Tattooed Truths

Memento

Hey, I just watched this really cool movie. I gotta tell you about it.

Okay… Do you see what’s going on yet?

Oh, you don’t? Embarrassing.

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I don’t want to give away too much, so I’ll explain what I can.

The movie is being told in reverse sequence. We start the movie from the chronological end and work our way backward while figuring out all the puzzle pieces that lead to Teddy's death.

It was such a unique way to tell a story. I was intrigued and trying to guess all the twists and turns that led Leonard down this path.

My guesses were wrong a lot of the time. And my trust in people (and even myself) kept being destroyed as more information was unveiled. 

The flashbacks are occasionally broken up by black-and-white scenes where Leonard gives narration and adds to the backstory of this whole situation. We mainly learn about Sammy Jenkins' connection to Leonard through these scenes.

In my last blog, I spoiled the movie by writing a summary of the whole dang thing and then told my thoughts about it.

I cannot, with good conscience, spoil this movie in this blog. It is a lesser-known film as it is Christopher Nolan’s first film. Most of the people I know haven’t watched it.

Shoutout to my roommate, Nathan, for recommending it to me. Everyone reading this should subscribe to his YouTube channel, G4G, as a way to say thank you.

As for my overall thoughts on the movie, I loved just about every part of it. I can’t think of one complaint that I have. 

With all that said, you HAVE to watch Memento.

Text me once you go and watch it because I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.

Anyways… I have got to tell you about this awesome movie I watched called Memento.

The film opens with a close-up of a Polaroid photograph depicting a gruesome crime scene—a man’s body lies on a decaying wooden floor, with a bloody mess where his head should be. 

As the photo begins to regress, we notice the scene moving backward. 

Leonard, the protagonist, fans the image, but it continues to fade until it disappears entirely. The shot reveals Leonard, his face sweaty and splattered with blood, standing over the body. He retrieves a handgun, and, with a chilling calmness, the body floats back up till the gun is at the man’s head, with all the blood disappearing.

The scene then cuts to Leonard waking up in a motel room. This scene is in black and white. 

He’s disoriented, unsure of where he is. Through a voiceover, Leonard describes his confusion and unfamiliarity with the room, setting the tone for the disjointed narrative that follows.

In the next scene, shown in color, Leonard is driving a Jaguar beside a man named Teddy. They arrive at a derelict building, where Leonard, still wearing his clean beige suit and blue shirt, notices an old pickup truck outside. 

While Leonard inspects the truck and finds fresh tire tracks, Teddy dismisses the vehicle as having been there for years. Leonard calls that out as being false. To the viewer, it seems obvious that the truck has not been there for long.

Why was Teddy trying to mislead Leonard?

Inside the dimly lit hallway of the building, Leonard pulls out a stack of Polaroid photographs. One photo shows Teddy standing in front of the same pickup truck, grinning. 

The caption on this photo says, "DON’T LISTEN TO HIS LIES," "HE IS THE ONE," and "KILL HIM." As Teddy enters the building, Leonard, with his gun now drawn, waits for the right moment to confront him.

Teddy, unaware of Leonard’s intent, tries to dismiss their search as fruitless, but Leonard, in a frenzy, attacks him, demanding that Teddy beg for forgiveness for what he’s done. 

The tension escalates as Teddy, bloodied and desperate, tries to explain that Leonard doesn’t truly know what’s going on or who he really is. 

Despite Teddy’s pleas and revelations, Leonard is determined and convinced that he has finally found his wife’s killer.

Pow

Leonard seemingly gets his revenge for his wife’s murder.

We now can tell that this scene is a flashback to before the movie's first scene. The dead body in the Polaroid picture was of Teddy.

The scene cuts and Leonard wakes up again in the motel room, in black and white, disoriented as before. He finds a Gideon Bible in the drawer and notices a message written on his hand: "REMEMBER SAMMY JANKIS." 

Leonard begins to narrate about Sammy Jenkins. Apparently, Sammy Jenkins was a man who had the same memory problem as himself. Sammy made it through life by having a system of notes to help him remember stuff.

The problem with Sammy is that he has no purpose in life. He was disorganized, and his life was miserable.

Leonard is different. He has a system of notes, photos, and tattoos to help him remember. And his sole purpose is to find the man who killed his wife. 

The scene cuts, and Leonard, in color, is at the motel's front desk, where he’s paying for his room. The clerk, Burt, informs Leonard that "the guy" he’s expecting is already there. 

As Teddy walks in with his big grin, Leonard greets him warily, and Teddy jokingly remarks about Leonard’s condition, revealing the repetitive nature of their encounters.

Outside, as Teddy heads for an old car, Leonard insists that it’s not his car, holding up a Polaroid of a Jaguar as evidence. Teddy, amused, eventually concedes, and they both head towards the Jaguar. 

This exchange shows Leonard’s reliance on his notes and photos to navigate his world.

Before they start to drive, Leonard, following a lead he doesn’t remember, hands Teddy a note with an address.

Teddy questions the destination, but Leonard simply responds with a smile, “I don’t remember.”

The Jaguar pulls up to the same derelict building as previously seen, where Leonard’s earlier suspicion about the pickup truck is rekindled. And where the beginning of the previous colored scene started.

We see the same cinematography as before.

We hear the same dialogue as before.

We know what is about to happen to poor Mr. Teddy…

The scene cuts to black and white again, and Leonard is in the motel room again, narrating more about Sammy Jenkins.

Hey, have I told you about Memento yet? It’s a really good movie.

Do you notice what I’m doing? I’m writing this whole blog backward so you get a little taste of what the movie was like. I might be the quirkiest author of all time.

I’d bet a $20 V Bucks card that no one has done this before.

Probably because it is dumb, hard to read, and makes no logical sense.

But IDGAF(fnaf).

What a movie! I’d like to formally apologize to Christopher Nolan for writing a hit piece on Oppenheimer in my last blog. While my critiques of that movie are still valid and objectively true, Christopher Nolan doesn’t deserve any hate. This is now probably his third film that is making its way into my top 5 movies of all time.

Memento did something really special to me that a movie hasn’t done in a long time. 

It made my brain hurt in a good way while I was trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

I hope this hurts your brain when reading (probably in a bad way, though).

Memento is a story of how fragile our memory is and how it can be manipulated. Our protagonist, Leonard Shelby (or Lenny as his wife calls him (he doesn’t like that name though, so DO NOT tell him I called him that)), is a man who struggles with having no short-term memory. I’m sure there is some complicated medical term for his memory problem, but I don’t think the movie ever says it. And I’m too lazy to look it up. 

This memory problem is a result of being attacked in his own house by two men who broke in, raped, and strangled his wife. The movie revolves around his quest to kill the man who did this to his wife.

But how can a man whose memory resets every few minutes to an hour solve a case like this?

Well, let me tell you about this movie I watched called Memento.