Summary
We see a hand holding a Polaroid photograph, the subject of which is hard to make out. It soon becomes clear that time is moving backward, as we see the photo become less developed, and get pulled back into the Polaroid camera. The man is Leonard Shelby, and as time continues to move backward, we see Leonard shoot and kill a bespectacled man.
We go back in time. Leonard narrates, "So you wake up and you're in a motel room. There's the key. It feels like maybe it's just the first time you've been there, but perhaps...you've been there for a week, three months." We see Leonard at the front desk of the motel, asking after someone, as a man comes in and calls him "Lenny." "It's Leonard, like I told you before," Leonard says. The man is the man who we saw Teddy kill in the previous scene.
"I guess I've already told you about my condition," Leonard says, to which the man replies, "Oh, well, only every time I see you." Leonard and the man, whose name is Teddy Gammell, go to a car, but Leonard insists that it is not the right car, holding up a Polaroid photo as evidence. "You're in a playful mood. It's not good for you to make fun of someone's handicap," Leonard says. Apparently, he has some kind of amnesia.
They get in the correct car and drive away. Teddy asks Leonard to roll up the window, but it's broken. Teddy asks Leonard where they're going, and Leonard tells him he has a lead on a place, a dilapidated building. "Why do you wanna go there?" Teddy asks, frustrated, and Leonard replies, "Don't remember."
They go to the run-down building and Leonard notes a truck out front, suggesting that someone is home. Teddy insists that no one is there, but Leonard tells him that the tracks from the truck are only a few days old. Leonard looks on the seat of the truck, where he finds some bullets, before going into the building, holding some Polaroids.
He looks at one Polaroid of Teddy, on the back of which it says, "Don't believe his lies. He is the one. Kill him." Suddenly, Teddy comes into the house and asks Leonard if he's found anything. Realizing that Teddy is the man he's looking for, Leonard hits Teddy over the head with his gun and tells him to beg for forgiveness. "You don't have a clue, you freak," Teddy says, taunting Leonard. Leonard tells him, "Beg my wife's forgiveness before I blow your brains out."
Teddy tries to reason with Leonard, telling him that he doesn't know who he is or what is going on, but Leonard insists, "I'm Leonard Shelby. I'm from San Francisco." Teddy gasps, "That's who you were. That's not who you've become." Teddy tells him to come somewhere with him, so he can figure out who he is, but Leonard shoots him.
The scenes shifts to black-and-white, a time in the recent past. Leonard looks through the drawers for some clue of where he is. In voiceover, Leonard jokes about the only clue in the room being a Gideon Bible, before saying, "You know who you are, and you know kind of all about yourself. But just for day-to-day stuff, notes are really useful." He talks about someone named Sammy Jankis who had the same amnesiac problems as him, and we see words on Leonard's arm, "remember Sammy Jankis."
We switch back to color. "You really do need a system if you're gonna make it work," Leonard says. We see him loading a gun and leaving his motel room. He goes to the front desk, announcing himself as the man who lives in 304. The front desk guy knows him and reminds Leonard that his name is Burt. Leonard tells him, "I think I may have asked you to hold my calls." He explains to Burt that he has no short-term memory since his injury. As Leonard explains more, it becomes clear that he's told Burt this before and that Burt is messing with him a little.
"What's the last thing you remember?" Burt asks, and Leonard tells him, "My wife." Leonard tells Burt to hold his calls but make an exception for Teddy, who Burt identifies as Leonard's friend. "He's not my friend," Leonard says, seriously. Burt asks him for 40 for the room, then points out that Teddy has arrived to pick up Leonard.
The scene shifts back to black-and-white in the motel room, with Leonard looking at a post-it attached to his thigh labeled, "SHAVE." In voiceover, Leonard tells us, "You write yourself notes, and where you put those notes, that also becomes really important." Leonard shaves, as we hear him say in voiceover, "You have to be wary of other people writing stuff for you that is not gonna make sense or is gonna lead you astray." He then tells us that sometimes writing on one's body is a good alternative to writing on a note. Suddenly, the phone rings and Leonard answers it, asking, "Who is this?"
We shift back to color, and see Leonard washing his hands in a public restroom, when suddenly he notices a note written on his hand: "Remember Sammy Jankis." He then notices a tattoo on his forearm that starts, "The facts:" When someone enters the restroom, Leonard covers his arm and continues going about his business, before leaving the restroom and going out into a diner.
A waiter comes over and hands Leonard his motel key and a placemat with a note on it. Leonard asks the waiter for directions to Lincoln Street, and the waiter tells him. He drives to Lincoln Street, and pulls into the Discount Inn where he lives. He goes into his room and hangs some Polaroids on the wall, a picture of the Discount Inn, a picture of a woman named Natalie, a picture of his car, and a picture of Teddy. Sitting down at the table in the room, Leonard looks at a photocopy of Teddy's license and an envelope that reads, "For Leonard, From Natalie." He notes that Teddy's real name is John Edward Gammell, then pulls Teddy's picture off the wall. At this point, the only thing it says on the back of Teddy's picture is, "Don't believe his lies."
