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This article is about the film. For other uses, see Memento (disambiguation).
Memento is a neo-noir/psychological thriller written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on his brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori." It stars Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. The film was released in 2000 to widespread critical acclaim, and was nominated for Academy Awards for Original Screenplay and Editing, and a Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay.

Overview

The film is told in reverse chronological order, with the beginning of one scene acting as the ending point for the next (the film's first scene moves from Y to Z, the next from X to Y, and so forth). Thus the opening (color) scene of the film is the last chronological event in the story, and is shown in reverse motion to clue viewers into the film's structure. Interspersed throughout these scenes is a black-and-white sequence which progresses forward normally in time (A to B, B to C, etc.), and which provides background exposition of Leonard's condition and motives. At the end of the film, the forward-moving black-and-white sequence converges with the reverse color sequence, such that a viewer could follow the entire story chronologically if he or she watched the black and white sequences in order, immediately followed by the color sequences in reverse order. There is an easter egg on the DVD that allows viewers to do this.

Memento follows Leonard (Guy Pearce), whose head trauma gave him anterograde amnesia, or "anterograde memory dysfunction". While able to remember everything up to the moment of the injury, Leonard is unable to form new long-term memories. He is continually meeting people over and over again as if for the first time. To remember events and people, Leonard develops a system using Polaroid photographs, notes, and tattoos — especially clues to the identity of one of the men who raped his wife, and who struck the blow that caused Leonard's condition when he stumbled in on the crime.

The film explores themes of memory, identity, time, revenge, reality and deception, including self-deception. It also examines grief and the role of memory in recovering from a loss.

The score was composed by David Julyan.

Plot summary

Chronologically speaking, the story begins in the black-and-white sequence with Leonard in a motel room. He engages in a conversation on the phone with an unidentified other party, where he tells the story of Sammy Jankis. Leonard was an insurance investigator and one of his cases was of a man named Sammy Jankis, who suffered from anterograde amnesia. Leonard investigates Sammy's case and determines that Sammy's condition is not physical, rather it is psychological, and is therefore exempt from any insurance coverage.

According to Leonard, Sammy's wife, a diabetic, believes that Sammy's condition is psychological and that he could snap out of it. She becomes more and more exasperated with him and decides on some drastic action. She repeatedly asks Sammy to administer her insulin shot, hoping either he will snap out of his condition or if not, she will basically commit assisted suicide. Sammy, unable to remember his actions after only a few minutes have passed, continues to inject his wife, happily assuming that it's "time for * shot" each time. His wife goes into a coma and dies from severe hypoglycemia, and Sammy is unable to understand what has happened to his wife, despairing as she collapses in his arms.

According to Leonard's narrative over the phone, one night there was a break-in at Leonard's house, in which his wife was raped and murdered. Leonard woke up and got into a fight with a masked man. He shot the person but suffered a blow to the head from an alleged second intruder and fell victim to anterograde amnesia, although it is never made clear whether his condition is psychological like Sammy's, or physical. Soon after the attacks, Leonard encountered Teddy who was assigned to investigate the death of Leonard's wife. Leonard teamed up with Teddy to find his wife's murderer: a man who was presumably named 'John G.'

