Solving "Memento"

First thing is - if you haven't seen Memento, you must see it. It's the best film of the last few years.

Second thing is - if you haven't seen it, get out of this thread as there will be spoilers.

Third thing is - if you haven't seen it, what the hell are you doing still reading this. I just told you not to read any more

Fourth thing is - Dammit, I'm not even joking! Stop reading.



Now, Christopher Nolan the film's director has refused in interviews to say explicitly what the deal was with Lennie. Which is cool as I've been able to discuss this film far more with my friends than any other film. Nolan does claim though that there's enough clues (some subtle, some even subliminal) to allow the viewer to piece together what exactly has happened.

What are your thoughts?

Is Lennie Sammy Jenkis?
(BTW, if you've never noticed this, have a look. When Lennie is telling the last part of Sammy's story we see Sammy in the mental hospital. Someone walks past the camera. Just as they pass, freeze frame it. Guess who's sitting in Sammy's place for 3 frames.)

If Lennie and Sammy are the same person, which is the real name? Why does Jimmy Grants say "Sammy" when Lennie hits him over the head in the basement?

On the subject of Jimmy Grants, why does Lennie wear his clothes? Does he have a subconscious habit of taking on other people's identities? Maybe that's why he became Lennie. Or was he Lennie to begin with?

When Teddy's talking with him, he makes a comment about when Lennie used to sell insurance. Lennie corrects him - "I didn't sell insurance. I was an insurance investigator." Then Teddy's like "Right, right" as if Lennie's story's changed.

What do you guys think?

 

Well if he is Sammy then his memory loss is bigger than his 15 minute condition. He remembers a life before the attack on his wife.

 

But does he really?

Lennie tells Teddy that memories can be distorted. Memories are unreliable.

 

It's been a while since I've seen it, but I did catch the face switching in the story, while no-one else in my family did.

I guess that I thought ... well i don't know what to think... i'd need to see it again to form an opinion.

 

The attack on his wife was a traumatic experience that's why this is the only thing he remembers.

 

This is how I see it...

Teddy was a corrupt cop using Lenny and his condition to make himself some money.

I am guessing Jimmy Grants knew Lenny because Teddy led him to Jimmy, making him believe Jimmy killed his wife. Sort of how Natalie led Lenny to Teddy.

Sammy Jankis was someone Lenny did deal with at his job before his condtion, but Sammy Jankis never OD'd his wife with insulin, Lenny did. Lenny's wife is the one who couldn't take dealing with his condition anymore. Lenny just keeps believeing that Sammy did it, probably because he can't deal with the guilt and pain. It also gives his life purpose to what would be a useless life otherwise.

So not only does Leonard have his condtion he also seems to have some other mental problems as well, that's probably why he was the one in the mental institution.

But this is what I think though...

 

Man, I gotta see the movie again. I'm lost with the Lenny/Sammy thing. I was lost just on the injections thing just while watching the film. When it comes to events prior to his wife's murder, I have no idea.

 

It's been awhile since I've seen it too. The way the story was told threw me quite abit.

How did Lenny leave the institution? If he was badly disturbed, I can't see how'd he could just get up and walk out.

 

If it's still up www.otnemem.com will make things a little clearer.

 

if you want to see a movie even more confusing than memento, see mulholland drive. that is a real trip.

 

A great little film. For those of you who don't know, the special edition dvd is supposed to be out pretty soon.

I, too, was the only one in my family who caught Sammy turning into Lenny in the hospital scene.

The film left a couple things unanswered for me, one that I've been having a hard time solving in other conversations; was the crooked cop telling the truth when he told Lenny that he already killed the real John G. years ago? That's pretty creepy if it is true, that means that Lenny can't be satisfied and will go on killing people for the rest of his life.

~PAd

 

It's too bad "Memento" didn't win for best screenplay. It's tough to write like that.

 

My question is this, if you can't be diagnosed for a condition until after you have it, in this case, how would you remember that you had a memory condition?

In thinking about this logically, you can only come to the conclusion that lenny does not have a memory condition. The only other suitable reason that this could truely exist, without deception, is if he has a multiple personality disorder, which would also help explain why he views sammy from a 3rd person pov rather than 1st.

 

all i gots to say is i would not want to be lenny. that's a scary thing to have to go through..

