Summary
Teddy follows Dodd and Leonard a little ways away. On the side of the road, Leonard lets Dodd out of the car and Leonard gets in with Teddy. We see that the next thing Leonard does after this incident with Dodd is go to Natalie's house.
Back in the black-and-white sequence, Leonard is still on the phone. He tells the person on the other end that Sammy's wife was financially as well as emotionally hurt by having to support Sammy. We see flashbacks of Sammy's wife trying to snap her husband out of his handicap. As he takes out a needle, Leonard tells the person on the other end that he planted the seeds of doubt with Sammy's wife, before adding, "But I never said he was faking. I never said that."
In color, we see Leonard in a bathroom, finding a bottle of whiskey on the back of his toilet. While he's in the shower, he hears someone come into the motel room, come into the bathroom and urinate. When Dodd opens the door, Leonard attacks him, punching him in the stomach and hitting him in the face with the whiskey bottle. When Dodd is unconscious, the housekeeper knocks on the door, but Leonard sends her away until later.
Leonard notices that Dodd is holding a gun and takes it from him. He then takes some duct tape out of Dodd's bag and puts it over his mouth. After taking a polaroid of Dodd, Leonard finds a note in his pocket that describes Dodd and says, "Put him onto Teddy or just get rid of him for Natalie." On the back of Dodd's Polaroid, Leonard writes, "Get rid of him. Ask Natalie." He puts Dodd's gun in the drawer and calls Teddy, asking him to come over.
Back in black-and-white, Leonard hangs up the phone with the person on the other end, asking them to call him back.
The scene shifts back to color, to another flashback that takes place before Leonard's run-in with Dodd. We see Leonard chasing Dodd through a trailer park. In the middle of the chase, Leonard tries to figure out what he's doing, and when he sees Dodd pull out a gun, he makes a run for it. Leonard manages to get to his car and drive away, pulling out the note about Dodd as he drives and reading it. Seeing that it says that Dodd lives at the Montcrest Inn, Leonard goes there, hoping to get ahead of him.
He pulls into a spot and goes to room 9, busting down the door when the man inside comes to open it. Leonard is confused when he notices that the man is not Dodd, and when he checks his note realizes that Dodd is in room 6, not room 9. Exasperated, Leonard goes to room 6 and breaks in, thinking to himself, "I need a weapon." He sees a whiskey bottle nearby and takes it into the bathroom, when suddenly he forgets where he is and we are back to the moment in which he thinks he is finding the whiskey bottle for the first time on the back of the toilet.
In black-and-white, we see Leonard making a needle out of a pen to give himself a tattoo. He picks up a note he's written to himself that reads, "Tattoo: Fact 5, Access to drugs."
In color, we see Leonard in the car, getting followed by Dodd in a red SUV, who he does not recognize. When Leonard pulls into an alleyway and asks Dodd what's going on, Dodd pulls out a gun and Leonard hastily drives away. As he pulls over, Dodd compliments Leonard's car, and Leonard lets him into the car, before making a run for it. As Leonard runs, Dodd shoots the window of his car and the window shatters. Dodd chases Leonard.
Back in black-and-white, Leonard starts to give himself the tattoo with Fact 5, when the phone rings. He picks up.
In color again, Leonard drives his car to a cemetery, where he builds a fire and burns a teddy bear on it. He then takes a hairbrush that belonged to his wife and burns that too, then a paperback book. In flashback, we learn that it's a book she read often, and that Leonard made fun of her for reading. The scene shifts back to the cemetery, and as he holds a clock, Leonard thinks, "Can't remember to forget you." He sits in the cemetery until morning.
In black-and-white, Leonard gives himself a tattoo of Fact 5, as he says to the person on the phone, "Well, sir, that'd certainly be in keeping with some of my own discoveries. I was hoping for a little more on the drugs angle." He gets up and looks at some papers on his desk, before telling the person on the phone, "The police report mentioned the drugs found in the car outside my house. The car was stolen, but his prints were all over it." He tells the person on the phone that some of the pages from the police report are missing, and some of the text is crossed out, before recounting that the police did not look for John G.
Color. We see Leonard lying in bed, reaching over for his wife, but finding the pillow empty. He sees a clock on the bedside table and a teddy bear, before calling out to his wife. When he realizes she isn't there, he has a memory of the night of her death and goes to the bathroom, where he finds a woman doing drugs. "Was it good for you?" she asks. He asks her to leave and decides to go to his wife's grave.
Black-and-white. Leonard tells the person on the phone, "There's something about the drugs stashed in the car that doesn't ring true for me." Leonard suspects that the killer wasn't an addict, and that John G. planted them in the car. Suddenly, the person on the other end confirms that the person who killed Leonard's wife was a drug dealer, and Leonard writes that on the note for his tattoo for Fact 5.
Color. Leonard looks at an address for the Discount Inn, takes a picture of the motel, and checks into a room. He hangs a poster with his findings on the wall, then calls an escort company. When the woman arrives, he requests that, once he falls asleep, she get up and slam the bathroom door. She is confused, but agrees. Leonard then gives her a bag of his ex-wife's things and asks her to put them around the room. When she pulls out a bra, she asks him if he wants her to wear it. He tells her no. Later, once Leonard has fallen asleep, the escort goes in the bathroom and closes the door.
