r/TrueFilm • u/FBPMOTTIs • 1d ago

Memento question - How can Leonard change his old memories with new information? Spoiler

This masterpiece of a movie has been on my mind for a while now. One thing that bothers me goes as follows and it is assuming that Teddy is telling the truth:

Lenny's condition does not allow him to make new long term memories.

Lenny killed his own wife with insulin after his condition began.

His memories about Sammy occured prior to his condition.

Lenny attributed "killing the wife with insulin" to his long term memories about Sammy.

Therefore Lenny retained new information by incorporating it into an existing long term memory

I understand that existing memories can become distorted. But in this case, the distortion contains specific information acquired after his anterograde amnesia began. What mechanism would allow him to retain that information as part of an old memory while being unable to form a new one? And if that’s possible, could he theoretically come to remember Teddy as a neighbour from before his injury, for example?

Dying for answers...

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u/mhornberger 1d ago

I inferred that Lenny's part of the tale about Sammy being unable to form new memories even through repetition (the table with the electrified objects) was a fabrication he kept telling himself. Whereas his own arc was based on the idea that if he repeated a story enough then it became reality for him. If nothing else he repeats the story and those around him absorb it and reflect it back to him, thus creating the only reality he knows in the moment.

He lets himself forget/lose the details that would undermine his sense of mission and purpose (and his shifting of the guilt for his wife's death), and he adds details to direct future Lenny's attention, also to sustain that sense of purpose. Sometimes just based on someone he picked in the moment, or who pissed him off, like Teddy did by threatening his ersatz innocence.

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u/DavidByrnesHugeSuit 1d ago

The way I've always read it is that Leonard literally is and always has been Sammy Jankis. One of the two names is a fabrication, perhaps he changed his name after the first murder, the murder of the actual 'second assailant.' After which both Teddy and Leonard himself started lying and sustaining this loop of fake investigation and murders.

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u/RepulsiveFondant3332 1d ago

Don't know if it answers your question, but I feel he figured out enough of what happened by the sheer amount of information he got tattooed + some reminiscent fragments of memory that lingered.