I guess I just don’t understand why so many people are convinced that Leonard can’t possibly really have anterograde amnesia. I don’t see anything in the film to support this theory. He claims to have a memory condition caused by physical injury, he has a convincing account of how this happened, and his behavior is consistent with that displayed by people who do have anterograde amnesia. Even Teddy never expresses any doubt that Leonard’s condition is both real and physical.
I suppose it is theoretically possible that a man in Leonard’s situation might develop longterm psychosomatic anterograde amnesia, but I have never heard of such a thing happening. If it’s a choice between Leonard having a physical disorder that is real, well-documented, and was clearly well-researched on Nolan’s part and Leonard having psychological disorder that would appear to be completely fictional, I’m going to have to go with the former.
This is not to say that one cannot interpret the film as being about a man who has a purely psychological problem, and since so many people seem to like this interpretation then it must have something to recommend it that I have failed to see. But I disagree that it’s particularly plausible based on the evidence given.
The problem is the issue of Sammy. If Lenny is Sammy, then Lenny is/was faking, as Sammy was faking. maybe.
If Sammy doesn’t really exist, then what is Lenny remembering? Why remember Sammy? Why the constant imposition of the two characters? Without the Sammy connection, the film falls apart as merely an exercise in clever editing…without a story to tell.
The real problem is that Nolan is playing games, he’s withinholding information that would lead to a honest answer. However a quick trip to the website fills in some of those holes.
Now that’s he’s right, but I think it’s tough to say that because Nolan created a character with a well defined illness, it must be true that, that character really has that illness. Especially when it appears that, that illness is rarely permanent.
The answer seems to me that Lenny DiD have the illness and as most people do, recovered. The question becomes, when and why did he continue with the act?
There is nothing in the film to suggest that Sammy Jankis did not exist. Teddy presents the possibility that Leonard’s story about Sammy is confused and contains elements from Leonard’s life, not that Sammy was never real to begin with. According to Teddy, Sammy was a con man who never had a memory problem at all, but this seems to be speculation on his part.
I don’t think there’s any support in the film for the theory that Leonard has already completely recovered from his physical brain injuries. Complete recovery is quite rare anyway. It seems to me the most one could reasonably argue based on the evidence presented is that he is beginning to recover.
I have yet to see any explanation requiring Leonard to be anything other than a man who really does have anterograde amnesia that is not both needlessly complicated and insufficiently supported by the film. I don’t see any reason to doubt that Leonard really does have anterograde amnesia.
There is room to argue that his condition is psychological (caused by emotional rather than physical trauma), especially since Leonard’s story about Sammy Jankis suggests that Sammy’s problem was psychological. But again, having a psychological problem is not “faking” or “acting”. Psychological conditions are very real, they simply have different causes than neurological conditions. However, I am inclined to buy a physical explanation since it seems that Leonard really did sustain a serious brain injury and because I have never heard of longterm anterograde amnesia that was psychological in origin.
What’s he remembering? Well, what is he remembering when he “remembers” him sitting in bed with his wife with an “I did it” tattoo on his chest? It’s a false memory.
Sorry, but there is plenty to suggest that Sammy is figment of Lenny’s mind…to explain to himself and others his condition and to project his wife’s death onto another person. There are flashbacks galore in memento and depending on whether they’re black/white or in color sometimes determine Lenny’s fantasies and Lenny’s “real” memories.
Teddy is **retelling ** Lenny the Sammy story, that Lenny originally told him. A tale that Lenny appears to be constantly modifing. He’s modifing the story to explain the “conditioning” ability he seems to have. An ability that a person with his illness shouldn’t be able to do. Why is hard to believe that the whole thing is a delusion?
As suggested the memento website and others have a more detailed breakdown of the events covered…but not shown in the film.
Things like the various police and hospital reports, the switching of Sammy and Lenny in the hospital…etc.
I agree that if one believes he has an illness, he isn’t really faking it…but you’re missing my point.
I agree that the original trama occured, what I’m saying is that the Sammy Jenkins/Lenny con also occurred sometime after Lenny was released from the hospital and his OD of his wife turned a once physical illness into a current psychological one.
Why is that such at leap? Especially in a fictionalized work?
What does a complete recovery mean? Instead of only having 15 minutes of memory he has a week? Christ i can’t remember what I had for dinner last week!
And while I understand your relutance to accept a fictionalized version of this illness, I think one needs to remember that this is a work of fiction…many liberties are taken.
Memento is a very subjective film and I’m not saying you’re wrong…hell it may be a straight, what you see is what you get film and the joke’s on me for trying to read into it.