Leonard calls Teddy and asks him if he is John Gammell. Teddy tells him to stay there and that he's coming right over. After hanging up, Leonard removes his shirt and reveals a number of different tattoos on his chest and arms. "Find him and kill him" is written down his torso, "She is gone" on his arm.
Leonard removes his pants and sees some text on his legs, before going to the desk and looking at the tattoo on his arm that says, "The facts." The facts state that the man in question is a white male, first name "John," and last name "G____." Another tattoo suggests that the man in question is a drug dealer, and then gives his license plate number, which matches up with the license for Teddy that Leonard has.
"I found you, you fuck," Leonard says to the photo of Teddy, before writing, "He is the one," on the back of the polaroid. As he goes to put on his shirt, Leonard notices a tattoo on his chest that reads, "John G. raped and murdered my wife." He buttons his shirt and adds, "Kill him," to the Polaroid.
In a black-and-white sequence, Leonard speaks to someone on the phone and tells them that he remembers everything up until his injury. He then tells the person on the other end that he tells people about Sammy Jankis as a way of helping them understand his situation. "Sammy wrote himself endless amounts of notes, but he got mixed up. I have a more graceful solution to the memory problem. I'm disciplined and organized. I use habit and routine to make my life possible," Leonard says. Leonard then suggests that Sammy messed up because he did not have a reason to make things work, but that he has a reason, as the camera pans over his chest tattoo: "John G. raped and murdered my wife."
Back in a scene shot in color, Leonard looks at a note that reads, "Today, 1:00 p.m. Meet Natalie for info." He turns over a photo of Natalie and reads a note he has written, "She has also lost someone. She will help you out of pity." He goes into the diner we saw him leaving earlier, and goes to a table where Natalie is sitting, wearing dark glasses.
Natalie calls him "Lenny" and he asks her not to, as his wife called him that. "So you have information for me?" he asks her, and she teases him for having memory loss. "Look, I'm sorry I don't remember you. It's nothing personal," he says. Natalie tells him that she had her friend at the D.M.V. trace the license plate number he gave her. She tells him that it belongs to someone named "John Edward Gammell," which matches up with the John G. who raped and murdered Leonard's wife.
"Are you sure you want this?" Natalie asks, suggesting that even if he gets revenge, Leonard will not be able to remember it. "Just because there are things I don't remember doesn't make my actions meaningless," he says. Natalie asks Leonard to tell her about his wife, because he likes to remember her.
He closes his eyes and remembers her, and we see moments of Leonard's wife in flashback. Natalie tells Leonard that she put an address with the materials, an abandoned house outside of town, implying that it's isolated and good for a potential murder. Leonard asks if she wants money for her work, but she laughs and tells him she's not doing it for money, before handing him his room key for the motel, which he left at her place.
"You know what we have in common? We are both survivors," says Natalie, before leaving.
Analysis
From the start, the film takes an unorthodox approach to structure, in that we see time moving backward. The exposition is swapped out for the final moments of the plot, and we see the protagonist, Leonard Shelby, killing a man before we even know who he is or why he would want to kill someone. In this respect, the film is a bit like an old film-noir, setting up a crime scene, and then using the plot of the film to retrace steps and discover how everything happened in such a way.
What distinguishes Memento from a straightforward noir is the fact that the viewer is left to piece together the context and exposition for themselves as the action moves forward. While an old Humphrey Bogart movie might include a voiceover narration or some other kind of guidance for the viewer, Memento provides no such instruction. The beginning of the film feels more disorienting than anything, and not knowing anything about the characters or their relationships to one another only heightens the suspense of the plot.
It turns out there's a very specific reason why the plot of the film feels so fuzzy. The protagonist, Leonard, suffers from some form of memory loss which makes it difficult for him to recall what has happened on a short-term basis. He cannot even remember what his car looks like, and he navigates the world afresh every single day. Leonard's is an unusual and compelling affliction, a "handicap" that he is constantly overcoming. The Polaroids that he carries are not simply sentimental tokens, but pivotal reminders of some of the basic details of his life.
Director Christopher Nolan uses various tricks to make distinctions between the different parts of Leonard's life. While most of the action is shot in color, other scenes are in black-and-white. This gives certain elements of the story a feeling of being somehow out of time, a suspended place that is separate from Leonard's actual biography. It also serves to delineate between different parts of the narrative.
Additionally, the color and black-and-white portions of the film follow different structures from one another. The color scenes move in reverse-chronological order, so the plot that comes into focus as the film progresses is based around the exposition for events we have already seen. The black-and-white sections, on the other hand, move in normal chronological order. At this early point in the narrative, the color and black-and-white sections are barely intertwined, and it is difficult to make sense of what is happening.
