Everything you wanted to know about "Memento"

By Andy Klein

Editor's note: Andy Klein's dissection of "Memento" elicited a dizzying array of theories from fans of the film, a selection of which can be found below, with Klein's responses in boldface type. Readers are warned again that the letters, like his piece, discuss the movie's plot and surprises in some detail.

July 4, 2001 | Read the story.

The official "Memento" site can be found here.

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I enjoyed your article about "Memento," which is very well done. I have just one small observation to pass along. On my second viewing of the movie, I noticed a clue that you didn't mention in the article. When Leonard is looking through his police file in the hotel room (I'm not sure which scene this is), I thought I saw among the papers a court order adjudicating someone (I think Leonard) legally insane and committing him to an asylum. Did you notice something similar? Like you, I am looking forward to "Memento's" release on DVD.

-- Heidi C. Doerhoff

Heidi: The only thing I've been able to read clearly among the documents in Leonard's file -- this is where a VHS tape can be only a little helpful -- is indeed marked "Psychiatric Evaluation." But I can't see anything more specific, and this might not be all that significant. There's no doubt that Leonard would have had plenty of such evaluations after the incident. (The "Memento" site, if we are to consider it "canonical," has much more detail about Leonard's recent psychiatric history.)

Your analysis of "Memento" is amazing -- thank you.

Now can you explain "The Animal"? I didn't quite get the bit at the end.

Thanks!

-- Paula Carino

Paula: Sorry. Some films completely resist rational analysis.

Great article on "Memento" on Salon.com! The movie has spurred much debate among my friends also. I am not sure of the ultimate truth, either, but there are three things you didn't mention that I recall that may help you draw a conclusion:

1) At one point Teddy says that Sammy Jankis was a con man. This could just be more of Teddy's lies, trying to save his own butt. Which actually brings me to my second point.

2) You said that some explanations that you might come up with break the "rules" of Leonard's condition. Most of the conditions stated were of Sammy's condition. There was one crucial difference between Leonard's and Sammy's condition (whether Sammy's was fabricated or not). Sammy could not be conditioned to subconsciously behave a certain way (recall the scene where he continued to grab the electrified object). Leonard said that he could be conditioned, though. This is the crucial difference, I think. Leonard conditioned himself to always look at his hand when he became "aware," and he conditioned himself to have his series of pictures, notes, etc. in his pockets. I interpreted the final scenes, with Leonard closing his eyes in the car, as him trying to condition himself to act a certain way in regard to the Teddy murder or the finding of John G. -- I'm not sure which.

3) I agree that the vision of him with his wife and the "I've Done It" tattoo is a fantasy. I think he was envisioning it in order to condition himself. Somewhere deep in the documents on the Web site, my friends and I found a couple of dates that support the claim that his wife is dead, but not by the rapist's hands. I don't have the details (it's been a few weeks since we looked it up), but there is an article giving the month and year of the original rape, while there is another article referencing the death of Leonard's wife. The date in that article is months later than the original attack!

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Does it help you draw a conclusion?

-- Denis O'Connell

Denis: I agree that it's clear Leonard could condition himself in ways that Sammy (at least in Leonard's version of the story) could not. But Leonard describes a fairly circumscribed sort of learning that someone with his condition should be able to do: If we are to believe Leonard about this -- and in this film it's up for grabs whom you should ever believe about anything -- he should be able to learn to look at his tattoos, to "instinctively" reach in his pocket for photos, maybe even to understand his condition the moment he wakes up and sees the Sammy Jankis tattoo. But he shouldn't be able to remember, for instance, killing his own wife (even transferred into someone else's biography).

The Web site says the attack took place Feb. 24, 1997. Leonard's wife is listed in critical condition, but there doesn't seem to be any clue as to precisely when she died. A psychiatric report, apparently from early 1998, refers to her as deceased but, interestingly, suggests that Leonard thinks she's still alive.

Next page: But where did the name "John G." come from?