if he is faking he is one of the most considered and inspired actors ever. Those things like being there hours until he signed the signature and his reaction to that wasn't a stereotypical man in distress it was pretty considered and innate. picking up on things like little gestures his friends make in videos he watches. Also his friends comment on how he had changed fundamentally as a person. All in all thats a pretty complex performance