Following the phone call, Teddy meets Leonard at the motel. It turns out that it was Teddy who was on the other end of the phone conversation. Teddy sends Leonard to an abandoned warehouse where Leonard kills a man named Jimmy Grants thinking Jimmy is the second intruder from the break-in. Here the black-and-white sequence melds into the last (but chronologically earliest) segment of the colour sequence, which comprises the climax of the movie. Leonard takes Jimmy's clothing and car. Through a dialogue with Teddy, Leonard learns that he has been manipulated into killing a man whom Teddy wanted dead, but had nothing to do with the attack on his wife. At a moment when Teddy seems to be the most deceptive, he reveals that Leonard is the real killer of his wife, via an insulin overdose. By Teddy's account, Sammy Jankis was actually a faker who was not even married. He asserts that Leonard's wife survived the assault, that it was she who needed the insulin shots, and that it was Leonard who accidentally overdosed her. Leonard killed the real second attacker over a year ago. Teddy had taken pity on Leonard, and allowed him to get his 'revenge' on the second man from the break-in. As evidence, Teddy presents Leonard with a photo of Leonard smiling and pointing at a blank spot on his left chest. Presumably this is where the final tattoo is to go. Indeed, a subsequent imaginary flashback shows Leonard in bed with his wife and with the words "I've done it" tattooed in this spot. However, for whatever reason, Leonard did not get such a tattoo. Instead, the consummation of his revenge was left to dissipate. On discovering that Leonard does not remember this revenge, Teddy eventually gets Leonard to kill again, though his motivation is unclear. He may have felt that Leonard was ready to try to make the memory "stick", he could have been motivated by a desire to rid the world of drug dealers, or he may have just wanted the money. It could have just been a combination of all those motivations. Understanding that this murder too will be forgotten soon Teddy suggests Leonard to continue search for other "John G."s out there - admitting that he himself is one, Teddy being a nickname.

This denouement is a shocking revelation, that Leonard has been lying to himself all this time. Writer Christopher Nolan has claimed that there is a truth and close viewing will reveal all, which is strong evidence that everything Teddy says is true, since the viewers are only provided answers if Teddy is being truthful. If Teddy is lying we know nothing. The film's official site provides further evidence to corroborate Teddy's words.

Before Leonard can forget what has just transpired, he writes "Don't believe his lies" on the Polaroid picture he had of Teddy; whether Teddy is lying or not, Leonard, hurt, has decided not to listen. Knowing that Teddy did not participate in the attack on his wife, Leonard nevertheless sets himself up to eventually kill Teddy. He burns the polaroid photo of Jimmy, and the card he had already written "I've done it" upon. His next note tells himself to tattoo Teddy's license plate number onto his leg with a heading saying that it is John G's license plate number. Leonard concludes that all people deceive themselves, and that the only thing different is that he is, for the moment, aware of his self-deception (probably meaning that he actually knows Teddy was telling the truth and that he does not want to remember what he did to his wife). He pulls up to the tattoo parlor just as he forgets, reads the note, and goes inside to get his new tattoo. It is at this point that the film actually ends.

Continuing, soon after (with the narrative now running backwards), Leonard is misdirected by a note from Jimmy Grants's girlfriend Natalie. He goes to the bar where she works and tells her about his memory condition. Once she realizes he is not lying, she sets Leonard up to kill a man named Dodd who got in the way of her drug dealing activities.

Leonard is tricked into chasing Dodd down, however, Dodd finds him first, believing that Leonard is Natalie's boyfriend, Jimmy Grants. Partway through the chase, Leonard forgets Dodd is trying to kill him and after being shot at (again) ends up running away to Dodd's motel room where he can later ambush him. Once Dodd returns, Leonard captures him and puts him in the closet bound and gagged. Soon he has forgotten why, and he panics. He calls Teddy over and they decide to put Dodd in a car, with which he apparently leaves town.

When Natalie hears that Dodd has been taken care of, she agrees to have a friend trace the license plate Leonard has tattooed on himself. Leonard deduces it is Teddy who owns the car. Teddy's real name is John Edward Gammell — John G. Leonard takes Teddy to the abandoned warehouse in which he killed Jimmy Grants a few days before and in the first scene of the movie, pulls a gun and kills Teddy. Leonard takes one final Polaroid ...

Characters

Leonard Shelby

Leonard Shelby, the main character, is played by Guy Pearce. He suffers from anterograde amnesia, which he attributes to a violent burglary that also included the rape and murder of his wife. However, as the film unfolds, we learn that Leonard is a classic unreliable narrator. Events that took place before the chronologically initial scene in the motel room, such as the investigation of Sammy Jankis and the rape and murder of Leonard's wife, are known to the viewer through Leonard's accounts only.

