Saturday, September 5, 2009

Memory - man's curse

The Hong Kong-based director Wong Kar Wai exposes in his movies the view that memory is man’s curse. A curse, though, we cannot live without. Without memory a sense of continuity necessary for an identity is unfeasible. Memory is needed to make morality in general and justice in particular possible. However, no matter how hard we try to reach out, no matter how much we urge for real contact with significant others, those others stay out of reach. And we try – we try to forget. That is when trauma kicks in – the curse of memory – and Wong Kar Wai’s mesmerizing movies lift off. His movies show the eternal return of our curse.

The clip is from the movie In the mood for love.