 

Lennie's form of amnesia is called "Anterograde Amnesia". We just talked about it in Biopsychology today, which is funny, because I saw the movie not too long ago. This condition is brought about by a a loss of cells in the hippocampus from either trauma or oxygen deprevation. People affected by this remember everythign about their lives up until the trauma.
Memories can be distorted, and be unrealiable, as Grand_Moff_Monkey brings up that Lennie said. False memory syndrom is a very common thing, which makes eye-witness testimony in court not so ironclad as it was once regarded.
As to the question of how Lennie even remembers he has a memory condition, I've got no idea. If I'd seen this thread before my class, I'd've asked my professor.

 

I think he remembers his condition because of something mentioned in the movie about habit and repetition...that it was somehow possible for him to remember how to do certain things through repeating them. He was probably told about his condition repeatedly when he was at that mental hospital...but this is just my theory.

 

There never was a John G.

Lenny made him up. If you watch the scene where Lenny is attempting to explain to Natalie why "he has all this info but the cops don't care" you'll see how he basically breaks down and admits he's wrong.

He mentions how they never found the other body or the other gun, and then says, as an explanation, "Well, John G. was clever."

So that's that.

As for how he got out of the institution, he broke out. If you buy the current Memento DVD, it's got a neat little newspaper article on it, and it's got several little snippets of information that show how Lenny was completely nuts while in the mental institution and basically would leave his future self weird notes in his journal, about how he had to break out, etc.

As for Lenny's story of his job, he was telling the truth. The scene where Teddy says "Right, right" is just a showing of Teddy being disintered in the small error he made regarding Lenny's actual job.

Now, furthermore, Sammy Jenkis really existed, but, like Teddy said, he was a con man, who Lenny exposed for a con man, and he was unmarried.

Lenny's wife survived the attack, and after that, the scene with the insulin overdose occurred, except with Lenny instead of Sammy, and because of the wife's death, Lenny was put in the hospital.

He breaks out, somehow the crooked cop finds him, uses him, and that's what you saw in the movie.

Whew, quite a lot of writing, old sport.

 

But, the thing that I don't understand: how does Lenny remember the insulin incident (even in a distorted way) if it occured AFTER his condition?

 

Fair question.

Unless anyone wants to try some creative reasoning, both that and his memory that he has a condition in the first place are both major plot holes.

Oh well.

 

I can deal with the fact that he knows that he has a condition if I assume two things:
1 -- he's very capable/intelligent; when he "comes to" he just deals with it and quickly pieces together the problem because...
2 -- he was told the condition enough to have been "conditioned" into knowing what's wrong with him


Otherwise, he'd always think he should be in the bathroom watching his wife get assaulted.

 

Notice he had the tattoo "Remember Sammy Jenkins" on his hand? It was in the place he would see most often. Whenever he saw it, he would think of Sammy Jenkins and his condition. That would then make him realize that he had this condition as well. Because he saw this every day, it got burned into his mind.

My theory is that when he was institutionalized, he obviously had no idea why he couldn't remember anything. Than a doctor said "Remember Sammy Jenkins? You have the same condition he had." Lenny than had this tattooed on his hand for the reasons I stated above.

But the insulin thing still boggles me. Maybe it was the cop just trying to confuse him.

 

I don't think Teddy was trying to confuse him. What reason would he have? He was being very candid about getting Lennie to kill the wrong person and that he got the real John G a year ago.

I noticed something about the "Rememeber Sammy Jankis" that no one's seemed to have pick up on:

In the black and white scenes, Lennie says that you learn to trust your own handwriting. All the writing that he does on his polaroids are in block capitals. The only exception is when he writes "don't trust her" on Natalie's picture because Teddy tells him to. He seems to deliberately use lower case to tell himself something, like don't rely on this bit on information.

When you look at the tatoos on Leonard's body, they too are in block capitals. But "Remember Sammy Jankis" is not. Was Lennie trying to tell himself something, or do you think it's just a coincidence?

 

Whoa i gotta see this film now wierd ass or what

 

Good point Grand Moff Monkey, I should look into that in my next viewing.

Has anyone here read the short story written by the director's brother? Where can I read a copy? Please don't say to read the excerpts on the dvd. Those irritate me.

~PAd

 

The thing about tattoo block letters is that few people write their own tattoos. So, it wouldn't be matter of "his handwriting."