Ultimately, when I dream or deal with a crisis in my life - an actor does not concern or comfort me - it's the human writer, the experience I am sharing in this universe. That is why I put the story first. Like Plato's Allegory of the Cave, I do not hold a video library in my head - it's all eventually dumping into a subconscious cauldron. I don't strive for memorization, I focus on understanding and relation. To participate, to dance.

I think this is a mistake. This is not how most people experience film and it is something that you could change if you choose to. For me I rarely remember the plot for long, I rarely remember character names more than a few hours after the movie ends. What I do remember is images.

Take The Third Man as an example. What do you remember from that movie? I remember the barest of details, though since I've seen it multiple times I probably remember it better than most. The protagonist goes to Austria in search of friend who it turns out is dead. The account of the death doesn't add up and it turns out the friend isn't dead and just faked his death to try to escape the law. The police eventually catch up with the friend (how they I don't know) and chase him through the city. I remember no dialogue at all. Not a single line. I remember the name of Welles' character, Harry Lime, mostly because in an interview he called it the best role he's ever had.

What I do remember well is images. I have a number of images that are stamped in my mind like an indelible mark. I remember the sitar being on screen in the credits. I remember the street where the death supposedly occurred. I remember the first fleeting reveal of Welles in the street. I remember Welles playing with the coin or lighter in the Ferris Wheel. I remember the chase through the sewers and the fantastic play of the light.

Kubrick put it like this:

When you think of the greatest moments of film, I think you are almost always involved with images rather than scenes, and certainly never dialogue. The thing a film does best is to use pictures with music and I think these are the moments you remember. Another thing is the way an actor did something: the way Emil Jannings took out his handkerchief and blew his nose in The Blue Angel, or those marvellous slow turns that Nikolay Cherkasov did in Ivan the Terrible.

Really if story is what you are after, I think you are wasting your time in the cinema. Literature and the theater are both better for that. Film is closer to poetry, music, or painting.