I love that this movie deals with Lenny’s “facts” that are clearly as untrustworthy as his memory, and then gives us “facts” (i.e., the existence of Sammy Jankis, the murder of the wife by John G.) which end up being as untrustworthy as Lenny’s tattos. It’s not just memory that is elusive, it’s reality.
Great movie.
First of all, JackKnife I’m glad you enjoyed the movie, and your interpretation of it. You can see that I also enjoyed the movie and my interpretation of it. We could have a ton of fun (and why stop now) trying to convince each other that our interpretation is the correct one, but that’s the beauty of the film…
All interpretations are valid.
Having said that, I interpreted Lenny’s wife’s eye opening in the rape scene not as proof that she was still alive, but as a teaser to make us wonder which of Teddy’s stories was actually the truth. The film maker never actually showed us the resolution of that crime scene. She was lying under the sheet … she blinked … what happened next? Either she lived and went to the hospital or she died and went to the morgue. Could be either depending on how you interpret the rest of the movie. In mine she died.
Damnit, damnit, damnit. This whole thread means that now I’ll have to go to go see it again.
I think Teddy killed Laura Palmer. Oh, and Darth Vader is Leonard’s father. And Leonard’s wife is really A MAN, BABY!
Im still confused about the tattoo “I’ve Done It”… I liked Jackknifed syopsis, but the removal of the tattoo does not fit in (removing a tattoo takes a LONG time, and I just dont think it fits into the movie). I convinced myself for a while that it was symbolic, but I just feel there is more to it.
Aslo, why did Natalie allow Lenny into her house? She knows he must have had SOMETHING to do with Jimmy’s death (he IS wearing his clothes and driving his car). I know she knew that Jimmy had a meeting with Teddy, but I would be more suspicious of Lenny (he is, once again, WEARING Jimmy’s clothes). It just would seem logical that she would mistrust Lenny even MORE than teddy…
confused 
… but LOVED the movie
I also do not beleive he ever had the "I Did It’ tattoo, I mena why would he get the one tattoo removed? I still wonder why Natalie points to his chest and says “What about here?” or something like that. I had just assumed she was pointing to a conspicuously blank spot on his body. the scene in his mind I think is strictly a closure issue, he imagines his wife seeing the tatto and getting “her” revenge. In fact I think that is why he stopped at the tattoo parlor (as I had previously mentioned), but then he forgot that was why he was there and got the license plate number tattoo.
You’re right about this, Tretiak: the line is “What about here?” and NOT “What’s this?” (I just saw the movie again.) Big difference, IMHO. “What’s this” would imply that she saw something specific (either a scar, or a tattoo that we can’t see). “What about here” sounds like she’s referring to the conspicuously blank spot.
Something else I noticed: on Leonard’s abdomen, written upside-down so he can read it when looking down, is a tattoo with the word: “EAT.”
Great advice. 
We saw Teddy lie to Lenny. Led him to the wrong car, said on multiple occasions that he’d never met Lenny when he had… He lied to Leo just a few SECONDS before the conversation is question, telling him that they’d never met when they had. Leo caught him due to his Polaroid “mementos”.
The tattoos said “John G. raped and killed my wife” and “I’ve done it” etc. I don’t think he’d have those tattoos if his wife were still alive. He was laying in bed with his wife, ergo it can not be literal.
**
Leo says to Natalie that his last memory is “watching his wife… dying”. He interrupts the murder, gets clocked, and hits the floor. She still has the plastic (shower curtain?) on her head. She’s too weak to move, he has a major head injury and can’t help, she suffocates.
Ah, clues like “leo remembered killing his wife (even though he can’t form new memories), and yet applied it the Sammy Jankis story (including creating NEW memories out of the blue of meeting with Sammy’s wife (even though he can’t form new memories)”. Yeah, I don’t how I missed that (director’s clue: that last sentence was sarcasm).
I couldn’t agree more. I know I said that the movie is open to interpretation, but the more I hear the “Leo killed his wife” theory, the more ridiculous I think it is. I know that even Joey Pantliano (who played Teddy) said that was his interpretation, but I don’t think so. As I said before, even if the WRITER says it’s otherwise, I don’t but it.
Hey, I found a neat “secret” thing on the Memento web site!
Go to the web site at www.otnemem.com. Click on “Flash Site.” On the newspaper article, click on the word “Questions.” You’ll see a scrap of paper saying “Who did I kill?” and a blank piece of paper below it. Click on the very center of the blank paper - you’ll get a text-style cursor. Type in “Teddy.” Then move your pointer to the side of the paper until it turns into a pointing-finger cursor, and click again.
Nifty!
Look here, when anyone else wants to give the post-accident Leo the ability to make new memories, you tell them that it’s nonsense. But here you are, giving the post-accident Leo the ability to make new memories when it suits your theory.
Leo can learn new skills. If you show him how to move chess pieces, he will eventually be able to play chess without remembering ever having a session. He likely won’t even know that the rook is called a rook unless he knew that fact before the accident.
If he reads a note telling him that he has a condition, he’s going to forget it every single time. Maybe he will pick up the instinct to be distrustful through the repetition, but he’s not going to be able to connect it to why he feels distrustful.
