MEMENTO SPLOILER
But first, may IKYA?
Merci. Moving right along.
So my original and clearly flawed understanding of the actual base-story, as revealed by the ending, was that the cop Teddy had essentially told us the truth, that Sammy, the memory of whom haunted Leonard, did not have a diabetic wife whom he killed (innocently) with the repeated injections she requested as a 'test,' that that was some sort of projection on Leonard's part onto the memory of Sammy of a guilt of his own, which (and this is now apparently untrue) I thought was this: that he, Leonard, was the one who had (innocently) killed his wife, who was the actual diabetic, following the break-in and the rape and attempted murder (remember her eye flicking under the shower curtain? she was alive then) of his wife, during which he, Leonard, received the brain injury that caused the memory loss.
And that the rest of the movie showed a man attempting to penetrate to the center of moments, discern meaning and create meaning, escape guilt, retain his manhood and dignity, but most of all to create both order and meaning by creating a significant (and exculpating) life project.
I thought his drive to do this, and the tools he devised to do it, were to be understood by us, until the end, to be instruments for accomplishing a genuine and significant end, the punishing of the murderer of his wife and the thief who stole his memory.
I thought the 'trick' of the movie was that we understood, suddenly, at the end, that his wife had not been murdered. That she had died, but in a way on which we can only speculate (the only information we might use as as basis for speculation is the story we heard from Teddy (which i take to be true), and Leonard's tale about Sammy.)
And that the real trick of the movie became, then, that the movie told us that all the tricks, psychological (denial), and quotidian (post-its, photos, tattoos), by which he managed his life and project, and protected his myth, and justified his mistakes, and created meaning and a life, were, in fact (SURPRISE!) not the means to an end at all, but... the end itself.
The myth and the ways we make and protect it is our often- deadly project, I thought it was saying. (All of ours, not just Leonard's.)
That's why Teddy had to die, I guess. This is a guess. In fact, I blocked Teddy's death out. My memory of the last time we saw Teddy was when he was looking for his car keys in the bushes. Someone on kissy mentioned it, and I thought, Oh! Well, then Leonard had to kill Teddy to protect The Project, ie the myth and its instruments, from the truth that would destroy them.
But....
this whole construct doesn't hold up if, lying in bed with his wife, after he's had the injury and begun getting tattooed, there is a tattoo among the others saying to go find and kill the man who raped and killed his wife. Because that 'project' would only have had to be devised, and tattooed across his chest, after his wife had died. (Though I can think of other explanations; except that they aren't that interesting.)
So....
Was that tattoo there?
And if it was...
what the f____ does that whole movie mean, then? |