Leonard uses notes, photographs, and tattoos to substitute for his missing memory. He records clues about the murderer because he hopes to have the opportunity for revenge. However, as the plot transpires, Leonard has apparently already had his 'revenge', seemingly with the correct individual responsible for the attack, but cannot remember it. He even destroys a picture of himself smiling and covered in blood, which Teddy says he took after Leonard completed his revenge so that Leonard could remember it, and goes back to only remembering that he is on the quest for the killer. When confronted with apparent success, Leonard finds himself disappointed and contrives to return himself to the quest for revenge against his wife's killer. As Leonard says at another point, one must have a purpose in order to succeed in the face of his condition. Leonard apparently prefers that quest and the purpose it brings, to the truth. By extension of the Sammy Jankis story, Leonard's condition may be due not to any neurological condition, but rather to a purely mental reaction, which the Sammy story suggests involves the profound guilt of knowing he is actually the one responsible for his wife's death, which is too great for him to deal with realistically and which he instead deals with by transferring it to external villains whom he is obsessed with hunting down, while perceiving his own self in the heroic light of a noble quest for vengeance.

However, the film never makes certain which version of his wife's or her attacker's fate, or Leonard's own condition, is the truth. The film also suggests that Leonard's rewriting of his version of reality is only an extreme version, due to his memory condition, of what all people do in shaping their perceptions of themselves and reality to justify their own actions and cast themselves as the good guy.

A major contradiction that reveals Leonard's condition as most likely pyschological, not biological, is the fact that Leonard can, with great consistency, remember that his problem is his lack of short term memory ability. In fact, he should only be able to remember up to the time of his injury, but he could only have become aware of the injury and its effect after the injury occurred. Were the injury the actual cause of the inability to remember, then he would not be able to remember that fact. If Leonard's amnesia is a memory blockage, not a physical condition, then is Leonard's subconscious able to act with intent?

Teddy

Teddy's character is played by Joe Pantoliano. Throughout the film, Teddy's actions throw his credibility into question. Although Teddy acts as if he is Leonard's friend, he uses Leonard's handicap to his advantage. He never tries to hurt Leonard physically, but he plays many psychological games in order to manipulate him. Ultimately, Teddy is innocent of Leonard's wife's rape; indeed, by his account he initially helped Leonard track down the correct individual responsible. Leonard later decides to burn this memory Polaroid.

Natalie

Natalie is played by Carrie-Anne Moss. She befriends Leonard and manipulates him into getting rid of Dodd, a man to whom she owes a lot of money. Her relationship with Leonard, however, is probably the most complex one in the movie. While Natalie undoubtedly knows that Leonard was somehow involved in her boyfriend Jimmy's disappearance, she eventually tries to help Leonard find the man he thinks killed his wife after he helps her take care of Dodd. It is here that the film plays a trick with the audience: just as Leonard cannot remember recent events but can remember things long past, we the audience tend to remember Natalie at her vicious and manipulative worst (since these scenes show up late in the movie, but earlier in the chronological order of her relationship with Leonard) but our memory of her at her sympathetic and genuinely helpful best fades away.

Sammy Jankis

Sammy is played by Stephen Tobolowsky. Before Leonard's accident, Sammy was one of the clients of the insurance company Leonard worked for, and he was suffering from anterograde amnesia. Leonard's (possibly mistaken) conclusions about Sammy's condition led to Sammy losing his insurance. Sammy's condition, and his wife's refusal to believe in it, brought about her death. Teddy's testimony at the end of the film brings into question the validity of Leonard's memory regarding the death of Sammy's wife or whether Sammy had a wife or amnesia at all.

Sammy Jankis is an actual character, but Leonard does not realise that when he is talking about Sammy Jankis, he is actually projecting his own history onto Sammy. In a clip where Sammy is sitting in the Psychiatric Ward, a man walks in front of him, and once he has passed, you see Leonard sitting there instead, just for a brief second.

