I think the reasons are as follows:
1. Such a complicated film involving the brain's thinking process is very likely to be logically flawed. After all, the director is not a rigorous scientist;
2. Is the message the director is trying to convey is what the audience understands and accepts? information;
3. starting point to restore the "truth" of whether the reasoning is based on reliable facts about, or based on another inference or assumption;
if the above three problems, then the film details the various conclusions also full of tricks Not surprisingly.
In order to avoid the interference of the above three points to our analysis of the film, we first need to state some important facts about the film that have been basically recognized (part of the facts come from its official website http://www.otnemem.com/ interested in People can check it out), all sources of facts are based on documents or real objects, excluding dialogue and thought processes:
-----facts from the official website -----
1. According to police records and local media reports, the protagonists Leonard and His wife was attacked at his home in San Francisco on February 24, 1997. A gangster was shot dead by Leonard on the spot. His wife was raped and survived. According to the local hospital records, Leonard suffered severe head injuries and suffered from anterograde memory disorder and short-term memory. Can not be converted into long-term memory, the duration of the memory is about 15 minutes.
2. Leonard wrote on a piece of shredded paper on April 11, 1997: "she's gone, gone for good. you're the only one left. but there isn't much left of you, is there? he took that too. "
3. Leonard wrote "remember Sammy Jankis" on another scrap of paper and no one believed him just like he didn't believe sammy.
4. According to the records of the Oakland Bay area Psychiatric Hospital on February 16, 1998, Leonard was sent to the place by California authorities for supervision. He was described as "as a ward of the state" in the records, and his mood fluctuated, and Leonard was mentioned. The fact that his wife has died, but he did not realize this fact and asked to see his wife.
5. A series of text fragments written by leonard in this mental hospital (infer the chronological order from the content):
--"you're in a hospital, ...she's gone for good, so you've got to stop looking for her, ok? please."
--"...let the doctors work you over,...but they've given up on you too..."
--"...maybe you can't fix the broken brain of yours, but you can at least make some of the pain go away...if they knew what you needed,
--"she's gone,...you got one of them,...but you didn't got the other one, the one that got away..."
--"...you're a coward because you know there's work left to be done. but you're still sitting here..."
--"...you get out and you catch the son of bitch...and no, you probably won't remember...
Take a picture or something." 6. The mental hospital record on April 11, 1998 mentioned that Leonard started to write a diary and rarely mentioned his wife; in addition, he wrote to himself in the second person, which seemed to be teaching himself to overcome difficulties.
7. It was mentioned in the weekly report of the hospital on September 17-25, 1998, that the nurse discovered that Leonard actually hid another diary, in which Leonard tried to persuade him to escape from the mental hospital to hunt down what he thought was the murderer of his wife; he seemed to Convincing himself that there is a second murderer ignored by the police, he named this murderer John.G.
8. It is mentioned in this report that the treatment of Leonard by the mental hospital has completely failed and the memory cannot be restored; and although Leonard still cannot remember the doctor's name, he has learned to have a sense of distrust and suspicion towards the people around him; Finally, it is mentioned that Leonard never seems to give up his fixation over his wife.
9. Leonard escaped from the mental hospital in September 1998.
10. Leonard wrote "the little notes aren't working out. not for the more important stuff. you've got to find a more permanent way of writing things done" on a small piece of paper.
-----Facts in the movie-----
1. The tattoo on leonard's chest reads: John.G raped and murdered my wife, the tattoo on the tiger's mouth on his left hand is: remember Sammy Jankis, the tattoo on his left upper arm is: she's gone , time still pass.
2. Teddy has a photo of Leonard after killing someone, and there seems to be no other tattoo on the photo except for the tattoo "John.G raped and murdered my wife".
3. Leonard's head was injured as a result of a club hit. You can refer to the conversation when he looked through the police records at natalie's home.
-----The basic framework of real events-----
The official website of the film provides very detailed information such as media reports, police records, medical records, patient condition logs, and Leonard's diary fragments; of course, there are props that have appeared in the film . These clues played a very crucial role in constructing the reality of what happened in the film.
The facts that can be inferred from the above facts are as follows:
Leonard and his wife survived the robbery on February 24, 1997. Leonard suffered from amnesia and could never remember anything that happened after the robbery. Therefore, his life is constantly confirming whether his wife is still alive. Spent in the state. Until April 11, 2007, he wrote on a small note: "She has gone...", implying that Leonard's wife is dead at this time, and the content of the note also hinted that he thought there might be another murderer. On another note he wrote that he needed to remember that Sammy Jankis, a man with the same mental condition as his, his current situation is that the doctors and police do not believe his words-there is another murderer, his wife was murdered .
Later in 1998.2 Leonard was sent to a mental hospital for supervision. Due to amnesia, his memory lingered between asking to see his wife and confirming that his wife was dead. This can be seen from the mental hospital records and a note written by him. see. By writing a diary, he gradually figured out a set of methods to let himself know what his current situation is. Through his daily memory, he concluded that his illness could not be cured, the doctor gave up hope for him, his wife has died, there is another assailant who has not been caught, and his wife was murdered by them; at the same time, he Fictionalized a white male named John.G and determined that he was the second murderer at large, so he decided to find the murderer and successfully leaped into the lunatic asylum.
After he came out, Leonard found that it was not convenient to memorize important information by writing notes, so he chose to tattoo and take pictures. His first three tattoos were: "John.G raped and murdered my wife", "remember Sammy Jankis" and " she's gone, time still pass". These are the three most important tattoos and are the basis for all his subsequent activities.
