It is a movie, it is open to interpretation.
There was a great Salon rticle that explored the movie in great detail and won me over to the ‘Leonard killed his wife’ camp, but I am more than open to other theories. I just happen to like that one.
This movie wasn’t made with the intent of having a clear summation/answer. It seems to have been made to explore the nature of memory and the self (and to spawn funky theories).
Well…yeah…but…
Spawning funky theories is cool, as long as they jibe with mine. 
Who says any of what Teddy says is a lie? What’s to make us believe that he’s being dishonest about any of it?
I’m with Munch on the memory scenes. The whole point of the movie is that memory is unreliable, so I don’t think any of the shots from Leonard’s memory are supposed to be taken at face value. We even see him reinterpreting his own memories when he says to Teddy “My wife wasn’t diabetic” and we see him pinching her thigh again instead of giving her a shot.
Did you guys see the web site? It has a whole bunch of new material not seen in the movie that is part of the Memento canon. Dunno what the url is off the top of my head.
the memento website?
that’s http://www.otnemem.com/
it’s got all this stuff like leonard’s psychiatrist’s report
which lead me to conclude that leonard’s making it up
i agree with stankow (the first one, not the second one)
Was there a REAL Sammy Jankis? Who was he? Why did Teddy call him a con man and a fraud? Why did he say Sammy had no wife?
Are we supposed to think that there was no Sammy, that Leonard just made up that story to describe his own situation with his own wife?
The conclusion I am slowly coming to is that Leonard is mentally ill, but not the way he thinks. I think he has deluded himself into believing he has the condition Sammy appeared to have, and lives in a psychotic state as a result of that delusion.
I used to believe that he was not ill at all, but faking the whole thing. One piece of evidence I used to back that up was that he didn’t have a tattoo that said, “I have a memory problem.” However, I think the “Remember Sammy Jankis” tattoo serves that function nicely. However, whatever he has wrong with him doesn’t prevent him from remembering that he is on a mission of revenge, that “John G.” is the name of the person he is looking for, and that he needs to arm and disarm the car alarm when coming and going from the car.
Veddy interestink.
But John G. was tatooed on him. And wasn’t he supposed to be able to remember everything before the accident? Surely he’d realize what an alarm thingy was for if he found it in his pocket.
Uh, Teddy lies throughout the film. Or are you talking only about the last scene? I don’t think there’s any way to know how much of what he is saying is true there. The fact that we know him to be a liar is enough to make us suspicious of him, but there is no proof that what he says isn’t true.
Yes, but it is clear from his actions that he doesn’t even remember that he has the tatoos all the time. It certainly wouldn’t be consistent that he would remember what any of them say.
Yes, he would know what it is for. But that doesn’t mean he would remember every time upon getting out of the car to arm the alarm and every time upon getting back to the car to disarm it.
If he had a car with a car alarm before the accident, it’s very likely that he’d be in the habit of turning the alarm on and off.
And, Lamia, Teddy lies throughout the film? I didn’t get that impression. Not at all. He seemed reasonably straightforward, though a bit of an asshole. What are specific instances of contradiction from Teddy?
What I wonder is, who was talking to Leonard on the phone?
BTW, on the DVD there’s lots of additional information (like the medical report) that, to me, gives the impression that Leonard killed his own wife. It’s my belief that the whole Sammy Jankis story Leonard told was pretty much about Leonard, with Sammy pasted in.
And even if he hadn’t had a car with an alarm, he is still capable of forming new habits.
Well, his plan to use Leonard to kill Johnny (and perhaps others?) involves one lie after another. This includes his many attempts to get the car (and the cash) from Leonard. His account of himself, his job, and his relationship to Leonard also varies.
I thought it was pretty clear that it was Teddy.
Adding credence to this theory are a couple slipups over the course of the movie. For example, the second time we see Leonard engaged in conversation with Burt (when he’s getting Burt to unlock his room for him), Leonard calls him Burt without having to ask his name (in that scene, that we have seen). Oversight on the part of the director/editor, or more?
Lamia, while Teddy is certainly being deceptive, and using Leonard for his own ends, I don’t think we ever see Teddy tell Leonard deliberate untruths. He did use Leonard to kill Jimmy, but he never actually lies. And while his account of his role in relation to Leonard does vary, I don’t recall that this is due to anything more than misdirection in the film towards the viewer. Could be wrong. But I think Teddy’s final speech is pretty much wholly true.
I’ve never really believed that everything Teddy said to Leonard at the end was true. In response to the claim that Teddy would have no reason to lie…well, Leonard was pissed off and had a gun, and so I think Teddy would throw just about everything he could at Leonard just to calm him down.
