Memento

Leonard Shelby worked for an insurance company. One night, men came into his house. They attacked his wife and she died. They also hit Leonard on the head, very hard.

After that night, Leonard had a big problem. He remembered his old life — his childhood, his job, his wife's face. But he could not remember anything new. After a few minutes, everything was gone. He walked into a room and then he did not know why he was there. He met a person, and five minutes later that person was a stranger again. This problem with his memory never got better.

So Leonard made a system. He took photos of every person, car and building. He wrote a note on each photo. And for the most important information, he did something extreme: he put tattoos on his body. Then he started to look for the man who killed his wife. He wanted revenge.

The film is very unusual. Most of it goes backwards! Each scene starts where the last scene finished. So you feel like Leonard: you are in the middle of a situation, and you do not know how you got there.

Leonard is looking for a man called "John G." Two people help him. Teddy is friendly and talks a lot. Natalie works in a bar. They are both nice to Leonard. But they are both using him, because he cannot remember what they did yesterday.

In one difficult scene, Natalie says bad things about Leonard's wife. Leonard gets angry and hits her. Then Natalie walks outside and waits. She waits for a few minutes, until Leonard forgets. Then she comes back and says another man hit her — and Leonard believes her. He has no way to check.

Teddy gives Leonard information about a man called Jimmy Grantz. Leonard finds Jimmy and kills him. But then he looks at Jimmy's clothes and car, and the story does not fit. Something is wrong. But Leonard cannot remember enough to understand what.

At the end of the film, Teddy tells Leonard the truth. Teddy is a police officer. He says that Leonard already found the real killer more than a year ago, and killed him. After that, Teddy used Leonard again and again, and gave him a new "John G." every time.

Teddy also says something very sad. Leonard often talks about a man called Sammy Jankis, who had the same memory problem. But Teddy says the story is really about Leonard. In Teddy's story, Leonard's wife did not die in the attack. She died later, at home, because Leonard gave her medicine again and again — and every time, he forgot the last time.

Is Teddy telling the truth? The film does not say. But Leonard makes a choice. He does not want this truth. So he burns a photo, writes a false note, and puts Teddy's car number on his body as a new "clue". He knows that tomorrow he will read it and start again. He chooses the story he wants to believe.

Henry Molaison was born in the United States in 1926. He had very bad epilepsy. On 1 September 1953, a surgeon called William Scoville operated on his brain and took out a part called the hippocampus, on both sides. The operation helped the epilepsy. But after it, Henry could not remember anything new. His memory was about thirty seconds long. He lived like this for fifty-five years, until he died in 2008.

A scientist, Brenda Milner, gave him a game: draw a star, but look only in a mirror. It is very difficult. Every day Henry did it better and better — and every day he said, "I have never done this before." So one part of his brain was learning, and another part was not remembering. This showed scientists something new: we do not have one memory. We have two. There is memory for facts and days, and there is memory for skills — for the things your hands know.

Clive Wearing is a British musician, born in 1938. He was a conductor and he knew a lot about old Renaissance music. On 27 March 1985 he became very ill with an infection in the brain (herpes simplex encephalitis). It destroyed his hippocampus. Now his memory is only a few seconds long. He writes in a diary every day: "Now I am awake for the first time." Then he crosses it out and writes it again. There are hundreds of pages. When his wife Deborah comes into the room, he is very, very happy, like after many years — even if she left the room one minute ago.

But when he sits at a piano, he plays beautifully. He can read music and conduct a choir, like before. His "skill memory" is still there. And this is where the film is honest: Leonard, too, learns things without knowing it, and other people use this. But the film also makes life look too easy. Leonard drives a car, lives alone and follows a plan for days. Real people with this illness need help every day. And Clive Wearing's diary shows the sad truth about notes: to use a note, you must first remember that you have notes — and that is exactly the part that is broken.