Memento tells an exhilarating psychological story of a man, Leonard Shelby, who suffers from short-term memory loss called anterograde amnesia. He suffers from this due to being hit on the head when defending his wife, who was attacked and raped in their house during the middle of the night. He kills one of the invaders during the attack. With the incapacity to form new memories, one of the last things Leonard remembers is seeing his wife, die. He then goes on what seems like an impossible quest devoted to find and kill the second attacker. Being unable to make new memories, Leonard develops a technique to help him remember what has happened post head trauma. He does this by using tattoos, polaroid pictures with added indications and hand-written …show more content…
The black and white scenes illustrate the story chronologically; whereas the scenes in color continue in reverse chronological order. Suffering anterograde amnesia, the death of his wife is a fresh, renewed wound to him, and where his reality picks up every day. Leonard Shelby is an insurance claim investigator, explains throughout the story he has a client, Sammy Jankis, who also suffered from anterograde amnesia as well. Leonard was allegedly assigned to determine whether his illness was covered by his insurance policy. After testing, Leonard concludes Sammy's condition was psychological; he was not covered for mental illness, and denied the claim. Leonard repeatedly tells himself the significant story of Sammy. The importance of the story of Sammy is made exceptionally clear, simply by the fact that Leonard has it tattooed on himself. Leonard explains how Mrs. Jankis, Sammy’s diabetic wife, met privately with him because she questioned if her husband’s condition was …show more content…
Throughout the movie Leonard has been used as a somewhat hit man to a degree. Both Teddy and Natalie, the film’s female fatale, manipulate Leonard to kill Natalie’s boyfriend Jimmy, a drug dealer who operated out of an inn and bar. Teddy took advantage Leonard, misleading him to believe Jimmy was “John G.” Teddy initiated a deceitful “drug deal” for $200,000, requesting Jimmy meet him. However, when Jimmy arrived, Leonard was waiting with the misperception that it was his wife’s murderer. He kills Jimmy, however, right before he dies, Jimmy whispers “Sammy” causing Leonard to realize something was not right. Natalie deceives Leonard by using him to pursue revenge on Teddy and betraying Leonard to believe he could not be trusted. Also, she implies that Dodd, a drug dealer associated with Jimmy, was threating her, fooling Leonard into offering himself to dispose of him. He listens to these requests in unknowing of his true actions. Towards the end of the film, Teddy even tells Leonard that there are innumerous “John G’s” in the world for him to kill, admitting to putting false perceptions in Leonard’s head of who the true, physical “John G” was. The misguided actualities personified by Teddy and Natalie, two people with whom Leonard held trust, displays the presence of crime and violence as social criticism, a thematic device of neo-noir film, through the betrayal of
The book "The Assault" by Harry Mulisch is very centered around the main character Anton's struggle with memory. The relationship between his approach to memory and the effects of his approach proved to be the main conflict of the story. Being complicated, it is hard to decipher. During the beginning of the novel (post-tragedy) Anton is very much a shell of his memories. Many details of his character, from major life aspects such as his wife or his job, too small (seemingly) insignificant things such as what sorts of media he likes can all be traced back to his supposedly forgotten memories of the events surrounding his families tragedy.
Through Nolan’s application of editing, such as flashbacks, in Memento, the story of Sammy Jankis can be linked back to Leonard’s past as well as the central theme of the fragility and unreliability of memory. Leonard’s unreliable memory is clearly conveyed as the sequence rhythmically displays scenes showing that the protagonist’s wife survived the assault, which is evident as she removes the shower curtain from her head in a flashback. This indicates the unreliability of Leonard’s memory and the devastating result of ‘Conditioning [himself] to remember, learning through repetition’. Nolan’s employment of flashbacks within the sequence expresses Leonards desperate attempt to escape guilt through the fragility of his memory. This is exemplified in the flashback when Leonard’s memory of pinching his wife adjusts to him injecting insulin into her. Nolan’s utilisation of editing illustrates the fragility and unreliability of Leonard’s memory, specifically when he learns that he
Leonard is the antagonist because he is the evil one in the story and he wants to murder. Although Leonard is all ready to shoot Asher he thinks about his own suicidal so he starts questioning himself. As the antagonist Leonard is against everyone and doesn’t
Trying to make ends meet, he turns to selling drugs. By the time Jimmy finds love ones more and decides to settle down tragedy occurs. Trying to escaping from a drug bust at a friend’s house his attempts end up with a conviction for murder. Due to his illiteracy, Jimmy couldn’t read the false accusations he never committed.
