*spoilers alert* Can Memento Make Sense (backwards or forwards)?

[dijinn]

Enormous Spoiler Alert - read at your own risk!

Is the ending of Memento open to discussion or has Christopher Nolan not given us all the answers we need to piece this movie together? What are the various possibilities here?

I have listed a few of the major characters here just to remind everyone - I know I was a bit hazy after not having seen it since it was in the theaters...

Sam Jankis?
This was the man who had the same condition as Leonard and who apparently needed to give his wife insulin shots several times a day. Sam eventually ended up killing his wife accidentally when she tested him to see if his condition was legit.

Teddy? Was Teddy friend or foe? Initially he seems like a foe - completely untrustworthy for poor Leonard. Later it shifts and looks like maybe he is the only person giving him valuable information about his life. And then he's foe again... So would the REAL Teddy please stand up?

Various John G.s?
Does Leonard finally kill his wife's killer? Is he finally vindicated in the end? Are there multiple John G.s who are killed in his effort to find the correct guy? Or are we only lead to believe this?

Natalie?
Obviously she plays poor Leonard harder than anyone else in the movie - but what is her involvement in Teddy's death... and what is Natalie's involvement with John G.?

And What is up with the ending? (Or is it the beginning?? - or the middle??) We see Leonard heading off to the tattoo parlor and we also see him (with all his tattoos - including a new one on his chest saying 'I did it') with his wife SITTING RIGHT THERE in bed.) This is a fabulous movie. I have been struggling to piece this thing together off and on ever since it came out. Love to hear your ideas on how this backwards of a story could make any sense!

Dij

ps... thanks ailsa for flagging this as a spoiler alert. I always forget everyone isn't running out to the movie theater to catch every movie as soon as it hits the streets. Be warned all... these are enormous spoilers here...

[soxfan[$]]

Good questions, djinn! I've seen Memento twice to date, and I still wonder about these things too. (BTW, I edited the thread title to alert folks who for whatever reason have yet to see the film, so the discussion doesn't ruin anything for them.)

Sam Jankis: I honestly don't know now if this guy ever existed except in Leonard's imagination. I have nothing to base this on, except that one very short sequence of shots in the (I think) hospital scene, when Sammy is sitting in a chair watching people walk by -- and then, as someone goes past, it's Leonard himself in the chair.

Teddy: I think he's both friend and foe. Definitely using Leonard for his own ends ... and there's no way to know if there have been other John G.s that he's had Leonard take care of.

Various John G.s?: Quite possibly. We have no way of knowing how long Leonard's been at this ... and if Teddy was the only other one with real knowledge of the case (assuming he was telling the truth about that part), Leonard might never find closure.

Natalie: I don't know if she was involved with the original John G. She definitely realized Leonard had killed her boyfriend (or at least had something to do with it). I can't decide whether she wanted Leonard to take care of Dodd, or the other way around.

The beginning/ending: I don't know about that either ... it'd seem to support Teddy's version of events, but how would Leonard even remember that?

Hmmm ... think I need to watch this one again.

Ailsa

[dijinn]

Originally posted by soxfan
Sam Jankis: I honestly don't know now if this guy ever existed...

Teddy: I think he's both friend and foe...

Various John G.s?: Quite possibly. We have no way of knowing how long Leonard's been at this ...

Natalie: -snip- I can't decide whether she wanted Leonard to take care of Dodd, or the other way around...

The beginning/ending: I don't know about that either ... it'd seem to support Teddy's version of events...

Ailsa-
Seems like you have a great handle on the movie. I seem to pretty much agree with your take on the whole thing... except I think I would put more faith in Teddy. Either he is a great liar (or maybe he's had lots of practice, giving that speech to Leonard time and time again) or he's telling the truth about the original John G. already being dead.

BUT, does it really matter?? (Although it helps give the viewer some since of the back story we have been lacking.) The really only question that REALLY torments me from this story is that stinkin tattoo at the very end. 'I did it'.

