Topic > A review of the film Memento

But you don't know who you have becomeThe thriller Memento takes the viewer through the life of a man with a rare memory disorder, temporal lobe amnesia. In the film the main character Leonard Shelby is initially portrayed as a man incapable of forming new memories who seeks revenge for his late wife; a lovely, kind woman who was raped and murdered by one or more men the night Lenny lost his memory. The film begins with Leonard answering the phone, then we find out that the man on the other line is Teddy, a supposed cop who is trying to help Lenny find the attacker Jimmy G. Jimmy G. or maybe John G. is the name of Mrs. Shelby's mysterious and alleged second attacker. Police working on the case rejected Leonard's idea of ​​a second attacker, although Leonard says he clearly remembers being hit in the head by a second man while his wife was attacked. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay Additionally, police have found no real evidence to support Leonard's second man theory as they believe his concussion was indeed caused by him tripping and hitting his head on the mirror. The viewer cannot accept any of these claims as we never hear the cops themselves dismiss the idea of ​​a second killer and we are initially presented with what we know Lenny remembers. Since Lenny is the main character, it must be assumed that what he remembers is what we must accept as truth. Following this logic we return to the initial scene with Lenny on the phone with Teddy. Teddy is asking him questions. However, Teddy later pretends to know this information as if he had learned it from dating Leonard. He introduces himself as Leonard's cop friend, but later in the film there is substantial evidence to suggest that Teddy or should I say John Gammell is a dangerous drug dealer who is trying to use Lenny to eliminate the competition. But even this information is questionable. as we learn from Natalie. Natalie is Jimmy the drug dealer's girlfriend. Leonard killed Jimmy the drug dealer because Teddy convinced him that this Jimmy must be the man who took part in his wife's murder. However, there is no concrete evidence to support this idea. As Leonard "learns" new hard facts about his wife's killer, he tattoos them on his body and keeps a mess of messy documents about the case in his briefcase. To work we find that Lenny leaves himself a lot of notes and trusts his own handwriting. He remembers people by taking a Polaroid photo of them and writing their name on the photo. He explains his disorder to everyone he meets and trusts everyone until they prove untrustworthy. Using a series of routines, Leonard finds comfort in his condition. He takes photos of places he's been and believes in his system. Leonard, however, is not the only man in this film with temporal lobe amnesia. Before his accident, Leonard was an insurance fraud inspector. With a keen understanding of the details, Leonard would meet people who claimed to need large insurance payments due to a sudden illness. Leonard usually used his skill and "smelled" those who tried to defraud the company; Leonard's shrewd façade and investigative instincts finally met their match, Sammy Jankis. Sammy has temporal lobe amnesia with a short-term memory capacity that is about the length of an average commercial. Sammy appears to have no anterograde amnesia and even remembers how to administer insulin injections to his wife. Sammy can't create new ones.