Yes, but the cinematic format is EXACTLY like any of his other memories. Next time you watch it, pay close attention to Lenny and Teddy’s conversation in the dinner regarding memories, and how you can’t trust them.
This is where I may have read too much memento info…but it’s been suggested that all realscenes of flashback/memory EXCEPT for that one are in colour and the ** false ** flashback/memories are in black and white…such as the Sammy scenes.
But it’s been awhile…and this is so much in the eye of the beholder…
Well, as long as we’re venturing our opinions, here are mine…
a) Sammy’s story is a forged memory. But it’s metaphorical, not literal. What do the psychologists call it? Projection? Sammy is a projection of himself. Lenny has anterograde amnesia. So does Sammy. Lenny was unable to save his wife. Sammy unintentionally kills his wife. (I have no opinion on whether or not Sammy the person was based on a real Sammy or not. It seems irrelevent, and the film is ambiguous on this point.)
b) Lenny truly has anterograde amnesia. Physically caused. He’s not faking it and it’s not psychological.
holmes, if you watch the chronological order on the Special Edition DVD, you’ll see that the B&W scenes all occur about 1 minute before the color scenes.
No, no, my point isn’t that all black and white scenes are false, but that whatever memory Lenny ‘sees’ in black and white is false. I believe it’s a device that Nolan uses to give us clues has to what to believe really happpened.
Remember seeing the movie in chronological order is a cheat, the movie isn’t meant to be seen that way. Black and White and Colour is used to separate past from present events and also i believe real from false memories; as well as add to the air of confusion.
The question comes down to, do you take the film at face value or do you factor in the information from the memento site…? If you use the extra info, I a lot of answers that seem obvious…no longer are.
That is a reason why Leonard might want to invent Sammy, not evidence that he actually did so.
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I’m sorry, but I think this is ridiculous. I do not see any reason to believe that Nolan intended any such thing. The “present” of the film also takes place in both color (the backwards ordered scenes) and black and white (the forward ordered scenes), and these scenes are all presented as being equally real. The present-time B&W and color scenes even converge at the end of the film, showing that they take place within the same level of reality.
Some of the memory/flashback scenes are probably inaccurate since they seem to contradict each other, but I don’t think Nolan color-coded them…especially since the system doesn’t hold up under close analysis (the shot of Leonard and his wife in bed, the nearly-identical scenes in which he pinches and injects her).
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No. That isn’t the way memory works. What causes anterograde amnesia is some problem with the transfer from short term memory to long term memory. A partial recovery from this condition would mean that a person was able to form long term memories again, or at least some long term memories, but not as well as other people can. It wouldn’t extend the “time limit” or anything of that nature.
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It could never be a WYSIWYG film because we never learn what happened during the crucial time period between the attack and the chronological beginning of the film. This leaves plenty of room for interpretation when it comes to questions about how Leonard’s wife died, whether or not Leonard ever killed the original John G., to what extent Teddy’s version of events can be trusted, what sort of man Leonard really is, whether he will ever give up his quest for vengeance, and what the truth about Sammy Jankis was.
However, Nolan left a lot less room to second-guess Leonard’s memory problem. There is simply nothing in the film to indicate that Leonard could remember if he really wanted to. A lot of people seem to like this interpretation and they’re certainly free to do so, but I don’t understand the appeal of an interpretation that is unsupported by the “text” of the film.
Oh, one other reason I have for preferring to believe that Leonard really does have anterograde amnesia: it would be boring if he didn’t. “Ha ha, he was faking all along!” is a boring twist. Stupid, too. I would have been seriously irritated with the movie if I thought that was what we were meant to take away from it. “The problem was all in his mind, and he could get over it if he really wanted to!” is similarly obnoxious and cliched.
A protagonist who actually has a rare memory condition is novel and interesting. An unreliable narrator who is unreliable for some reason other than intent to deceive or plain ol’ craziness is also refreshingly original. I liked Memento a lot, but if I thought that all these unique twists were really just red herrings and that the “truth” of the movie was something silly, convoluted, and hackneyed, I’d have to stop liking it.
My own interpretation is generally that the main point of the movie is the unreliability & willful distortion of memory. However, I actually have a question more about the medical condition -
Aren’t the majority (or 100%) of people with anterograde amnesia unaware of the details of their condition? I don’t know enough to know if that’s true, but of a few cases I’ve heard about, the person simply doesn’t realize what’s wrong, or possibly if anything is even wrong at all. Even if they acknowledge that there is a problem, they aren’t likely to remember that so they won’t believe it later.