The only possible explanations my small mind could come up with are...
1) Laser Surgery??
2) Leonard killed John G. and then his wife recovers & is then killed by Leonard later??
3) Teddy told Leonard the truth accept for about Leonard's killing his wife?

There are enormous problems with each of the explanations above... Can anyone else explain that tattoo for me??

The coolest aspect of this movie was the various ways people were using Leonard (the most intriguing to me being the way Leonard used himself!) throughout the film. Which makes figuring out the plot all that more difficult... no good guys to trust.

There is an island which is populated only by Knights and Knaves. Knights only speak the truth and Knaves always lie. Who is speaking when one of the two says "I will always lie to you, I will always cheat and steal from you."

Dij

[eplovejoy]

Originally posted by dijinn



There is an island which is populated only by Knights and Knaves. Knights only speak the truth and Knaves always lie. Who is speaking when one of the two says "I will always lie to you, I will always cheat and steal from you."

Dij

Can't we just try to answer this question instead? I think I know the answer to this one. Unless the some of the Knights or the Knaves have tattoos.

[dijinn]

I just KNEW that would happen! hah. Sure sure, what's the answer? I actually read that riddle in a recent book The Nautical Chart and just loved it. Thought it was rather appropriate.

That tatoo is gonna be the death of me I just know it!

Dij

[eplovejoy]

Originally posted by dijinn
Sure sure, what's the answer?
Dij

Damn. I was hoping you'd simply trust that I know it. Now I have to risk being wrong.

SPOILER ALERT (maybe):

The person speaking is a Knight. He is telling the truth when he promises to lie in the future. He can then remain true to his truth-telling nature simply by not speaking.

But there would be no way for a Knave to say "I will always lie." If he does always lie, he was telling the truth when he said he would.

[lambchops]

There are soooo many ways to think about this film. Here is what I've come up with in my own mind....

Sam Jankis? I don't think he ever existed. I think that Leonard made him up in order to better help explain his own condition.

Teddy? Teddy seemed so slimy all the way through the entire film. I actually believe him to be friend. As the movie progresses (in reverse, of course) it seems that more information comes to light. By the time we see poor Leonard get so confused and write down incorrect information on his beloved pictures, I feel that Teddy is a friend. He's portrayed as a slime ball because that's how Leonard sees him.

Various John G.s? I dont' believe that there is a John G. I don't believe that there ever was a John G. I simply believe that Leonard created a John G. to justify him killing his own wife.

Natalie? Since I don't believe in 'John G.,' Natalie is a completely external personality whom is playing with Leonard just for fun and to be spiteful...

Who knows EXACTLY what this film means. I saw it in the theater and now own the DVD. It would be nice to figure it out for myself...

[vania]

Anyone visited the official Memento website??

http://www.otnemem.com/


Some of the answers are there, though they're still frustratingly vague.

You'll find out that Leonard and his wife were definitely attacked, which is how Leonard lost his memory, but his wife lived through the attack. They don't really say anything about how she ended up dying, but I assume it's the overdose of insulin, as suggested in the movie.

You'll also find out that Leonard was definitely in a mental institution, which he escaped from in order to exact revenge.

I've seen this movie a few times and I know I'll never figure everything out!

Argh!

v.

[dijinn]

Originally posted by eplovejoy
The person speaking is a Knight. He is telling the truth when he promises to lie in the future. He can then remain true to his truth-telling nature simply by not speaking. But there would be no way for a Knave to say "I will always lie." If he does always lie, he was telling the truth when he said he would.

(by the way, no spoilers here - just anecdotal information)
Wow intriguing... the only possible way I suppose. But no, the answer is neither. Which makes it a lame riddle ofcourse - but proved my point about Memento all the same. The Knight can't say I will always lie, cheat & steal for it would go against his nature. But I liked your sly answer much better! heh.

Just seems like everyone in Memento, whether they are a knight or a knave, will eventually shoot poor Leonard in the back at some point.

Originally posted by Vania
Anyone visited the official Memento website??