Mrs. Jankis

Mrs. Jankis, Sammy Jankis' wife, is played by Harriet Sansom Harris. She dies of an overdose of insulin after she manipulates her husband into repeatedly administering her insulin shot. She chose to do this either out of some hope of getting her husband to recover or stop faking his condition, or because she was unwilling to live without the old version of her husband. However, Teddy reveals, apparently truthfully, that Sammy Jankis didn't really have a wife, in which case all of Leonard's memories of Mrs. Jankis are actually memories of his own wife. The movie never explicitly clarifies which is the reality.

Burt

Burt is played by Mark Boone Junior. He is a clerk at the motel where Leonard stays for part of the movie. Like Teddy and Natalie, he takes advantage of Leonard's condition for his own gain. He rents out multiple rooms to Leonard (who pays Burt multiple times) since Leonard cannot remember which room he is staying in. Burt explains that his boss asked him to do so.

Dodd

Callum Keith Rennie plays Dodd. Natalie manipulates Leonard into tracking down Dodd. She accomplishes this by convincing Leonard that Dodd had beaten her. While Leonard is driving around in Jimmy's car, Dodd recognizes it and a chase results. Leonard eludes him and plans an ambush, which results in Dodd being forced to leave town under the threat of his own gun.

Jimmy

Jimmy is Natalie's drug dealing boyfriend, played by Larry Holden. Leonard is manipulated by Teddy into killing Jimmy near the chronological middle of the film. It is the photograph of Jimmy's dead body which transitions from the first half of the scenes (the black and white scenes, which move forward) to the second half of the scenes (the color scenes, which are placed in reverse scene order).

Catherine Shelby

Catherine Shelby is Leonard's wife, though her name is never spoken onscreen. She is played by Jorja Fox. Her role in Memento is minimal, but integral to the story and critically well received.

Blonde

A blonde prostitute is played by Kimberly Campbell. Leonard says at one point that the night his wife was attacked she had been up for a while and hence the bed was cold. He conjectures that it would be nice if he remembered the bed as warm so that in the future whenever he woke up he would find the bed cold and know that it was not the same night. Leonard hires a prostitute, and recreates the night of the assaults in an attempt to bring this about. He is laying down a new track in his mind so that instead of remembering a cold bed before the assault, he will remember a warm bed. This shows one essential difference between him and Sammy Jankis. Sammy allegedly could not acquire any kind of new memory through repetition. Leonard can, and in fact has done so to an astonishing extent.

Critical responses

In his review of the film, long-time film critic Roger Ebert mentioned that there is one key plot-point that he does not understand; if the last thing that Leonard remembers is his wife’s death, then how does he remember that he has short-term memory loss? After watching the film twice, Ebert came to the conclusion that we are intended to be left in a state of confusion. Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010413/REVIEWS/104130303/

James Berardinelli from Reelviews diagreed. He gave the film 4 stars out of four, placing it #1 of the year 2001 and #61 on his All-Time Top 100 list. In his review, he said: "This is a great motion picture, and, as an added bonus, it has a tremendous "replayability", meaning that subsequent viewings are almost as rewarding as the first. The only downside is that, with a small distributor like Newmarket Capital Group, it may be difficult to find, especially for those who don't live near major metropolitan areas." and "Those who enjoyed the dubious pleasure of piecing together the plot of The Sixth Sense in retrospect will be delighted by Memento, which only reveals the entire landscape when the end credits start rolling. Unlike The Sixth Sense, however, Memento does not rely upon an easily-predicted twist ending to give the storyline meaning. This movie is constructed as a series of clever and logical revelations. It builds to the final scene rather than attempting to ambush us."

William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer writes that Memento is a "delicious one-time treat". Arnold enjoyed how the film constantly makes the viewer re-examine the situation and strain to make mental links between the different scenes. Arnold also observed that Leonard's memory loss and tattoos could be a metaphor for the increasing number of passwords and number codes we are now expected to remember. *

TV Guide's reviewer writes that Leonard is as much of a mystery to himself as he is to the audience. Whether the audience is willing to surrender to its fragmented, repetitive rhythms will determine whether they will find Christopher Nolan’s philosophical puzzle film enthralling or infuriating.

