Christopher Nolan explores the nature of memory in his mystery-thriller Memento - here's what its ending really means. Over the span of twenty years, the British-American filmmaker Christopher Nolan has become one of the biggest names in Hollywood. Altogether, his movies have grossed nearly $5 billion and won multiple Oscars, making him the rare director whose work combines prestige with commercial viability. Even as intellectual properties and brands have come to dominate the landscape over the last ten years, Nolan has prioritized originality and continued to examine the themes that've long fascinated him as a storyteller, going back to his early indie days.
Nolan's interest in time and memory, and how these factors color out perception of not only the world but ourselves, can be traced back to his breakout effort on 2000's Memento. His second feature film after the crime-thriller Following, the movie stars Guy Pearce as Leonard Shelby, a man who's suffered from anterograde amnesia (the inability to retain memories of recent events) ever since two men attacked him and murdered his wife. In his search to find his attackers, Leonard has developed a system where he collects information by using Polaroid photographs, handwritten notes, and details tattooed onto his body.
In order to give audiences a better idea of what the world is like from Leonard's perspective, Memento plays out in two different series of scenes: one of which is presented in black and white and unfolds chronologically, the other of which is in color and done in reverse order. These story threads converge towards the end of the movie, revealing the truth about what Leonard has become and the way he's been manipulated by those around him. But in order to understand the film's deeper meaning, it's best to begin by breaking down the overarching timeline.
The way Memento is constructed, the first scene in the black and white sequences is the first event that takes place chronologically (not including the flashbacks to Leonard's past before his brain injury and the immediate aftermath), whereas the first scene done in color is the last thing that happens in the plot. Thanks to the film's unconventional structure, the point where the two intersect is actually the middle of the narrative chronologically, despite being shown in the movie's final scenes. It might seem like a gimmicky way of telling this story on the surface, but a closer examination suggests this is an effective approach to putting viewers in Leonard's shoes.
In the black and white scenes, Leonard is shown talking to someone over the phone in a motel room. The audience isn't told where he is or who he's talking to because he doesn't remember either of those things. Similarly, because the color scenes take place in reverse order, viewers never have the complete context for what's happening in any given moment, just like the film's protagonist. Memento's contrasting colors are equally important and serve the distinguish the scenes set in the movie's past from those in the present, while at the same time enhancing its noir atmosphere and tropes (like Leonard's internal monologue), particularly during the black and white sequences. Even when the answers arrive, it takes a little detective work to put all the pieces together, much like Leonard has to do in order to fully understand what's become of him, and the role he played in causing his fate.
Due to his condition, the last thing Leonard remembers is the sight of his wife, Catherine (Jorja Fox), lying on the floor next to him, seemingly dying after being sexually assaulted and strangled by their attackers. Prior to that, he managed to kill one of the men who invaded their home, only for the second one to club him in the head (which resulted in him developing anterograde amnesia) and get away. Leonardo now believes the police didn't think there was a second attacker, leaving it to him to find the man using his elaborate methods. However, other than the man being named some variation of John or James and his last name starting with G, Leonard has no idea who they are.
The twist comes at the end of the film, when Memento reveals that Catherine actually survived the initial attack. Not wanting to believe Leonard's newfound condition was real, Catherine (who was diabetic) attempted to call his bluff by having him assist her with her insulin shot one day. She would then wait long enough for him to supposedly forget he already gave her a shot that day and asked him to do it again, believe he would stop and admit the truth before accidentally killing her by giving her an insulin overdose. Problem was, Leonard wasn't faking and ended up becoming the man who was directly responsible for her death.
All of this information is relayed to Leonard and the audience at the end of Memento (where the black and white and color scenes meet up) by Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), a man who's been presented as his contact up until that point. In reality, Teddy is the cop who was assigned to investigate Catherine's case and, feeling sorry for what happened to the couple, chose to help Leonard track down the mysterious John/Jimmy G, in the hopes that doing so would fix his memory. The two succeeded in finding and killing the second attacker, even commemorating the event by taking a pair of photographs afterwards (which Leonard still has). It didn't work, though, and the latter once again become obsessed with finding his wife's attacker, unable to recall that he already had.
Upon telling Leonard the truth, Teddy also admits he's been using Leonard ever since then, having him kill other men named John/Jimmy G to both serve his own ends and give Leonard a purpose for living. Infuriated and not wanting to remember the truth about how Catherine died and the terrible things he's done since then, Leonard burns the photos of the real second attacker and him right after killing them. Seeking revenge, he then decides to frame Teddy for the crime instead, leaving himself a note not to trust the latter and writing down Teddy's car's license plate number as that of the real John/Jimmy G. There's no way for Leonard to know the truth later, either: as Teddy admitted to Leonard, John/Jimmy G. is such a common name that it's actually his own (John Edward Gammell). So, as far as Leonard is concerned, when he later kills Teddy (as shown in the movie's opening scene), he's finally avenged his wife for real.
Memento leaves room to doubt whether Leonard will actually be satisfied after killing Teddy, suggesting he remembers more than he realizes. During the black and white scenes, Leonard recounts the story of Sammy Jankis (Stephen Tobolowsky), a man with anterograde amnesia who Leonard learned about before his accident, back when he was an insurance agent. As Leonard tells it, it was Sammy's wife (Harriet Sansom Harris) who was diabetic and refused to believe his condition was real, leading her to test him by having him give her insulin shots the way Catherine actually did to Leonard. But as Teddy later confirms during his confession, the real Sammy Jankis was an unmarried fraud (as Leonard proved after investigating him) and his story is truly Leonard's. The latter has simply repressed and distorted the truth out of guilt.
As challenging as Leonard's condition makes his life, Memento suggests he's not really any different than anybody else when it comes to how his memory informs his sense of identity. During the film, Teddy argues that everybody lies to themselves the way Leonard does, but in a broader sense Memento subscribes to the idea that factors like trauma and grief can shape people's understanding of who they are. Rather than making peace with the past and moving forward, many resort to self-deceit instead and soon find themselves trapped within a cycle of destructive behavior caused by their actions. It can be extremely difficult for anyone to break out of those cycles once they've begun; even reminders of the people and events that brought them to where they are can warp the truth and keep the cycle going rather than ending it (like so many of the mementos Leonard creates for himself do).
Unable to learn from his mistakes, yet still able to lie to himself about who he is and what he's done, Leonard potentially finds a way out of his own destructive cycle by framing Teddy and making up his own truth. It's a fittingly dark conclusion to Nolan's neo-noir tale, but also one that gets at a deeper notion - sometimes the actual truth isn't good enough and people need something better - he would go on to explore in greater depth in The Dark Knight (before, as some have argued, contradicting that film's conclusion in The Dark Knight Rises). Memento then ends with Leonard arguing his actions still have consequences even if he can't remember them, and the film doesn't necessarily disagree with him. It does, however, suggest the truth about what those consequences are (and even what led to them) lie very much in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes.