Ooh ooh I have, I HAVE... (Vigorous arm waving involved there) - www.otnemem.com is an awesome site. One of the first times I really saw the potential of brilliant cross-pollinating between various mediums and the web. It really is a great tie in between the movie experience and the website (normally tie-in websites are flat pamphlets about the movie, whereas with the memento website it is an interactive learning experience. Loved it!) The really sweet thing is that you can actually learn things that were missing in the movie. (Like your example about Leonard's wife surviving - and his escaping from a mental hospital (is that a bow to Memento Mori?)) And yet at the same time you are still left with the same basic questions. (Depending on what your assumptions were when you went in to the website.)

-----

With the Oscar nominations coming out the next 24 hours my big question right now is whether or not the screenplay will end up in the original or adapted categories. I figure it will win either category (it better anyway) but I really don't know enough about the rules to figure out what it will be categorized as. My guess has always been Original - but I figure I am going against the tide here. Hrmmm, we'll see soon I suppose.

Dij

[Grouch]

The website contents also appear (at least in part) on the DVD. I agree, it's a fascinating feature to complement the movie.

I will say that after reading through this thread, Memento still leaves me baffled and wondering if there was more smoke than mirrors in there. I love the structure of the film, but at the end I was left with more questions than it seemed the movie could answer. With all those ??s, I also wondered if there weren't some sizable plot holes in Memento. Granted, this is all based on a single viewing of the film, but I wasn't as giddy aferwards as I'd thought I would be.

As for the Oscars, I would have thought this was a sure bet, too....until the Golden Globes shut it out. I'm fairly certain Memento will get at least one nom, but I have my doubts about actually winning the Oscar. Let's not forget, the Editing category, too. What a nifty trick of post-production scissor-work this was...

[dijinn]

Originally posted by Grouch
I will say that after reading through this thread, Memento still leaves me baffled and wondering if there was more smoke than mirrors in there.

Oh great and wise one, demigod-grouch... plot holes? No, CAN'T be. Selective omissions, maybe. Plot holes, never. This movie is just too smart for plot holes. Like back in the old days of X-files when Carter knowingly walked the edge of two parallel possibilities. Maybe that is what we have here with Memento.

With that said - what about this theory... [list=1][*] Leonard and his wife are attacked by John G.[*] Leonard's wife is in critical condition and hospitalized[*] Leonard is institutionalized - with some sort of mental trauma[*] Teddy is assigned the case and works with Leonard[*] Eventually Leonard & Teddy get John G. (Natalie's boyfriend)[*] Teddy confronts Leonard with the truth that he's already had revenge[*] Leonard decides that Teddy's the bad guy (who's major sin of omission is not telling Leonard his wife's alive - thus keeping Leonard on the case?)[*] Leonard kills Teddy[*] Decides he's done killing - gets tattoo 'I Did It'[*] Finds out his wife is alive, and voila, we have the ending scene WITH the tattoo AND his wife.[/list=1]
Yes, no? It's the only scenario I can come up with that makes sense. And to be honest it didn't hit me til after my little knights/knaves riddle. I always thought Teddy was TOTALLY on the up and up... but if he is hazy shady, maybe.

Where are the weaknesses here? (Other than the OBVIOUS fact that I am reaching.) I'll send a Starbucks latte' (coupon coupon coupon - I'd get sued by the United Postal Service for burning an employee of theirs I just know it! heh) to the first one that makes me start my search over again. Honest honest.

Dij

[satan]

Originally posted by dijinn
The Knight can't say I will always lie, cheat & steal for it would go against his nature.

The original riddle statement just mentions that the knights never lie . . . no mention about their moral nature . . .






FROM THE SECRET JOURNAL OF SHELBY, LEONARD (found in abandoned pick-up truck parked outside distant fatality scene)

Natalie

She'll screw you. Don't trust her.

John G

There never was a John G. I made him up so I could go on a hunt for revenge.

Teddy

He's screwing me for his own purposes . . . but he needs me alive to do his dirty work for him.

Sam Jankis

I concoted him too, using details of past cases I've worked on . . . like SPOILER ALERT! 'Verbal' Kint in The Usual Suspects . . .


