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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
Leonard sets up shop in 304 and calls an escort service for a hooker. He has her try to re-create the scene from the night he and his wife were attacked. He discharges her and drives to a trashy construction site, where he ruminates about his marriage and burns some of his wife's belongings. He stays there all night. As he leaves the construction site in the morning, Jimmy's car is spotted by Dodd -- a drug dealer who was Jimmy's boss. Wanting to know what's become of Jimmy -- and the money he was carrying -- Dodd gives chase.
Leonard slips away and goes to Dodd's motel room -- Natalie had given him the address -- and waits for Dodd to arrive. But he forgets where he is and why, assuming it's his own motel room. When Dodd shows up, Leonard mistakes him for an intruder and beats him up and tosses him in a closet. Desperate, he calls the only phone number he can find -- Teddy's. Teddy comes over and together they send Dodd packing. Teddy again makes efforts to get access to the keys to Jimmy's car.
Knowing from his notes that his run-in with Dodd had something to do with Natalie, the agitated Leonard goes back to her place, demanding an explanation. She placates him, agrees to help him identify the owner of the license-plate number on his thigh and takes him to bed. The next morning, they agree to meet for lunch, after Natalie has had a chance to look up the license number. Leonard forgets to take his motel key and leaves, but Teddy is waiting for him. They go have lunch, after which Leonard returns to the Discount Inn. Realizing he doesn't have a key, he asks Burt to let him in. Burt takes him to room 21 instead of room 304, and Leonard realizes he's being ripped off. But before Leonard returns to 304, he finds his note about having lunch with Natalie and dashes off to see what info she has for him. After some banter, Natalie gives him the DMV information, fingering Teddy as the killer -- just as Leonard had planned.
He goes back to his room and calls Teddy, telling him to come right over. At the front desk he tells Burt to let him know if Teddy shows up, but Teddy gets there while they're talking. Leonard drives Teddy out to the same location where he killed Jimmy -- having gotten the address from Natalie -- takes him inside the building and shoots him. It's the same shooting that we saw in reverse during the opening credits.
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On this level, "Memento" is a persuasive piece of work -- a seemingly straightforward murder mystery that ends up turning the genre inside out. But what has seized the attention of its fans is yet another level of meaning that Nolan seems to be working on. Throughout, the film features visual hints -- some so brief as to verge on the subliminal -- that call everything else in the film into question.
For one, as Leonard narrates the conclusion of the Sammy Jankis story, we see a serene, extended shot of poor Sammy in an insane asylum. A figure walks across the front of the camera -- and suddenly, for literally a split second of screen time, we see Leonard himself in Sammy's chair. Similarly, as Teddy berates Leonard at the abandoned building, we see shots of Leonard himself administering insulin to his wife's thigh. But a split second later, we see him merely pinching that same thigh -- a "memory" that we have seen before.
In the film's final sequence -- the bravura 22/A -- as Leonard drives around in a frenzy of mental activity, we see a rushed glimpse of him relaxing in bed with his wife -- with the legend "I'VE DONE IT" tattooed on his breast.
These scenes call into question the film's back story -- everything that happens "before" the black-and-white scenes. No matter how jumbled the movie's chronology is, everything I've described in the narrative above is stuff that we in the audience actually see. It may be confusing, and we have good reason to doubt that anyone is ever telling the truth, but we see what we see. We have no reason to doubt the accuracy of what transpires. But the back story is presented to us in flashbacks, flashbacks from the memory of a man with brain damage.
We are told by Leonard -- who, remember, is a less-than-reliable, brain-damaged source of neurological information -- that, in his form of amnesia, his recall of his previous life is left intact. Even if we accept that, there's no reason to believe that "intact" is the same thing as "accurate." This point may be the source of a number of odd, unanswered questions: Leonard has a copy of a police report, but we are given to understand that some pages are missing. Presumably the missing pages would have included the information that Leonard's wife didn't die in the original attack. But who took the pages? And why?
It seems that Teddy's outburst at Leonard in scene 22/A answers all the film's questions. But if what Teddy says about Leonard is true, and if Leonard can remember fully his life before the attacks, why doesn't Leonard remember his wife had diabetes? He says flatly that she didn't. If she didn't, then Teddy's not telling the truth.
