Memento is not only a well produced, well-acted and scripted movie, but it also plays into the psychoanalysis of the mind and why people do the things they do. As we see in the end of the film, Leonard makes the conscious decision to keep searching for John G. even though he killed the original criminal already. This quest makes his life worth living, the same way that elderly get pets so they have a reason to wake up in the morning. Because Leonard lost everything due to his disorder, it is easier for him to forget that he was the cause of his wife’s death and live blissfully ignorant of his deeds. There are several clues that this ending was coming; when he is burning his wife’s possessions, he states that he probably did this act before with loads of her things to try to forget her. While typically seen as a sign of mourning, we ignore the fact that he has had a life before this and we do not know all that he has done or even how much time as passed since his injury; he does not even know this information.
More clues that are easily glossed over are when Natalie tries to rip the picture of Donn, and he states that to get rid of them, you have to burn them. He has experience; it is not common knowledge that you cannot rip polaroids. Another clue is the fact that he knows how to fill a syringe; if you put Leonard in Sammy Jankin’s place; one would have to for his wife’s insulin shots. One final clue that is often overlooked is the scene that shows Sammy sitting in a chair in a hospital. At the end of this scene, there is a split second frame that shows Leonard in the chair. It is not easy to catch, but the small detail puts everything together for the viewer, or even subconsciously makes them begin to think in this way. This movie tells us what is going to happen from the very beginning, as the opening scene is Leonard killing Teddy. When we see the details we cannot ignore them and we realize how the movie subconsciously was gearing us toward a certain way of thinking with subtle hints throughout.
Well done, Memento, you successfully manipulated most of us, at least the first time through the movie.
I was manipulated throughout Memento by many of the various scenes you just mentioned. What frustrated me about Memento was that I could feel that I was being manipulated, but I was not sure how. I imagine that this is how Leonard would have been feeling in the movie, as well. The major clue for me was the photo of Teddy containing the words “don’t believe his lies.” As the movie progressed, I realized that Leonard’s system of short term memory was far from perfect. The photos he carried with him rarely contained accurate information. For Natalie, because he couldn’t find a pen, he forgot to write down the fact that she was a manipulative, untrustworthy person. Therefore, the photo only recorded – and he only remembered – her more honorable attributes. He also wrote down “facts” without fully understanding them. At the presence of a mere phone call, his “fact” about John G. having “access to drugs” quickly turned into John G. being a “drug-dealer”, two very different descriptions. Needless to say, Leonard’s system of memory was not foolproof. These flaws in his memory system led me to focus on the great emphasis Leonard places on the phrase “do not believe his lies” on Teddy’s picture. He made many of his decisions based upon those words. I found myself wondering when and why Leonard wrote that phrase about Teddy. Naturally, I questioned its credibility. Therefore, when we reached the end of the movie, I was expecting some sort of twist involving those lines on the photo. However, it is a true testament to the plot of the movie that, despite my expectations of manipulation, I was still shocked by the ending.
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