. . . now . . . where was I?

[vania]

Originally posted by dijinn



With that said - what about this theory... [list=1][*] Leonard and his wife are attacked by John G.[*] Leonard's wife is in critical condition and hospitalized[*] Leonard is institutionalized - with some sort of mental trauma[*] Teddy is assigned the case and works with Leonard[*] Eventually Leonard & Teddy get John G. (Natalie's boyfriend)[*] Teddy confronts Leonard with the truth that he's already had revenge[*] Leonard decides that Teddy's the bad guy (who's major sin of omission is not telling Leonard his wife's alive - thus keeping Leonard on the case?)[*] Leonard kills Teddy[*] Decides he's done killing - gets tattoo 'I Did It'[*] Finds out his wife is alive, and voila, we have the ending scene WITH the tattoo AND his wife.[/list=1]

Interesting theory, but what about the whole insulin deal?? In some ways I wonder if what Grouch said was true: maybe there are no legitimate answers to some of these questions.
Maybe there are some plot holes that can't be explained.

v.

[dijinn]

Originally posted by satan
John G
There never was a John G. I made him up so I could go on a hunt for revenge.

Sam Jankis
I concoted him too, using details of past cases I've worked on . . . like 'Verbal' Kint in The Usual Suspects . . .

Tipu -
I have thought of that before, its all inside his head, a world within a world... made up primarily to build a life worth living? Something to that effect anyway. That is a good spin - any movie that takes itself after The Usual Suspects can't be too far off base in my opinion. But that basically means we can't know anything at all, really.

In my scenario though Sam Jankis has to be real... and Teddy is lying. Not quite as interestingly tragic a story - but this way I get to have my happy ending. hehehe. I gotta admit though Vania, I was about ---> <--- to just shipping that latte' your direction. Caught me off gaurd for a second there.

I think the really cool thing about Memento is that two or three parallel valid theories can run at the same time. For example, Tipu's Verbal Kint idea... which I can't deconstruct. Oh, by the way - looks like the Academy figured Memento to be an Original Screenplay (which makes me all kinds of happy).

Dij

[vania]

Originally posted by dijinn




In my scenario though Sam Jankis has to be real... and Teddy is lying. Not quite as interestingly tragic a story - but this way I get to have my happy ending. hehehe. I gotta admit though Vania, I was about ---> <--- to just shipping that latte' your direction. Caught me off gaurd for a second there.


Dij

See, I'm thinking that maybe Sam Jankis is real, but all the events that Leonard believes about Sam might not be.

For instance, Leonard asserts that Sam is institutionalized, but there's that one shot-- that split second-- where Leonard is seen sitting in the institution in Sam's place. That shot's gotta be there for a reason.

On a similar note, on the website you can read the "psychiatrists" notes on Leonard. In the beginning of his treatment, Leonard apparently doesn't realize his wife's dead. Quite a far cry from what we see on screen.

Man, I love this movie!!!

v.

[Flamepillar]

This is one of my faves too... there was an actual Memento message board somewhere that I posted on a few times but I lost the URL like an idiot.

The shot of Lenny taking Sammy's place in the chair in the institution was something that I didn't catch in my first EIGHT viewings, and who knows how many more it would've taken after that if I hadn't actually read about it on the internet. The movie never actually shows when he wrote "Remember Sammy Jankis" on his hand so...yeah I tend to believe that Sammy is Leonard's "fake" version of himself to shift the blame away. Who knows how to read the mind of someone with that kind of a problem?