Later, he met a policeman, Teddy, and the only certainty about this man was that he found Leonard had amnesia and used him to kill people to make huge profits for himself. Given that he has a photo of Leonard covered in blood and the photo shows that Leonard did not have many tattoos at the time, it can be judged that Leonard was used by Teddy shortly after escaping from the neuropathy and had killed at least one person; but it is certain that before Teddy It was definitely not John.G who lied to him to kill, because John.G didn't exist at all.
Teddy uses the Leonard cycle to kill. After Leonard was misled and killed Jimmy, he deliberately left a false clue to himself out of a certain mentality, pointed the information about John.G to Teddy, and made himself after a series of amnesia and logical reasoning. Determine that John.G is teddy and kill him.
----- Doubts and contradictions -----
One of the doubts is whether Leonard's wife died of insulin overdose.
At about 1 hour and 30 minutes in the film, when Sammy was sitting in a wheelchair in the mental hospital, there was a scene where his face suddenly changed to Leonard’s face. This scene implies that Leonard is actually in the mental hospital, which is consistent with the facts provided on the official website. Therefore, it can be considered that this moment is not Leonard’s memory, but a suggestive performance technique of the director; in the same way, Leonard saw himself in his hands when watching TV at Natalie’s house at about 1 hour 21 minutes 29 seconds." "Remember sammy jankis" tattoo suddenly flashed a frame of change. One hand took a needle for insulin injection. The background is a woman in white clothes. If you look closely, you will find that this is Leonard's hand, so here It can also be considered that this is a performance technique used by the director to imply that it is indeed Leonard's wife who has diabetes and died of insulin overdose.
Since these two pieces of evidence are neither empirical nor physical objects, they can only be regarded as inferences and cannot constitute the truth of the story. At the same time, if Leonard's wife dies from an overdose, this inference is contradictory to the plot of the story. Since the insulin injection did not happen to Sammy’s wife, which means that it happened after Leonard’s amnesia, it is impossible for him to graft this memory to the memory of Sammy, because there is no overdose of insulin in his brain. This material. Then how could he talk about Sammy's tragic experience?
So on this issue, I think the director really wanted to express that Leonard accidentally killed his wife but couldn't accept this reality, so he grafted this memory to the memory of Sammy, but made a logical error.
The second question is whether John.G exists or not.
It is impossible to determine from the analysis of the film alone, but adding the information from the official website, it can be concluded that John.G does not exist. The facts on the official website are very clear. First, before Leonard entered the mental hospital, it only showed that he suspected the existence of a second murderer, but he did not know who he was. Secondly, the name John.G and the physical characteristics of this person were all The conclusion he reached in the psychiatric hospital, then, without any source of information, it is impossible for him to draw the correct conclusion in the psychiatric hospital, it can only be imaginary.
The third question is whether the second assailant exists or not.
First of all, in the plot of the film, the police believed that it did not exist. In the official website information, the hospital records mentioned that Leonard was injured because of a head-on conflict with "intruder". Here, "intruder" is used in the singular, which also shows that the second person does not exist. But this is what the police said. When Leonard recalled the incident at about 1 hour and 20 minutes in the movie, the memory showed that he was hit by a second person on the mirror, and then he read the police documents and said that the police found a stick stained with his blood, so what did he do? Did the head hit the mirror or was it hit by a stick? Here I personally suspect that there is something wrong with his memory, because the head hit by a stick is recorded in the file, and his head hit the mirror is his memory. Which is more reliable?
-----in conclusion-----
Because filming is not scientific research, and many places use artistic expressions, and different people have different understandings of these expressions, this leads to a film with a more complicated storyline and more uncertain factors. Its storyline Many different interpretations will be derived. A large part of the interpretation is based on the logic of the film. Every detail in the film has deep meaning. The information received by the audience must be based on the assumptions that the director wants to express. I have seen some logical deductions. And the impeccable film review in terms of observation power, because the basis of the analysis is not reliable, so all kinds of coincidences are far-fetched, and weird conclusions are drawn.
Films such as "Mulholland Avenue" or "The Wilderness of the Night", I think there is no logic at all. The director just wants to express a kind of emotion, but you have to be reasonable in the various scenes. How can there be a solution to the explanation? In addition, like "American Crazy Demon", whether the protagonist killed or not in the end is a lot of controversy, and various arguments and reasoning are brilliant. The director finally said that he actually killed him, but he did not perform well, which may have misunderstood many people.
As for the film, I think there are only so many reliable conclusions. As for whether people such as Sammy exist or not, the relationship between natalie and Leonard, and what Teddy said is true and false except for empirical evidence. In the film and the official website, no written materials or physical evidence were provided to explain; in fact, these details did not have a big impact on the theme of the film, so it was left to the audience to play.
Therefore, for us analysts, before analyzing a movie, we must first understand what the "truth" is-the truth not only exists in the movie, but also exists outside the movie. We have to believe in a great art. The product is definitely not perfect from a scientific point of view, so when you want to make a scientific interpretation of its various details, you must be based on solid truth instead of relying solely on the film itself. If the film cannot be provided to you like memento official website. For these solid truth words, I suggest that you still write a post-insight review, so as not to fall into the logical hell and become unable to extricate yourself.
-----Unsolved mystery-----
Is it the director but the ulterior motive or what I call the infinite hell, please interpret it:
1. At the end of the film, why did Jimmy suddenly say the name sammy when Leonard dragged Jimmy to the basement? His motives seem illogical.
2. At the end of the film, Teddy compares his own shoes with Jimmy's shoes. What is the purpose?
View more about Memento reviews
