Line #8 Fridge/Memento


1	'''BEWARE OF SPOILERS'''
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3	!!FridgeBrilliance
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5	* ''Film/{{Memento}}'''s backwards narrative can feel somewhat gimmicky, but it forces us to live through Leonard's perception of the world, seeing a scene with no knowledge of the (usually critical) events that lead up to it.
6	* One thing that lends credence to the theory that Teddy is telling the truth about Leonard's wife surviving the attack and it was Leonard who killed her is that even in the heat of their argument at the end, Teddy always specifically says that the assailant raped Leonard's wife, never including that he killed her.
7	* Leonard's story about Sammy Jankis is not only revealing about how Leonard is able to form new memories, it's also possibly Leonard's only real memory of how his wife actually died.
8	* Most of Leonard's tattoos are written in a way that you can read them normally. The tattoo about the man who killed his wife is mirrored. When Natalie points out that the tattoo is backwards, Leonard says "It's... it must be for when I've found him." Leonard doesn't know it, but if he ever finds the killer, he'll be looking at a mirror.
9	* Teddy repeatedly asks Lenny for his car keys or tries to bluff Lenny into letting him drive his car throughout the film, without success. This is because Lenny has recently murdered the expensive and conspicuous Jaguar's owner, and Teddy is trying to dispose of it discreetly, as well as get his hands on the $200,000 inside.
10	* When Sammy Jankis gets the electric shocks in the flashbacks, he barks out, "What the fuck?!" and "Test ''this,'' you fucking quack!" while giving the doctor the finger. It seems out of place for a mild-mannered accountant to use language like that... until you realize that, most likely, Leonard himself was the one receiving the shocks, and Leonard is quite the [[SirSwearsALot potty mouth.]]
11	** Or, that Sammy Jankis was the one getting zapped--Teddy says that there was a Sammy Jankis and that Leonard exposed him as a con artist, but that the real Sammy didn't have a wife. So the "real" Sammy, the one that was zapped and cursed at the doctor, is different from the kindly Sammy giving his wife insulin shots, who was Leonard.
12	* Come to think of it, if Leonard's memories of the assault are anything to go by, it's really unlikely that it could have been done by a single attacker: Lenny shot the first one in the head, almost point-blank, probably killing or incapacitating him instantly, and he himself, judging by his severe memory loss, probably passed out within seconds after having crashed into the mirror. So how could they have inflicted it on each other then? Looks like the police investigation WAS shoddy after all.
13	* Note how Teddy IMMEDIATELY hangs up on the phone when Leonard asks "Who is it?". In the light of Leonard's tattoo telling him not to accept any phone calls we are of course inclined to suspect the sinister motives of the caller. But in the light of the entire movie, the more plausible explanation is that ''Teddy had already got used to Leonard's memory "resetting" in the middle of the conversation'' - and he knows that, with Leonard's natural suspiciousness, he has to wait for the new "iteration" to resume the talk.
14	* Naturally Christopher "StuntCasting" Nolan would cast Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano and Stephen Tobolowsky - the former two having most recently played an innocent heroine and sketchy bad guy, respectively, in [[{{Film/The Matrix}} a movie about people lost in the impermanent web of perceived reality]] and the latter being particularly known as the comic relief in [[{{Film/GroundhogDay}} a movie about a man stuck repeating the same patterns ''ad infinitum'']]. The point being made is that the audience, like Leonard, are blinded by their preconceptions: Natalie (Moss) is not a benign love interest, Teddy (Pantoliano) is far from just a weaselly traitor, and Sammy (Tobolowsky) isn't at all an annoying comic relief.
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16	!!FridgeHorror
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18	* At the end of the movie, you can be left with two conclusions: that Teddy was lying to Leonard, or that he was telling the truth. Which means that either Teddy is a ManipulativeBastard, or that Leonard is taking advantage of himself just as much as the rest of the cast. Neither interpretation is especially happy, but which one is worse?
19	* Teddy reveals that the man who raped Leonard's wife is already dead, and was just a random nobody. So why did Leonard pick the alias "John G." for this guy he was supposedly still pursuing? He was already planning on killing Teddy (real name John Edward Gamell) at some point in the future long before the events of the movie took place.
20	* Leonard spends the film telling the person on the phone - and the audience - that he is exceptional, different from other amnesiacs. Notably, he is surrounded by people with soft "Ee" sounds at the end of their names: Teddy, Jimmy, Natalie, Sammy - and repeatedly asks Teddy not to call him "Lenny". He is desperate to be a person alone and totally self-defined while blissfully unaware of how unattainable this goal actually is.
21	** The final moment of the film reinforces this - despite it being one of the earliest sections chronologically, it teases the audience with the idea of Leonard crashing his car while driving with his eyes closed. We know he ''doesn't'', because the rest of the events of the film have not shown him recovering from a car crash, but it's still an incredibly tense moment that encapsulates how he lives his life - wandering around blind to the important details because he's too busy trying to center himself.
22	* Guy Pierce lost a lot of weight for this role, and his resulting skinniness makes him look frail, helpless and desperate. It also hints at an ugly truth of his condition: without the help of people like his wife or Teddy, he is very likely forgetting to eat through most days.
23	* Sending Leonard to kill Jimmy, Teddy instructs him to "make him beg". A futile gesture on his part since Leonard won't remember anything - and a grim irony, in that Leonard doesn't ask Jimmy to beg his wife's forgiveness but ''does'' ask Teddy to do so when he later kills him.

Context Fridge / Memento