A.O. Scott of The New York Times liked Memento's noir feel and disorienting reverse chronology, calling it an "existential crossword puzzle". Scott writes that Nolan folds "straightforward events and simple motives into Möbius strips of paradox and indeterminacy". *

Richard Roeper of Ebert & Roeper selected Memento as the Best Film of 2001.

The film was also a financial success accumulating $25 million domestically and $14 million overseas from a meagre budget of $5 million.

As of 2006, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) ranks Memento at number twenty-five in its list of the top 250 films of all time. IMDb's rankings are based on ratings by users of the website.

Trivia

  • The idea for the film was pitched to Christopher Nolan by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. His brother wrote a version of the idea as a short story called "Memento Mori" while Nolan did a film version (though the film is based on the same idea, it is not classified as an adaptation due to the fact that the story was published after the film was completed). The film's website linked the short story and the film together, in which bits from Leonard's "journals" seen on the website are from the short story.
  • Memento took twenty-five days to shoot. *
  • Teddy's phone number is the same as Marla Singer’s in Fight Club, 555-0134. *
  • Teddy's licence plate (SG13 7IU) corresponds to the postcode (UK equivalent of zipcode) of the school the director (Christopher Nolan) went to in England. (Source: Director's commentary on the DVD).
  • The tattoo parlor is named after Christopher Nolan's wife and the film's associate producer, Emma Thomas. *
  • A white Honda Civic can be seen parked next to Leonard Shelby's Jaguar at the motel; this is writer-director Christopher Nolan's car. *
  • Natalie's handwriting on the coaster that Leonard finds in his pocket changes from what it is just before Leonard enters Ferdy's Bar to what it is at the Tattoo Parlor. *
  • Memento was rejected by every major studio. As a result, Newmarket Films was left with no choice but to distribute the film themselves. It became a critical and box-office success.
  • Disc two of the DVD Special Edition contains a hidden feature that allows the entire film to be viewed in chronological order, whereas the theatrical release (on disc one) has it in its original non-linear order. To view the hidden version of the film, start the faux psychological screening tests on disc two. On the questions involving four pictures of a woman changing a tire, order them backwards. On other versions of the 2-DVD-set, this feature was found on disc 1, by pressing cursor right twice and then enter at the start menu.
  • In the scene where you see Sammy ending up in the clinic, if you watch very closely you can see a hint to the eventual revelation at the 'end' of the movie. Near the end of the scene, someone walks past Sammy between him and the camera. As the person passes, just before the end of the scene, there is a very brief glimpse, in just two frames of film, of Leonard sitting in the chair in place of Sammy. Additional special features in the DVD version reveal that Leonard was placed in psychiatric care and kept journals to remind himself of information to remember. In one of his journals, he encouraged himself to "escape" from the institution.
  • Near the end of the film, when there is a shot of Leonard and his wife in the bed, you can see the wife looking at a tattoo on Leonard. The tattoo reads "I've done it" - hinting perhaps that his wife never died, or that he has accomplished his quest to "find her killer." Another possible interpretation is that the scene is a daydream: his quest fulfilled and his wife alive. It is apparent that it is not a memory, since he does not now have the tattoo and we have clearly been shown that he has no scarring or any indication that the tattoo was removed. It also can not be the "future" since a future scene would be shown before the first scene in the movie.
  • This film is sometimes used as a teaching tool in high school and college psychology classes.*
  • The film's "dislinear" timeline is in the shape of a "U". The film ends in the middle of the "U".

Awards

Won

Nominations

Other films and plays involving memory pathologies

See also

External links

2000 films | 2001 Sundance Film Festival | Thriller films | Neo-noir | Cult films | Fictional amnesiacs | Films directed by Christopher Nolan | Films based on short fiction

Memento (Film) | Memento | Memento | Memento (film) | Memento | ממנטו | Memento (film) | メメント | Memento | Memento | Memento | Memento | Memento

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Memento".

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