I don’t conclude that he’s ‘faking it’, but Leonard’s constant awareness always bugged me a bit. There’s never a point at which he forgets that he has the problem. On the other hand , nothing about his life in the movie would work if he wasn’t aware of it. Still, I think it’d have been interesting if the memory of his condition was intermittent, so at times he’s shocked at why he’s got all these tattoos stating obvious things.
i agree and i think that’s why Nolan has hidden or removed a lot of the info that would turn this movie into another piece of blah…and that’s a good thing.
Because now the viewer gets to choose, like Lenny what to believe or not to believe.
Let me ask you a question and I think this is where we’re talking a cross purposes here.
Do you consider the extra info at the Memento site relevant or not? Do you consider the info concerning the story Memento Moi(sp) which inspired Memento relevant?
Or do you just view the Memento the movie as a self contained entity?
The chances that Sammy exists and then Lenny gets the same condition is highly unlikely for such a rare condition, unless…
Unless Sammy did exist and ddid suffer from the condition and Lenny did investigate. And in his investigations he certainly learned a lot about it. Then the attack and he suffers some trauma, that manifests itsslef as short-term memory loss not, but only psychological. I.e. it is a condition he acquires from a subconscious suggestion of having worked on the Sammy Jankis case. So while Sammy probably did actually have the condition, Lenny is the one who has the psychological equivalent. And I do believe the Lany killed his wife as Teddy suggests.
This is a weakness in the film, but I think Nolan left himself an “out” – the tattoo on Leonard’s hand that says “Remember Sammy Jankis”. Whatever the truth about Sammy was, Leonard at least thinks of him as a man with a memory condition. The tattoo is also right where Leonard is sure to see it. If we grant that Leonard is at least dimly aware that there must be something wrong with him if he suddenly can’t remember where he is or what he was doing, then it’s not too much of a stretch to accept that the tattoo is enough to allow him to put two and two together. One that says “Hey Leonard, you have a problem with your memory!” would probably be more helpful to him, but less helpful in furthering the story.
Oh, and I think in a few scenes Leonard does seem rather surprised by his own tattoos.
I think if a writer/director considers certain information to be an important part of the story they want to tell, that information should be in the movie. Supplemental information may be interesting, but it’s what’s in the movie that really counts.
I have read Memento Mori and looked at the extra photos, news clippings, etc., on the DVD (I think this is the same stuff as is on the website), but I didn’t notice anything that would call for a radical reinterpretation of the film. These additional materials do confirm something the film only hints at, that Leonard spent time in a mental institution, but I can’t remember (ha!) anything that would cause me to question the causes or reality of Leonard’s condition.
Not that unlikely considering that Leonard was an insurance claims investigator and must have encountered plenty of people who had, or pretended to have, rare medical problems.
Anterograde memory loss is actually the most common form of memory loss (anyone who has ever blacked out while drunk has experienced it); what is very rare is for it to be permanent. It’s not clear that Leonard’s case is permanent, as we don’t know how long it’s been since his injury. It’s also not clear that Leonard and Sammy actually do have the same condition rather than different conditions with similar symptoms. Sammy was unable to learn through conditioning, while Leonard seems to be able to do so.
I think the movie made it very clear that Sammy did learn through conditioning, but the investigators were documenting it wrong.
He couldn’t tell ahead of time which object was wired, but every time he picked it up, he flipped off the evaluator. They show it repeating over and over again: he flips the guy off every single time. It became a natural reflex for him; that’s what he conditioned himself to do.
It’s like riding a bicycle; you consciously get on and start pedaling, but once it’s been initiated, the rest is reflex and habit.
The results for Sammy were plain as day, but the investigators just didn’t pick up on it. They’d conditioned Sammy.
“No no, its not that [Amnesia] Its something else. I can remember eveything before the incident, its just that I cant make new memories, everything just fades.”
(or something like that)
Lenny knows everything about the condition from investigating sammy. (If you choose this route of the story). So, we know that Lenny has some resource to work from before he had his condition. (Sammy would make tons of notes, he would always lose them… he didnt have a system…) This implies that Lenny can always use this information at any time… Im sure he would get a feeling of forgetting something, but not be able to recall it.
As I hinted to before, perhaps the “professional” tattoos can be trusted more than self made ones. Emma (and I hope we all caught the Easter Egg there, it was obvious for me.) would help Lenny once he got there.
I will post later which tatts are professional/crude. (as seen on the DVD)
Should we open the can of worms with why “John G. Raped and Murdered my wife” is backwards? :eek:
I agree 100% with this, perhaps the anger has something to do with the conditioning? If Lenny ever shows any emotion other than anger (Ok, and the times he recalls his wife) it is a rare occurence.)