Representing the Mind: The Psyche on Film (Memento and Donnie Darko)

The film industry has long been known as a ‘dream factory’ which permits audiences to escape, and challenge, reality. However, cinema also has a long history of representing the mind, from the very first silents which explored ideas of perspective and meaning to the complex reconstructions of hallucinations, memory and the metaphorical ‘doors of perception’. How films have represented these issues is central to this paper but also key is the way in which film theory has approached how the mind’s articulation is represented and this paper will employ two seemingly jarring theoretical approaches in discussing the impact of pop-psychology on cinema’s visual frame of reference: Freudian psychoanalysis and cognitive theory.