Interpreting the Film Memento
Part 4: A Clinical Psychology Diagnosis
This is my fourth, and final, article about Christopher Nolan’s 2000 neo-noir psychological thriller film, Memento. Links to my three earlier posts can be found by scrolling to the bottom of this article.
My personal copy of the two disc Special Edition DVD of the film Memento includes bonus material. One of the bonus items is a Psychiatric Admission Report for “an alleged mentally sick person”, Leonard Shelby:
This multi-page document indicates that Leonard was administered a number of psychological tests. At the end is a blank sheet, presumably to be filled out by the viewer, that has a place to write in a “diagnosis.” It seems the producers/distributors of the film are literally inviting the viewers of this film to make a psychological diagnosis. This bonus material was added to the DVD set years after the theatrical release of the film, perhaps because virtually no one, critics or audience, had yet properly interpreted the film.
Antisocial Personality Disorder
The DSM is the standard reference manual used by psychiatrists and psychologists when diagnosing mental disorders. One of the diagnostic conditions is referred to as Antisocial Personality Disorder. Individuals diagnosed with this condition lack empathy for the pain and suffering of others, and are able to inflict physical and emotional pain onto others without feeling any remorse. These individuals also love to play elaborate con games, especially ones that are cruel. Furthermore, they often play these games simply for thrills rather than for personal gain. Individuals with these traits are sometimes called psychopaths and that is the term I will use in the remainder of this article.
Clinical Psychology Diagnosis
Leonard was a psychopath. He went through life playing an elaborate game in which he pretended to have a rare form of memory loss, anterograde long-term declarative amnesia. He most likely spent extensive effort and time studying the symptoms of this particular form of amnesia. Perhaps he had actually once known someone who really did have the condition (More about the character Sammy below). Or perhaps he just heard about the condition somewhere, became intrigued by it, and went to the library to study up about it. Either way, he decided to initiate an elaborate game with his life. In every situation in which he found himself, Leonard imagined what a person with this form of amnesia would do, and then acted in the same way. He played this game to the limit, regardless of where it led, including if it required him to drink other peoples’ spit, even hurt or kill other individuals. This game led Leonard to murder at least three individuals, probably others we don’t know about, including his own wife.
Claims Versus Evidence
In a previous article I explained that the color scenes in the film can be treated as perceptual evidence (events that viewers can see with their own eyes). The black-and-white scenes in which Leonard describes and interprets events that have happened to himself operate like memory, and cannot be trusted.
Leonard claims that he had learned about a rare form of amnesia from one of his clients named Sammy.
There would be ample reason to be skeptical about this claim based simply on grounds of probability. Anterograde long-term declarative amnesia is an extremely rare condition. The odds that Leonard would meet and interact with someone who has this condition, and then later come down with the same condition himself, are extremely unlikely, probably something akin to being struck twice by lightning.
In fact, there are several lines of evidence that Sammy probably did not even exist as a separate character.
Leonard himself went by the name “Sammy” sometimes. For example, in one scene a character calls out, “Sammy”, towards his murderer, Leonard. It seems most likely that Leonard used the name as an alter-ego to describe characteristics or events that applied to himself.
The character Teddy states that Sammy did not have a wife, and that all of Leonard’s stories about Sammy’s wife having diabetes were really stories about Leonard’s wife.
And if all of this suggestive evidence does not convince you that Sammy was really Leonard, the director threw in one more explicit clue in the form of a flashback. During a scene in which Leonard is discussing how Sammy was committed to a mental hospital, we are shown a flashback in which we see Sammy sitting in that hospital. However, at the very end of the flashback, the director inserts a few frames (so short that it probably was not detected during a theatrical viewing, but shows up clearly when played in slow motion on the DVD) in which the person shown is actually Leonard.
Leonard claims that his wife was raped and killed during a home invasion robbery.
Leonard’s wife might have been raped by someone named John G during a home invasion robbery, but the evidence suggests she was not killed then. We see several color flashback scenes in which the wife’s eyes open and close while she is laying on the floor in the bathroom following her rape, indicating that she was not immediately killed.
We also see a short color flashback scene in which Leonard is lying next to his wife and already has a tattoo on his chest. Very cleverly, the director shot this scene from an angle that only shows the portion of the tattoo that states “John G raped” and hides the portion we see in other scenes that adds “and murdered”. There is also an additional tattoo visible in this flashback scene that states, “I did it”.
We see color flashbacks of Leonard giving insulin shots to his wife, replicating in color the actions that Leonard attributed to Sammy during the black-and-white scenes. Also, Leonard tells us that “Sammy’s wife” was skeptical about whether or not Sammy really had memory loss. A likely scenario is that Leonard starting playing his elaborate amnesia game after his wife was raped. She ultimately became sick and tired of his game and decided to put him to the ultimate test of seeing if he would kill her with insulin shots rather than fess up that it was a game. As a result, she is now dead.
Leonard claims that he has a rare form of anterograde amnesia.
Keeping in mind that Sammy is really Leonard’s alter ego, the following lines of dialog may be relevant. Leonard tells us that, in his role as insurance investigator, he concluded there was “no physical reason that should prevent Sammy [italics added] from making new memories”. Similarly, Leonard tells us that doctors who examined Sammy were skeptical about his memory loss.
More direct evidence comes from the fact that the writer/director of the film included a scene where Leonard messed up and revealed a fact that he should not have known if he really had this form of amnesia. In the critical scene, Leonard refers to the motel manager, Burt, by name, demonstrating that he does remember the name even though he professes not to. A related interesting observation comes from looking at the bonus material on the Special Edition DVD. One of the options on the DVD is to view a copy of the marked screenplay while the movie is running. In the screenplay there was a second slip by Leonard in which he referred to the character Natalie by name. That line of dialog never made it into the film and there is a note in the margin stating that the line was unnecessary. I interpret this to mean that the director decided one clue, the slip involving Burt’s name, should be enough for a discerning audience to figure out that Leonard did not really have amnesia.
The final, and most subtle evidence would probably not be apparent to any viewers except those with a background in psychiatry or clinical psychology. Once again keeping in mind that Sammy is really Leonard’s alter ego, consider the scenes in which Sammy is shown undergoing psychological testing. One of these tests required that Sammy reach out and grab blocks of various shapes (a triangle, square, etc) on a table in front of him. Whenever he touched one of these shapes, say the triangle, Sammy was shocked. Sammy never learned to avoid touching the shape that led to shock. Why might Sammy have failed this test? A key diagnostic feature of psychopaths is that they have trouble learning to alter their behavior based on punishment. This is because they do not build up a normal fear response to situations or events that have led to punishment in the past. Normal individuals who are punished for specific behaviors will try to avoid repeating those behaviors in the future because they fear being punished again. Psychopaths do not develop normal fear responses, and thus continue exhibiting behaviors that lead to punishment, over and over.
Of course, that evidence is indirect since it is a flashback within a black-and-white scene. Can we find any direct evidence for this diagnostic trait in Leonard in a color scene? There is a color scene, early in viewing time, where Leonard runs into the glass at the entry door of the motel where he has been staying. Ouch! He does this because the door opens outward but he tries to push on it. A “normal” individual might do this once, or perhaps twice, but then quickly learn to alter his behavior so as to avoid continuing to be punished. A psychopath might not. At this point in story time, Leonard has been staying at this same motel for at least days, possibly weeks. Bingo!
Ron Boothe
psyrgb@emory.edu
My first three articles on this topic can be found here:
