Summary
Leonard gets up and goes to the bathroom, and we again see him reading the note on his hand, "Remember Sammy Jankis."
The scene shifts into a flashback shot in black-and-white. In his motel room, Leonard tells someone on the phone, "I met Sammy through work. Insurance. I was an investigator...My job taught me the best way to find out what someone knew is to just watch them talk and watch the eyes and the body language." Leonard tells the person on the phone that Sammy was his first "real challenge."
The scene shifts back to color, to the morning before Leonard's meeting with Natalie, and we see Leonard in his car, as Teddy appears in front of his windshield and offers to buy him lunch. They go to the diner and Teddy eats soup. When Leonard asks Teddy if he's told him about Sammy Jankis, Teddy tells him he talks about Sammy Jankis all the time, then asks if Leonard thinks John G. is still in town. Leonard is confused as Teddy reminds him, "Johnny G. the man you are looking for. I mean, that's why you haven't left town, am I right?"
Teddy warns Leonard to be careful, as someone might be setting him up to kill the wrong guy. "I go on facts, not recommendations, but thank you," says Leonard confidently. Teddy points out that Leonard's notes are unreliable, but Leonard assures him that memory isn't very reliable anyway. "Cops don't catch a killer by remembering stuff," Leonard insists, adding, "Memories can be distorted." Teddy agrees to help Leonard and asks him where he's staying. Leonard pulls out a picture and tells Teddy he's at the Discount Inn and realizes that he doesn't have his key.
Leonard returns to the Discount Inn and goes to the front window, telling Burt that he's misplaced his key. Burt leads him up to a room and lets him in, before realizing that he has led Leonard to the wrong room. He tells Leonard to come with him, but Leonard recognizes his handwriting on a nearby paper bag. "This was your room, but now you're in 304," Burt says, awkwardly.
When Leonard asks Burt what time it is and realizes it's almost 1:00, he runs off without going to his motel room, realizing that he's set to meet Natalie at 1.
In black-and-white flashback, Leonard shaves his thigh in the motel room, and narrates to the person on the phone that he had just become an insurance investigator when he met Sammy Jankis, a 58-year-old semi-retired accountant who had been in a car accident. After the car accident, Sammy suffered from memory issues, similar to those that Leonard suffers from now.
Leonard was hired to investigate Sammy's insurance claims. "This is my first big claims investigation, so I really check into it. Sammy can think just fine, but he can't make any new memories," Leonard tells the person on the phone. We see a flashback of Leonard visiting Sammy and his wife at home. Sammy cannot remember anything long enough to watch an episode of television, but he can remember complicated things from before the accident, and we see Sammy giving his wife an insulin shot.
Still in flashback, we see Leonard revisiting Sammy at home. Leonard narrates to the person on the phone that he soon began to doubt Sammy's sincerity and ordered more tests.
Back in color, we see Leonard waking up in Natalie's bed beside her, the morning before their meeting at the diner. As Leonard wakes up, he doesn't know who Natalie is. She wakes up and realizes she has to be somewhere, before looking at Leonard's tattoos. Natalie tells Leonard she can ask her friend about John G.'s license plate, and Leonard plays along with her, before she reminds him that he has it tattooed on his thigh.
He looks through his pockets and finds the Polaroid of Natalie to identify her. She wants to talk to him on the phone later, but he requests they set up a meeting since he isn't very good on the phone. She writes down a meeting time on a piece of paper. Leonard thanks Natalie for helping him, and she tells him, "I'm helping you because you helped me." Leonard doesn't know what she means and she kisses him goodbye, telling him that he will remember her. As he goes to leave, Natalie stops him to tell him that he's wearing her shirt.
In black-and-white, Leonard tells the person on the other end, "Sammy couldn't pick up any new skills at all." We see Sammy getting tested by doctors, picking up three objects one at a time. When Sammy picks up one of the objects, it shocks him with electricity, which Sammy resents. Leonard explains that they re-administered the test over and over again, always with the same objects electrified, to see if Sammy could avoid them "not by memory, but by instinct."
Color flashback. Leonard arrives at Natalie's house on the night they sleep together. When she opens the door, he holds up a photo of a man whose bloody mouth is duct taped closed with the name "Dodd" written underneath. "Who the fuck is Dodd?" he asks her.
"Guess I don't have to worry about him anymore," she says, and invites Leonard inside. Inside, Leonard is upset, but Natalie assures Leonard that Dodd has nothing to do with his investigation. "You offered to help me when you saw what he did to my face," Natalie tells Leonard, noting the scar on her cheek and lip.
Leonard is confused, not remembering any of this, and Natalie tells him that she came directly to him after Dodd hurt her. Leonard is still unconvinced, however, and is paranoid that someone is trying to mess with him to get him to kill the wrong person. "Did you?" Natalie asks, and Leonard insists that he didn't kill anyone. She insists that Dodd has nothing to do with him and tries to rip up the polaroid, but Leonard tells her that she would have to burn it to destroy it.
Natalie tries to calm Leonard down, but he is frustrated with his plight. All he can remember is that his wife is gone, and he complains to Natalie that "the present is trivia, which I scribble down as fucking notes." As he gets more upset, Natalie undresses Leonard, noticing the tattoo on his chest. Natalie takes Leonard over to the mirror so she can read his backward tattoo.