Natalie's boyfriend is a drug dealer. She sees Leonard drive up in her boyfriend's clothes and in his car at the end (which is actually the beginning), she lets him into the restaurant, gets people to spit in the drink and Lenny drinks it anyway. So she knows he has a problem. Rather than killing him right off though (which almost any girl probably would want to do) she starts using him (maybe because she has no immediate proof that her boyfriend is dead, and the guy wearing her boyfriend's clothes and driving her boyfriend's car is the only thing that will ever lead her to her boyfriend). Dodd had something to do with that boyfriend of hers, I think he was gonna buy drugs from the guy. So he sees the guy's car (not knowing that Lenny has replaced the guy), follows him around, sees that it's a different guy and tries to kill him. Then he goes after her, so she uses Lenny to take care of Dodd... or did I get it out of order? It's been a while since I've seen it...lol

Okay, here's the only thing I have a problem with. Did the police ever even come to that house on that night that his wife was raped? Let's assume for a minute that they did. According to Lenny, the police didn't believe his theory about there being a second guy. So obviously the police thought that there was only one guy. Do they really believe that Lenny could have shot the one guy and the one guy knock him upside the head and knock him out at the same time? Judging by the injuries, surely whoever got the first strike would have won the battle and not have been able to do the damage to the other. And yet the police insist there was only one guy? Maybe that's just another one of Lenny's false theories, I dunno.

[soxfan[$]]

Just remembered a neat little tidbit about this, courtesy of my dentist. We got to talking about the film at my last checkup (so it wasn't completely painful), specifically about Leonard's condition. As it turns out, the dentist's son had read Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, and one of the stories was about a patient who had the very same inability to make new memories.

The patient's name? James G.

Ailsa

[satan]

Originally posted by Flamepillar
So obviously the police thought that there was only one guy. Do they really believe that Lenny could have shot the one guy and the one guy knock him upside the head and knock him out at the same time? Judging by the injuries, surely whoever got the first strike would have won the battle and not have been able to do the damage to the other.

Remember Pyrrhus.

Originally posted by vania


See, I'm thinking that maybe Sam Jankis is real, but all the events that Leonard believes about Sam might not be.

i think Teddy wasn't lying when he says that Sam Jankis never had a wife. There actually is a person called Sam Jankis, but Shelby co-opted his name to create a persona Sam Jankis that he's been using as a clotheshorse for his own emotional baggage . . .

???

[dijinn]

Originally posted by vania
See, I'm thinking that maybe Sam Jankis is real, but all the events that Leonard believes about Sam might not be.

I guess you can all listen in - but this is directed to Valerie (to whom I owe a latte' if I can't get this straight in my head darnit!)

After thinking about the points you made in regards to Sam Jankis - I would have to agree with you, that he does exist - and that the 'reality' we've been shown isn't so real. Try this on for size (new items are in bold).
[list=1][*] Leonard and his wife are attacked by John G. [*] Leonard's wife is in critical condition and hospitalized [*] Leonard is institutionalized - with some sort of mental trauma [*] Teddy is assigned the case and works with Leonard [*] Teddy tells Leonard that his wife is dead, killed by John G.[*] Eventually Leonard & Teddy get John G. (Natalie's boyfriend) [*] Leonard kills John G. - again (someone Teddy needs handled for some reason)[*] Repeat step 7, again and again[*] Eventually, Teddy confronts Leonard with the truth that he's already had revenge [*] Also informs him that although his wife lived, Leonard killed her through his own mental failings (this is a lie conjured up by Teddy to throw the parking break on his insanity)[*] Leonard decides that Teddy's the bad guy (who's major sin of omission is not telling Leonard his wife's alive - thus keeping Leonard on the case?) [*] Leonard kills Teddy - for disturbing his apparent quest[*] Decides he's done killing - gets tattoo 'I Did It' [*] Finds out his wife is alive, and voila, we have the happy ending scene WITH the tattoo AND his wife. [/list=1]

Seems to make sense if Teddy originally was hoping to keep Leonard on a short leash doing his bidding... but when he gets out of control he spins Leonard's familiar story back on himself, which ultimately breaks the chain - and ends up getting Teddy killed to boot. Still, it worked and Leonard convinces himself that he has his revenge.

No? Seems to work for me... (but then again it works for me everytime! hehe) Just post a simple 'no' here in the thread and the latte's in the mail! heh.

Can you believe I have only seen this once? I am dying to see it again. But I want to get it figured out first! hehe.

Dij