Not even Roger Ebert had a satisfactory explanation of how Leo knows he had a condition.
I believe that Leo CAN “remember” through repitition. I believe that he CAN read a piece of paper that reminds him of his condition and remember if he reads it often enough. If I am mistaken and the movie says that it’s only skills, then please cite the section of the film to remind me.
Now, as to the “Leo killed his wife” theory. I believe that Leonard COULD have remembered that he killed his wife and put it on Sammy if he wrote that down and read it every day for a period of time. That said, I think it’s ludacris to hypothosize that Leo wrote all that down and read it to himself day after day, especially when at the start of the “learning” he knows (from his “old” memory) that it’s bullshit.
I’m not trying to be a cock here, I’m sorry that you’re taking such offense to my theory and/or the voracity of my posts.
My take, without reading any posts, just back from the film.
Leonard is whacked. He killed his wife with an unexpected insulin shot and played it off with a pinch on her bun. He killed her intentionally.
Leonard is faking. We also see shots of him in the rack with his wife furtively looking at his tatoos. They are hand drawn, and can be interpreted as a symbol of insanity before the murder.
Leonard can send cognitive messages into the future for himself. He wakes up knowing he has a problem. He knows he has to fake it from the instant he’s awake.
This brings up the debate of perspective. Are we watching third person omniscient, third person Joseph Heller, or first person flashback, as well as many other options? I think we’re watching Leonard’s psychotic last day’s recollections, from the moment the vice guy dies. Once he reaches full enough recollection, his insane mind rebells back into temporal amnesia (I think that’s what it’s called), and he “forgets” everything. His last act, the first scene of the film, is to overexpose the film of his polaroid, yet another attempt at memory erasure.
Okay, now that I’ve posted to the thread in reverse, let’s see how wrong I am…
I think Leo uses the example of the chess pieces when he is discussing the Sammy case. If not, maybe I picked it up at one of the Web sites I’ve looked at concerning anterograde amnesia. I was a biology major in college, so brain injuries interest me greatly. I can’t say that I’ve become an expert on the subject, though.
From what I have gleaned from these Web sites, patients can learn new skills or learn by stimulus-response. Forming new memories such as names and dates is severely impaired, but there’s no reason that the impairment has to be total; maybe a very little bit can sneak through. All I’m saying is, if you get to claim this for your theory, then I get to for mine as well.
**
Reading a piece of paper isn’t the only way that learning-by-repetition can be accomplished, is it? Doing an action over and over could accomplish the same thing. Say that Leo gave his wife insulin injections with regularity before the accident (she could have been afraid of needles). That memory gets jumbled up with Sammy.
**
I’m not taking any offense. We’re both just engaging in spirited debate, right? We’re both just doing our best to make sense of a strange movie. I think I may need a break, though – I’m feeling a little weary of the subject.
I loved this movie but was really frustrated at the end, and still am because of the way I interpreted it. The whole movie seems to keep us on really sound footing until the last few moments when suddenly everything that we are standing upon is shattered. Partly because of Teddy’s quick threesome of lies, 1) This is the guy that killed and raper your wife. 2) You’ve already killed that guy and I’ve helped you keep on killing. 3) Your wife survived. A subset of this lie was that she had diabetes, which seems to shock Leonard. Also that whole scene seems to piss Leonard off enough that he is willing to lie to himself and set himself up to kill Teddy. So suddenlywe are all left wondering what the truth really was. Was Sammy real, was his wife real, who was John G., is there a John G. etc. I think are all questions we are supposed to be asking ourselves after the movie and I think the director purposely built his movie so that no answer can be proven. If you make assumptions you can lean toward one reality or another but it’s all just a guess.
As for the “I did it” tattoo. I think that was just a brief fantasy he had. He was still thinking about the things Teddy said, his anger had kept them in his mind and he was driving down the road and closes his eyes to try and imagine a reality where he got his vengence and his wife survives.
I also thought about the money, an issue that’s not really resolved. We assume it spent the movie in the back of his car but then at at least one point Teddy had access to the car when Leonard wasn’t there.
On the note that Natalie wrote at one point talking about the Montcrest, didn’t the paper read Monterest? Or was this just bad handwriting or do I need new glasses?
sigh, now I found it under foul at the flash site. Look at Nathalie’s handwriting, she seems to have little control over which letters she capitalizes. anyway, what’s up with MonteRest? Anybody know?
I think you’re right that the movie doesn’t make it clear that only skills/behaviors, and not memories, can be learned through repetition.
However, take a look at this site:
http://currawong.psy.mq.edu.au/~max/104/Disorders.html#amnesia
…which distinguishes between procedural memory (“knowing how”) and declarative memory (“knowing that”), and says that anterograde amnesia seems to affect declarative memory only.
On the other hand, I agree with Snoooopy when he says…
…so, I can buy that Leonard might be able to remember that he has a condition along with a few other real or imagined “facts.”
OK. I’ll agree that the “I did it” tattoo might just be a dream, although I can’t figure out why the filmmaker would have Natalie ask about it. I mean, there were alot of other blank spots on his body that she didn’t ask about.
