Comments on: Memento Explained

By: John

John — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 08:00:42 +0000

This may be a bit far-fetched… but maybe the “I did it” is in fact insinuating that Leonard himself (for whatever reason) killed his own wife. As was the case with Sammy, perhaps his problem was not physical at all, instead perhaps it was mental. We see a similar situation in the movie “Shutter Island” in which Leonardo DiCaprio kills his own wife and thus has memory loss and plays an investigative game (similar to what Lenny does). Also, the parallel between the names Lenny and Sammy strike me as interesting. The rhyming in these names perhaps represents a parallel between the two where both killed their wives, just by different means. Lenny creates the Sammy story so that he would not remember how he had actually killed his wife. Thus, he may have been put on trial, put in a home for mental treatment and imagines everything in his own mind.

By: Taylor

Taylor — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:17:22 +0000

I agree Michele – I have been lurking here for a while, longer than I remember… and have just had a lot of fun every time another person drops by and throws their two cents out there. Memento is such an epicly wide open move and so disjointedly foreign that it really can go any which way.

I didn’t realize the comments plugin jacked up the readability of the older comments. Need to go fix that pronto. Regardless, would love to hear your comments after you’ve rewatched it again!

Until then,
Taylor

By: Michele

Michele — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 22:41:14 +0000

I, for one, am very appreciative of the many thoughts and opinions being shared here. I am going to re-watch Memento and go from there. Amazing film in my book.

By: RobK

RobK — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:35:36 +0000

Excellent article and a joy to read after having seen the movie (again) last night.

It seems to me that the “Verbal Kint” theory is the best one, except that there really were two people, not one that raped Lenny’s wife. So, on the one hand, he and Teddy actually do end up finding and killing the other guy and Lenny used the exact methods employed in the film. So there is a whole other story there, but not really another movie, because in that case there was no twist to the story. Meanwhile, intertwined with that story (perhaps happening before, perhaps after) Lenny kills his wife with an insulin overdose and constructs Sammy to cover over his memories. After all, it is these memories/lies that keep him happy, just as we all tell lies to make ourselves happy. Clearly this is not something that he is incapable of doing since he does it in order to get Teddy.

A great movie to show in a into to philosophy class, especially with Lenny playing with the idea that maybe the world doesn’t exists when we close our eyes. He appears to convince himself that it does…but them maybe not completely an “external” world. After all, by closing his eyes, that is, telling himself a lie generates a new world in which he can find meaning.

A brilliant, brilliant movie that doesntt even come close to Inception.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:18:12 +0000

So, I just finished watching this and it really made me think. Especially the last monologue given by Lenny after Teddy says Lenny is Sammy. Sammy was a con artist and faking his amensia, according to Teddy. According to Lenny, his memory problem WAS NOT PHYSICAL, but instead was a mental block likely an adverse reaction to blocking out the traffic accident he was in. What if both these theories are true to an extent? What if Sammy exists as a man who had partial memory loss due to a mental block, but later overcomes it, however’ still seeks out the insurance money? And what Lenny’s wife was raped, and Lenny killed her attacker? In order to block out the horror of his wife’s defilement and murdering another human being, Lenny mentally blocks out his short-term memory. And then the story continues much like it was told in the film, Lenny’s wife has diabetes and in her utter frustration of her husband’s unwillingness to “come to” she tests him via her insulin injections. Lenny obliges her, and ends up killing her. At some point in time (probably after her death), Lenny breaks down his mental barrier and is in fact able to make and retain short-term memories. Rather than accept responsibility for his wife’s death, he chooses to remain blind to the facts and creates a second attacker in order to give him purpose and to allow him to seek his own kind of redemption. An this brings us back to the closing scenes. Teddy says Lenny is not a killer, which is true to a degree in this theory. Lenny is mentally incapable of handling murder unless it has the purpose of revenge (redemption), which is also why he refuses to believe he is resposible for the death of his wife, the only killing in which he would be held accountable not for revenge, but out of neglect or selfishness or at best, inability. And in the closing scene, where Teddy forces Lenny to face the truth of his own actions, Teddy has essentially broken through all the five layers of defense mechanisms Lenny has been using to try and redeem himself. This call back to reality forces to the forefront all the emotions Lenny has been repressing about the attack and the death of his wife and Lenny resolves to kill Teddy, not because Lenny actually has amnesia, but because he doesn’t. Lenny remembers everything, but actively chooses to repress it, deny it, regress to a state of mental confusion, and finally projection. He projects his own moral reality on to everyone else around him because he can’t face his own. So the closing lines from Lenny are a recognition of his past and a resolution to stay burried in his own defense mechanisms, thus resolving to kill Teddy. Killing him will effectively end the life of the only other person who can make him face the truth, and simutaneously reaffirming his own defense mechanisms by projecting his reality on Teddy once more, only this time with him as the mark he needs to kill to redeem himself.

By: Bob

Bob — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:22:33 +0000

Something left out of all of this commentary is the importance of the scene in the pickup right before Leonard kills Teddy. He has a conversation with himself and says:

“Can I just let myself forget what you’ve told me? Can I just let myself forget what you’ve made me do? You think I just want another puzzle to solve? Another John G. to look for? You’re John G. So you can be my John G… Will I lie to myself to be happy? In your case Teddy… yes I will.”

Add in this quote:

“Sammy Jankis wrote himself endless notes. But he’d get mixed up. I’ve got a more graceful solution to the memory problem. I’m disciplined and organized. I use habit and routine to make my life possible. Sammy had no drive. No reason to make it work.”

And what I get is that Lenny does have anterograde amnesia, Teddy is using him to fleece criminals and drug dealers for cash (ie, he’s a dirty cop), Lenny needs motivation to go on so he intentionally sets himself up to believe he has not yet killed “John G” (in a moment he will forget he fabricated the “evidence” and legitimately believe Teddy is his target).

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 16:31:09 +0000

To Andrew: I agree he could have been clearer when he said the color and b/w scenes were “running away from each other” (I think that’s what you are referring to). Really they’re converging: the black and white scenes moving forward in time, the color scenes moving backward in time until they meet in the middle in the scene that transitions so subtly from black and white into color.

I think the scene where he’s lying in bed with his wife who’s ALIVE and has the tattoo saying he’d DONE it is not a big problem at all. It’s one of the easiest puzzles to explain: it was a fantasy, nothing more, just as Andy Klein says in the salon article.

By: Iona

Iona — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:03:14 +0000

The literary source interweaves with the movie and gives you a better understanding of the movie. It is sort of like a prequel to the movie itself.

By: Ian

Ian — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 01:58:23 +0000

In the “The Verbal Kint theory” how would Lenny have gotten brain damage if there was no second attacker to cause it?

I believe that Lenny and Sammy are the same person. I think that his wife survived the attack. In the scene where Natalie is looking at Lenny’s tattoos in the mirror, she put her hand over his chest and says “what about here” to which Lenny responds “maybe it for when I find him.” I look at this scene and then at the “I did it” scene and cannot think of any other explanation than Lenny killed his wife. Perhaps he creates Sammy as a person who he can relate to and learn from.

By: matt

matt — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:19:58 +0000

lenny cant be sammy because the tattoo artist tells sammy to gtfo while lenny is getting ink. and the multiple car thing wouldnt work out. and trinity looked up sammy’s plates in a dmv database