There is no way to take time to think situations over, a decision must be made immediately or the thought will be forgotten. While Leonard’s memory problem causes him not to be able to form new memories, his memories of everything that happened before the incident are still intact. According to MemoryLossOnline, “Memories for events that occurred before the injury may be largely spared, but events that occurred since the injury may be lost. In practice, this means that an individual with amnesia may have good memory for childhood and for the years before the injury, but may remember little or nothing from the years since” (“Anterograde”).
During the teenage years, Jimmy is already the leader of the criminal group and naturally flocked into crime. Things are going well until a gang member by the name of Ray Harris decides to betray Jimmy. Jimmy is ruthless and decides the best punishment is death, and so, he kills Ray. In a surprising twist, the son of Ray coincidentally kills Jimmy’s daughter and frames it on Dave. Sean realizes what Jimmy does, and moreover, that Jimmy has never been innocent, “You killed both of them -Ray Harris and Dave Boyle.
Since his condition prevents him from creating new memories Leonard uses a clever system of Notes, Polaroid photos, and Tattoos to record clues which may lead him to finding the man who killed his wife. Every morning he would wake up and the body tattoos will remind him of what happened and what his mission is. He will use post it notes, polaroid pictures to reconstruct what he was doing and what he needs to do today. He followed some simple rules – focus on the objective and take short notes and picture of relevant clues after key events. But the fact that Shelby was aware of his condition made life even more challenging. Since he was AWARE of his condition he forced himself to live a very structured routine; every morning he’d wake up study and observe his body
The way this movie messes with time in the past is not new. Pulp Fiction did it, and many other movies did, but never like the way Memento has chosen to work it. The movie is broken up into individual segments, and each one ends where the one before it began. This is confusing, but it does not take long to understand how the story is going to be told. Nolan wants the audience to feel what it is like when you cannot make any new memories and cannot trust anyone. That is what Nolan accomplish, the audience feels like they are in Leonard’s shoes. This method Nolan uses creates an amount of tension and suspense. The audience knows what happened, but now they want to know why it happened. We learn the bits Leonard forgets. Nolan created a unique movie, blending color and black and white images and with this technique of filmmaking. It is truly original; the audience will feel just as confused and lost as Leonard when each scene begins.
Is Leonard Shelby the same person he was prior to “the incident?” In the film the audience sees limited flashbacks to Leonard prior to the home invasion. We are lead to believe that Leonard was an insurance claims investigator and married, ultimately portraying an ordinary life. However, the
Shelby cannot be responsible for his actions either, as they can be grossly manipulated by others as shown in the film. Leonard had to analyze his surroundings
Also, from the viewpoint of neuroscience, Leonard confabulates some of the stories on the day of the incident. He thought that his wife was killed by the assailant and wanted to take revenge all along; however, his wife was not dead at that time. It was Leonard himself who had killed his wife by giving her insulin shots more than
The first scene we see in Memento, is Leonard, in color holding up photo of a man he just killed to serve as a memory of what he had done. Throughout the film, both in color and in black and white, we see various forms of memories Leonard has manufactured such as photographs of people, notes, and tattoos on his body. Christopher Nolan does a good job of utilizing this mise en scene and timeline structure to help influence our perspective of characters like Natalie, Leonard and Teddy.
Summary The crime film Memento is about a man named Leonard Shelby (Lennie) who suffers from a condition called anterograde amnesia. Anterograde amnesia, as Lennie explains in the movie, is the inability to create new memories. He refers to it as “no short term memory” because everything he recently does quickly fades away from his head and he can’t remember any of it, he can only remember things that took place in his life before he had the condition. A major injury to the head was the cause of Lennie’s anterograde amnesia, one night he was at his home sleeping in his bed when all of a sudden loud screams from another room woke him up.
The things that Lenny knows about his world is the kind of certainties that people take for granted, like objects that your memory recognized right away. In this quote, Lenny decribes how his memory plays a big role on how he knows some objects and how we take that for granted. “Leonard Shelby: I know what that's going to sound like when I knock on it. I know that's what going to feel like when I pick it up. See? Certainties. It's the kind of memory that you take for granted.” He also does know everything thing that happened with his wife. He flashes back in a few segments and replays everything that happened when his wife dies. Lenny remembers past memories about his world like it happened yesterday. He remembers Sammy Jenkis with his condition and can’t seem to forget him. I found a good quote that Lenny says. It describes his own world and how he feels about it. Leonard Shelby: “I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still there. Do I believe the world’s still there? Is it still out there?… Yeah. We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are. I’m no