I’ll also agree that Teddy did lie to Lenny, but only because he wanted to get at the money in the Jaguar (which didn’t belong to Lenny anyway). Lets face it, Teddy could have easily had Lenny killed at any point in the movie, but didn’t. Why didn’t he? Because Teddy wasn’t really a bad guy. He was money-hungry but had no bad intentions for Lenny. In fact, he tried to help Lenny.
But those of you that are “explaining away” the wife’s eyes opening up and Lenny injecting his wife with insulin are interpreting the story the way you wish it happened. You want Teddy to be the bad guy and Lenny to be the good guy. The filmmaker has shown you the story from Lenny’s perspective and you feel for him. But then we are given the scenes that tell us what actually happened.
We know that the wife lived through the assault because a) her eyes opened up, and b) it is shown that Lenny injected her, and c) Teddy had absolutely no reason to lie about this.
So, whether or not the “I did it” tattoo is really there or not, the sequence of events as I described earlier still holds. Believing anything else requires making a few leaps of faith. I don’t think that you can arbitrarily choose to discount Teddy’s story as a bunch of lies and to cast aside the images of Lenny’s wife’s eyes opening up and him injecting her with insulin. Remember, Lenny is the sick and confused one, and Lenny has vengeance on his mind, and Lenny is shown to destroy any evidence that might suggest that his mission is complete.
Finally, I can’t understand why analyzing this film destroys it for some of you. I think that the need to analyze it is what makes it so great. The filmmakers given us exactly enough information to figure out what happened, and not an iota more. I love to hear other theories about it. I would even accept them if they fit what was given on screen.
I have to agree with Hemlock for the most part, just because it does seem to be the most logical and simplest of explanations.
The one thing that I have thought about is that Leonard realizes that to stay “sane” he has to continue his quest, because without this huge sense of dedication he feels, he will end up just like Sammy (who I think was real, and really had the condition, and really put his wife in a coma), and THAT is the real reason he has the tatto on his hand. It’s also the reason he decides to kill Teddy, because Teddy seems to now intend on convincing Leo that he’s found and killed John G. and he doesn’t have to go on killing. With Teddy trying to interfere with Lenny’s “quest”, he can’t remain fixated and his purpose will be undermined, hence he has to put the kibosh on Teddy. This is the real reason for the tatto that reads “remember Sammy Jankis”.
What do you think?
I’m not “explaining away” anything, but I’d like to try to clear up a few misconceptions …
I’m going to address these one at a time.
A - We see her eye open while she was under the sheet. This proves nothing but that that is one of Leonard’s last memories pre-trauma.
B - We see him injecting his wife, but we also see him pinching her.The scenes come in rapid succession. These scenes also come when Teddy is telling him what happened. Leonard has no recollection so he his trying to manufacture a memory. He even states that his wife was not diabetic. He rememberd this because his memories pre-trauma have not been affected.
C - Teddy has every reason to lie to Leonard. It’s what he does. He tells Leonard whatever he wants to suit the moment because he knows Leonard won’t remember it later.
See above. Leonards wife was not diabetic. And … everything Leonard knows about Sammy is pre-trauma. These memories are not affected.
The only evidence he destroys is the evidence of Jimmy’s death. After he kills Jimmy is when Teddy lays the stories on him. Teddy has told him that he already helped Leonard kill the real killer, and that he has been leading him towards others just to be able to see that happy look again. Leonard doesn’t want that to continue, AND he want’s to at least think that he has accomplished his goal. So he puts himself on Teddy’s trail. This accomplishes the two things listed above (in his mind he will have killed the killer and Teddy stops messing with him).
[sub]here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush …
ain’t we got fun[/sub]
This is getting fun.
A - Why show her eyes opening up if it didn’t mean anything? Everybody is perfectly happy in assuming that she’s dead until that point. The reason is to show us that she wasn’t.
B - The first time, we see him pinching his wife. The next time, we see that the pinch is transformed into an injection. Again, why show it in this fashion except to tell us that Lenny’s pre-injury memory has also been affected?
C - At the point in the movie when this happens (after Jimmy Grants’ murder), what is Teddy’s reason for lying? All he really wants to do is get the money from Lenny. Why go through the whole story about Sammy Jankis and Lenny’s wife and so forth?
A and B from above (especially B), and the story of Sammy Jankis being a con man, all tell us that Lenny’s pre-injury memory has been affected (probably due to the shock to his system when he first realized that he was responsible for his own wife’s death).
There is plenty of evidence that he destroys. The opening scene in the movie is a photograph of a dead Teddy being burned in reverse. He obviously burns this photo after he kills Teddy so that he can continue his mission. He also alters the police report to fool himself even further. And in the final scene of the movie, he explains that he would lie to himself.
This is why I pointed out the existential problem that the man has. Without a memory, the only goals in his life are formed by old memories. If these goals are ever fulfilled, his life has no purpose. So he will continuously change the facts to ensure that he still has a goal to accomplish (to punish the rapist and “murderer” of his wife).