But is an experience ‘real’? Can such value be ascribed to something as subjective as memory? Monroe’s struggle with authenticity seems to, quite intentionally, echo that of Vertov. Man With A Movie Camera was, in many ways, a vehicle for Vertov to distance the art of cinema from storytelling—accomplished by eschewing acts, scenes, and the arc of a storyline in favour of an overwhelming array of novel techniques such as double exposures, Dutch angles, and slow- and fast-motion. In order to eliminate artificiality in cinema, he aspires to create films that are completely objective, unspoiled by personal experience. Similarly, Monroe is disgusted with the commercialization of cinema, which he believes is responsible for its loss of innocence. However, in order to do so, he sacrifices personal choice and the trust of his own experiences, a profoundly Modern ideal (see Nationalism). In one of his graffiti scrawls, he laments, “oh, not being everybody nor everywhere."
Therefore, the socio-cultural contexts of the films can shed light on the idealism of Ruttmann and Vertov and the folly of Monroe. Ruttmann and Vertov’s films epitomized the nationalism of post-war Europe in the 1920s, whereas Wenders’ Lisbon Story was created at the height of Postmodernism, in which we learned (from Las Vegas!) that “while any staged environment is by definition artificial, the resulting emotion in the audience is real” (Klingmann 104). Authenticity is not to be defined objectively, but rather through its ability to provide pleasure, connect to a time or place, and express oneself (Postrel 114). In other words, an experiential reality is singularly personal, shaped by the subjective vectors of happiness, memory, and self-actualization. Monroe’s eventual recognition of these vectors in Lisbon Story proves that, within the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, “the only true thing is memory.” →
