"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind."
Christopher Nolan’s 2001 film ‘Memento’ is a cinematic masterpiece, truly showing viewers the complexities of the human mind by creating a nonlinear narrative using reverse chronology. Nolan himself stated “...if you withhold the information from the audience that’s withheld from the protagonist, then you’re doing quite a good job of putting them in his head... The way to do that is to structure the film backward."
Plot Summary
Leonard Shelby has anterograde amnesia and uses polaroid photos to keep track of his life . His main mission, however, is to find the person who attacked him, which caused his amnesia, and murdered his wife. To keep track of the facts in this case, he tattoos each piece of vital information on his body.
The movie is divided into black and white and colour scenes. The scenes in colour are situations that occurred in Leonard’s life ordered reverse chronologically; and the scenes in black and white, where he is speaking to an unidentified caller on the phone, occur chronologically.
The movie begins with a reversed sequence of Leonard taking a picture of a dead man, but as it progresses we discover that he was the one who shot the man. Teddy is a ‘friend’ of Leonards, who Leonard discovered to be suspicious: the back of Teddy’s polaroid said ‘DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES’ ‘HE IS THE ONE’ ‘KILL HIM’.
The black-and-white sequences provide some insight into Leonard’s life prior to the incident: he was an insurance investigator but now suffers from a ‘condition’ . Leonard is in a motel room, speaking to an unknown caller on the phone explaining his history. Leonard details the attack on his wife and him and explains that he killed the attacker who raped and strangled his wife, but a second clubbed him and escaped. The police did not believe that there was a second attacker, but Leonard was sure the attacker's name was ‘John G’ or ‘James G,’ and was determined to find him.
By following the colour sequences, we’re able to discover the story behind Leonard’s suspicion of Teddy and how he began to distrust him and believe he was the ‘John G’ that attacked him, which leads us to the opening scene where he shoots him. But, it was all a ploy set up by Leonard himself.
Once he killed a man called Jimmy Grantz, Teddy had revealed that Leonard had killed the real culprit a year prior and Teddy had even taken a picture of Leonard after that, which Leonard had in his possession. He just wanted Teddy to have some purpose in life and was also using him to help out with his other cases, since Teddy became acquainted with Leonard as the officer in charge of his wife’s case. For example, the man he’d just killed, Jimmy, was running a drug ring that Teddy was tracing. Teddy even pointed out that the name ‘John G’ is very common, since he himself had a ‘John G’ name (John Gammel).
Teddy even says that the Sammy Jankis story (a story Leonard tells everyone: Sammy also had anterograde amnesia but his wife didn’t believe it and once tried to test him; she died by overdosing on the insulin shots her husband administered) was his story; his wife was the one receiving insulin and he was just trying to escape the feelings of guilt by replacing himself in the story with ‘Sammy’.
This made Leonard furious and he burnt the proof of his previous 2 killings (the polaroid of him the previous year and the one of Jimmy’s dead body). He then wrote ‘DON’T BELIEVE HIS LIES’ on Teddy’s polaroid and made a note of Teddy’s car licence plate to get tattooed as a ‘fact’. He basically framed Teddy to be his wife’s murderer.
In a monologue at the end of the movie, Leonard explains that he wants justice against anyone who has wronged him. Therefore, he's going to trick himself into thinking Teddy is a bad guy, and kill him for revenge.
Leonard’s relationship with memory
Anterograde amnesia is one of the 2 main types of amnesia. With Anterograde amnesia, you can't form new memories but can still remember things from before you developed this amnesia. In the most extreme cases, this means you permanently lose the ability to learn or retain any new information. This type of memory loss is rare, on its own but it is common in relation to age-related brain diseases or through injuries or damage to the brain. The other type of amnesia is Retrograde Amnesia, which is when you can't recall memories from your past.
Leonard developed Anterograde amnesia after the attack on his wife and him. He states at the very beginning of the movie “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the colour of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts.”
He also believes that, even though the only other Anterograde amnesiac he knew, Sammy, was unable to do so, he would be able to develop and improve his life through creating habit and conditioning. We are unable to see any new proof of him being able to do this after developing amnesia but conditioning does seem to be possible in amnesia patients because both of these are directed at different parts of the brain. However, there is limited research conducted on this topic so the possibility of conditioning an amnesia patient will have to be acknowledged as inconclusive.
He clearly doesn’t trust memory especially since he lost his ability to create new ones. Therefore, he only trusts picture proof and permanent records on his skin. Additionally, he mentions early on that you learn to trust only your own handwriting. One interesting instance is, when Teddy tells him he shouldn’t trust Natalie, he writes it on her polaroid but in a very different handwriting and later scratches that out and replaces it with actual facts in his normal handwriting.
This habit of Leonards, to only trust his pictures, tattoos and handwriting are what eventually led to him being able to trick himself into believing that Teddy, who, to some extent, was simply trying to help him cope with his wife’s death, was the one who did this to him. He laid the path out for himself to believe that Teddy caused his situation.
One source mentions “What’s interesting about Christopher Nolan’s Memento, is that Leonard is adjusting his memories to make his reality worse.” Leonard needs a reason to live so he creates a new mystery for himself to solve and feel satisfaction. But, he can never truly be satisfied since he would forget a few minutes later anyway. He says “When it’s done, I’ll know; it’ll be different.” This is clearly not true since he killed 3 different men, one actually being the real culprit, and did not seem to feel any more satisfied or ‘different’.
Conclusion
Memento details the complexities of human memory and a person’s inner motivations and desires through complex yet fascinating storytelling. The reverse chronology of the movie truly allows viewers to be able to experience some aspects of what the main character is actively going through and shows the intricacies of memory and trust. The film's ending leaves viewers questioning what is real and what is fabricated, further displaying Nolan's message about the elusiveness of objective truth.
Author- Anushka Aiyer, Editor - Ipshita Adarsh