She asks him why he's left his heart bare of tattoos, and Leonard tells her, "Maybe it's for when I find him." Natalie then tells him, "I've lost somebody too." She pulls out a picture of herself with a man named Jimmy, who went to meet someone and never came back. "Who'd he go to meet?" Leonard asks, and Natalie tells him it was a guy named Teddy.
Leonard tells Natalie that he's going to kill John G. when he finds him, and she tells him that she can help him find John G. We see the two of them in bed, later. Even though Natalie is asleep, Leonard speaks to her, confessing that he doesn't know how long his wife has been gone. "If I could just reach over and touch her side of the bed, I would know that it was cold," he says, mournfully. Natalie wakes up in the middle of Leonard talking to himself. "How can I heal if I can't feel time?" he asks himself.
Leonard gets out of bed and wanders through the hallway of Natalie's home and into another room, where he finds the photograph of her and Jimmy. He writes on the back of Natalie's Polaroid, "She has also lost someone, she will help you out of pity," and goes back to bed.
Black-and-white. Meanwhile, in his phone call, Leonard continues to recount the story about Sammy and the tests he took with the electrically charged objects. Leonard explains the significance of this: "Even with short-term memory loss, Sammy should have learned to instinctively stop picking up the wrong objects. All the previous cases responded to conditioning. Sammy didn't respond at all. It was enough to suggest that his condition was psychological, not physical." We see Sammy flipping off the doctor administering the test, over and over again. Leonard explains that they turned down Sammy's insurance claim because his insurance didn't cover mental illness. "His wife got stuck with the bills, and I got a big promotion," Leonard says. Leonard tells the person on the phone that he lives the way Sammy couldn't, based on instinct and conditioning.
We see flashes of the night of Leonard's wife's death, a masked man, a woman's face pressed up against a shower curtain, a glass container of blue bath salts falling on the floor of a bathroom.
We see Leonard, in color, waking up in his motel room. He opens the drawer of his bedside table and finds a Bible and a gun. When he opens a closet, he finds a man, Dodd, with his mouth shut with duct tape. Suddenly, Teddy begins knocking on Leonard's door. Leonard looks at his Polaroids to identify Teddy before letting him into the room.
Teddy sits down and can hear the muffled groans of Dodd in the closet, but decides that it must just be "amorous neighbors." When Leonard asks Teddy why he's there, Teddy tells Leonard that he called him for help. As Dodd's grunting continues, Leonard opens the closet to show Teddy. Teddy doesn't know who it is, and Leonard cannot remember.
Leonard takes the tape off Dodd's mouth and asks him his name and who did this to him. "You did," says Dodd, and Leonard puts the tape back on his mouth and closes the closet door to consult his Polaroids. He finds a photo of Dodd, on the back of which is written, "Get rid of him. Ask Natalie." Teddy asks who Natalie is, but Leonard wants to get Dodd out of there. They decide that the best way to get him out is to clean him up and walk him off the premises with a gun at his back. Teddy is surprised when Leonard pulls a gun out of the drawer, saying, "It must be his. I don't think they'd let someone like me carry a gun."
They escort Dodd out of the motel and Teddy thinks they ought to steal his car. Leonard tells Teddy he will drive with Dodd, and tells Teddy to follow them in another car. Teddy wants to drive Leonard's car, but Leonard tells him to drive his own. They drive out of the motel parking lot.
Analysis
In this section, we learn a little more about Leonard and his life. He tells the person on the phone (still unidentified) that he used to be an insurance investigator, and that he was good at his job. The information that we do receive is split up and comes in small doses, which only enhances the suspense of the story. As soon as we get a little bit of information, the scene shifts to a different moment and we learn something else that seems to contradict what we know already. This fragmented structure simulates the disorienting experience of memory loss.
The fragmentation of the plot makes it all the more confusing just exactly who Leonard is meant to be tracking down and who he can trust. Memory loss puts him in thrall to everyone he meets, forces him to put trust in people that he cannot build any kind of longterm relationship with. In the world of the movie, to live without memory is to live without trust and connection, and as Leonard meets with various confidants and consultants, the viewer is meant to wonder if anyone is telling the truth, if there is a method to Leonard's process.
Teddy's identity becomes more complicated as the film moves backward in time and we begin to see who he is to Leonard. In a scene at the diner, Teddy appears to be Leonard's friend, anxious to help him discover the details of who raped and murdered his wife. He professes his loyalty to Leonard, telling him that he wants to help, but also acting as a kind of conscience by suggesting that Leonard should be careful that he doesn't kill the wrong man. This strikes an ironic chord, because as we know from the beginning of the film, Leonard ends up killing Teddy. Scenes like this lead the viewer to wonder, is Teddy actually trustworthy? Can Leonard trust his own methods?
Even as more details are uncovered in the story, it becomes less and less clear who Leonard can trust. After he goes to Natalie's house, Leonard is upset about the photograph of a man named Dodd, and suspects that there is someone trying to get him to kill the wrong man. In this moment, it is difficult to tell if Natalie is a femme fatale meant to divert Leonard, or an actual accomplice and companion for him. Given that he has no memory of anything, Leonard can only trust his hunches, and he feels paranoid that someone is trying to make him do the wrong thing.
At the center of a rather complicated plot is a story about a man wanting to heal. Leonard is motivated by his desire to avenge his wife's death, and underneath this urge for revenge is his deep loneliness in her absence, and his desire to find some closure and justice in the wake of an event that has hurt him so deeply. Leonard is bereft, and the tragedy of his plight is encapsulated in the moment when he asks, of no one in particular, "How can I heal if I can't feel time?"
