Is Manipulation Right?

In Momento, it’s revealed that Teddy manipulates Lenny in order to kill people that he was looking into for cases. However, in order to exact revenge for being used, Lenny manipulates himself into believing that Teddy is the killer, knowing that he would have no other memory of the event. The manipulations continue to be added on, as Nathalie also takes advantage of Lenny’s condition and gets him to go after someone who will kill her. All of them revolve around Lenny’s inability to create and store new long term memories, which forces him to rely on pictures and notes that he makes for himself. Each of them is aware of the power that these objects have over him. The manipulations of using these things against Lenny make up the plot of the movie.

So were any of them justified?

With Teddy, we find that he is a corrupted cop who uses Teddy’s ability to kill and then forget afterwards as a way to scam money and give himself an alibi. However, as he does mention at the end of the movie, part of the reason for why he does it is because Lenny appears to have no other reason to live beyond punishing John G.s over and over. It can be argued that Teddy has been directing Lenny to people who deserve to die because they are big time criminals. His manipulations keeps Lenny “happy” as it continues to give Lenny a goal in life as well as small opportunities for Lenny to feel extremely happy when his “revenge” is extracted. Teddy’s main personality trait of greed, however, prevents us from saying that his manipulations were justified. He had many opportunities to get Lenny professional help or, at the very least, end the killings. But he decides not to, leaving viewers with very little sympathy for him.

Nathalie is a bit harder to place. In the order of the memories that the movie presents us with, we first believe that she loves Lenny. It’s only late into the movie that we discover that she was not a love interest but rather a manipulator. Her circumstances, however, are quite different. She knows that her boyfriend/lover has suddenly disappeared, most likely died, and that her life is in danger. Nathalie understands that out of the two of them, Lenny probably stands a better chance against Dodd than she does. By manipulating Lenny into confronting Dodd, she plays the chances for both of their survival to be greater. However, she manipulates one life to be risked instead of her own without the other person’s permission or full understanding of the situation. Her manipulation, which places lives in danger that aren’t even aware of the full events, is what marks her actions as wrong.

But what about Lenny? He walked away from the scene, knowing that he’ll forget that he is a killer and that Teddy has been using him. He knew that he was angry at the moment, and that Teddy might get away with using Lenny. In order to exact retaliation that he wanted from that one moment, Lenny set himself up so that his mind would end up killing Teddy. Did he have a right to do that? Is manipulating oneself to kill someone for reason long lost okay? Unlike the other two, Lenny knows that he is putting himself at risk and he’s okay with that. He’s assuring his own happiness. But is manipulating himself really alright?

In many cases, when evaluating ourselves, we find that we can manipulate our own thoughts with perception or exaggeration. Don’t like something? Exaggerate how badly it went and eventually you’ll think it’s worse off than it actually was. If you saw things happen in a certain way, then you convince yourself that what you think happened is true.

Are we capable to manipulate ourselves into murdering? Well, that depends. Are you ready to convince yourself to go against morals that society set out and kill someone?

(Yeah, I hope not too.)

So is Lenny excused? It really depends on your point of view. He knew he was going to exact revenge during the moment and that he’ll be in a state of peace relative to him. Yet he also knows that this adds to the amount of people that he killed that weren’t his wife’s attackers. So where do the morals of manipulation lie?