Who Can You Trust

One thing I constantly thought about while watching Momento was how susceptible Leonard is to manipulation and lies. Because he can't make any new memories, he must constantly rely on scribbled notes and his best judgement. Everything and everyone in our world is manipulative and it's almost impossible to get the honest truth. Leonard is forced into this world with absolutely no recollection of his recent past accounts. Throughout this course we've been emphasizing manipulation and deception, but I think this movie focuses on the truth. Leonard is forced to trust his notes, his tattoos, and himself more than anything or anyone else. He has no other choice than to believe in the things he has written for himself.
In Leonard's case, the truth will lead him to justice, so it's crucial that he find the right killer. He wants revenge but he also realizes that with his "condition" it will be difficult to find him. He carries around a camera which take place of his actions and the notes become his memories. They guide him through his hunt and provide him with the most basic information he needs to find his wife's killer. However, sometime the notes can contradict one another. In one scene, Leonard gets in his car to find Teddy sitting in the passenger seat. Teddy tells him that Natalie cannot be trusted, but on Teddy's card, it already says Teddy is a liar. This is a case where Leonard has to use his best judgement and trust that the note he recorded about Teddy was accurate and made for a reason.
As we've seen in all of our texts this semester, manipulation is powerful. This movie showed us the opposite and that the truth can be just as influential. What's important is knowing which side you're dealing with. We, as a class, have learned to recognize when and how we are being manipulated, and even though we choose nothing to do about it, we are still conscious of the manipulation at hand. Leonard is also conscious of this manipulation, but more focused on the truth. He knows people will lie to him so he relies on his notes and pictures to solve his case.