Black-and-white. Leonard tells the person on the phone that he understands why the cops haven't taken him seriously, given his unusual condition. He tells the person that Sammy's wife came to visit him once and told him about how difficult life with Sammy was. "It got to the point where she'd get Sammy to hide food all around the house and then she'd stop feeding him just to see if his hunger would make him remember where he'd hidden the food," Leonard says, and we see Sammy's wife meeting with Leonard.
Sammy's wife confronts Leonard about the fact that he thinks Sammy is faking. Leonard assures her that the official position of the company is not that he is faking it, and tries to deflect her questions, but she wants answers. "If I knew for sure that my old Sammy were gone, then I could say goodbye and start loving this new Sammy. As long as I have doubt, I can't say goodbye and move on," she says, before asking Leonard to give his honest opinion about whether Sammy is faking his condition, apart from the position of his company.
"I believe that Sammy should be physically capable of making new memories," Leonard says, as Sammy's wife cries. She leaves. The scene shifts to Leonard on the phone, telling the person on the other end that he just thought Sammy's wife needed an answer.
Color. Leonard goes to his car, where he finds Teddy waiting for him. At first, Leonard has no idea who Teddy is and is belligerent, but when Teddy mentions that Leonard told him about Sammy, Leonard believes that they know each other. Teddy tells Leonard that his business is "very much finished," and informs Leonard that he just walked out of Natalie's house, even though Leonard does not remember who Natalie is.
When Leonard pulls out a Polaroid of Natalie, Teddy tells him, "You'll wanna make a note. You can't trust her...Because by now she's taken a look at this suit and this car and she's starting to figure out ways of turning the situation to her advantage." Teddy tells Leonard that Natalie is involved with drugs and writes down the name of a motel for him to stay at. Teddy pulls some coasters out of the glove compartment from the bar where Natalie works. He tells Leonard that Natalie's boyfriend is a drug dealer and she writes notes for him on the back of the coasters when she gives him drinks at the bar.
Leonard asks why he should care, to which Teddy replies, "Because when she gets jammed up, she's gonna use you to protect herself." Teddy warns Leonard that Natalie is using him, and that, "When she offers to help, it'll be for her own reasons." He tells Leonard to write down that he ought not to trust Natalie, and Leonard does so begrudgingly. When Teddy tells Leonard to leave town because people will start asking where Leonard's money comes from pretty soon, Leonard assures him that his money comes from his insurance on his wife's death.
Teddy is skeptical, telling Leonard that he doesn't know how long it's been since his wife's death, and advising him that he ought to try and figure out why he started wearing designer suits. Teddy gets out of the car, advising Leonard to go to the Discount Inn.
Leonard looks at his Polaroids of Natalie and Teddy. He sees that on the back of Teddy's Polaroid he's written, "Don't believe his lies." Seeing this, he crosses out the "Do not trust her" on the back of Natalie's photo and heads to the Discount Inn.
Analysis
The story of Sammy Jankis runs parallel to the main narrative, in which Leonard is trying to figure out who he is and what he can do to avenge his wife's death. The two sections of the film are not only contrasting in their chronology and the way they are shot—the black-and-white section moves forward in time, while the color goes in reverse—but also because they show two different sides of Leonard. In the black-and-white sections, Leonard is an expert on the Sammy Jankis case and disseminates his knowledge fluidly, whereas, in the color sections, he is almost constantly at a loss.
Things get all the more complicated when we realize that the room Leonard holds Dodd hostage in is not his own room but Dodd's. Trying to apprehend the enemy, Leonard makes his way to Dodd's motel and plants himself in the bathroom. After a few moments of waiting for his adversary, Leonard completely forgets where he is and who Dodd is, mistaking Dodd's room for his own. While the viewer has previously believed that the room Leonard kept Dodd in was his own, it is now revealed that that was not the case. Slowly, the complexity of Leonard's situation takes form and we begin to see the deep dangers of his unreliable memory.
Leonard's pain is caught up in the fact that he cannot forget the trauma that he would most like to, yet cannot remember that which would be most helpful to him. At one point, we see him visiting his wife's grave and burning her belongings, as a symbolic way of forgetting the pain of his loss. He thinks to himself, "Can't remember to forget you," and we see that one of the worst parts of his memory loss is the fact that he can never build on previously experienced feelings, and thus can never heal from the pain of loss and grief.
Leonard's memory loss condition becomes a manifestation of his stalled grieving process. He cannot move on and learn new things literally because psychologically and emotionally, he is unable to integrate the traumatic memory into his life. Thus we see him attempting different ways of facing the trauma, such as when he solicits the escort to re-stage the night of his wife's death. He is desperate to move on emotionally, but his mind will not even let him, so haunted is he by the horror of the violence he suffered.
Another major thing that haunts the characters in Memento is doubt. Leonard can never build on any of his own knowledge, and so is in a constant state of doubt. In this respect, he feels comparable to his former client, Sammy Jankis. In his own situation, however, Leonard also has much in common with Sammy Jankis' wife, who doubts whether her husband is actually experiencing the memory loss he purports to have. She suspects that if she figures out the right angle, she will be able to jolt Sammy into consciousness, and is haunted by her own doubts and unsureness about his condition. Similarly, Leonard is haunted by the belief that he can somehow will his mind to go back to normal, that he can find the right combination of elements to get himself to absorb new information.