And Teddy does lie in the movie. He says that Natalie doesn’t know who he is (not entirely true), he says that Leonard’s car is his…and keep in mind that he has been lying to Leonard the whole time during the black and white scenes, and for god-knows-how-long before that, in order to get him to kill Jimmy. (Keep in mind that Jimmy and Leonard had met before–Jimmy recognized him–but Leonard didn’t have a polaroid of Jimmy. What do you think happened to that polaroid?)
Teddy is manipulative and Leonard has every reason not to trust him. It seems to me that Teddy is not so much concerned with telling Leonard the truth as he is with telling Leonard anything he needs to to get him to do something.
Think about it–Teddy’s quite familiar with Leonard’s case. And he’s a bad cop, suffice it to say. So given his goal of getting Leonard to wipe out various ne’er-do-wells, it seems to me that all Teddy would care about is, say, getting Leonard to write something down (like “don’t trust her” in Natalie’s case). After all, Leonard won’t remember what the exact circumstances were that made him write it down, so minutes later it’ll be as good as fact to him. So why NOT lie to Leonard?
And so I like not knowing for sure how much of what he says at the end is actually true. That having been said, the movie’s website and surrounding materials (hell, the DVD case is a psychiatric file) seem to suggest otherwise.
Occam’s Razor applies here, at least to me…it’s much easier to believe that Sammy Jankis existed, and did have anterograde memory loss (this previous experience is the only way Leonard could even be aware of his condition) than to believe that Leonard is faking it all, that his “condition” and Sammy are just symptoms of a FAR more complex psychological condition. I do believe, though, that Leonard has trouble sorting out what happened to Sammy and what happened to him. Past that, I don’t know, and I don’t really want to know.
Was there a REAL Sammy Jankis? Who was he? Why did Teddy call him a con man and a fraud? Why did he say Sammy had no wife?
Are we supposed to think that there was no Sammy, that Leonard just made up that story to describe his own situation with his own wife?
This is actually not inconsistent with the facts of anterograde amnesia. The kind of permanent anterograde amnesia that Leonard suffers from is very rare and not completely understood by the medical/psychological community, but at least some patients do form some new long term memories. For instance, there was a fairly well known case of a man who’d suffered from anterograde amnesia since (I believe) the 1950s, but who still knew that a young politician named Kennedy had been assassinated.
Yeah, but it is inconsistent with the movie’s description of the condition (within the context of the movie) as being a total inability to form long term memories. That was emphasized over and over.
I’m bummed because I bought the regular DVD release a couple months ago, not knowing that a limited edition was going to come along.
And who do we hear this description from? A neurologist? A psychologist? From any objective, impartial, and informed source? No, we hear it from Leonard. He’s a layman, and an unreliable narrator to boot.
I don’t know that I’d give the director a “Get Out of Jail Free” card on this, as it does seem rather unfair to the audience, but heck, he’s messing with the audience for the whole movie.
I forgot to mention, the movie does indicate that Leonard misunderstands, or at least lacks the expertise to properly describe, his condition. He refers to it as a problem with his short-term memory. This is incorrect. His short-term memory is just fine. His ability to access previously formed long-term memories is also fine. His problem is that he cannot form new long-term declarative memories (he can still form new long-term procedural memories). As the film’s depiction of anterograde amnesia is otherwise accurate, the fact that Leonard makes this very basic mistake in describing it suggests that the mistake is really his and not the writer/director’s.
But the movie would not be as interesting if Sammy Jankis really existed. The ending (and the beginning) would mean absolutely nothing if Teddy wasn’t telling the truth.
There’s another clue in there that strongly hints at Leonard being a victim of his psychology rather than neurology (and of him being Sammy Jankis). Throughout the movie, we see flashbacks of him and his wife on that night of the attack. He gets hit on the head, the burgular escapes, and Leonard sees (and remembers) his wife’s face through the fogged-up plastic sheet. He remembers this even though technically he shouldn’t. And his wife is clearly still alive (because she’s breathing). Why would we get treated to this flashback if this wasn’t a part of Leonard’s subconscious memory?
I think Leonard’s obsession with Sammy Jankis is a clue in and of itself. He holds on to this story like it’s his security blanket, subconsciously projecting his own problems onto this fictional person. If Sammy was real, why would Leonard constantly use Sammy as a way to explain his condition to others, since he says over and over that Sammy was clearly nuts? It doesn’t make sense unless Sammy is Leonard and he just doesn’t realize it.
Isn’t it about time to hear from jjimm again?