does he have a "condition" - WARNING, SPOILERS

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2001)

WARNING - SPOILERS - WARNING - SPOILERS
This movie is not about a grieving man's search for his wife's killer.
It is about a psychotic murderer's decent into violence
and total madness.
Leonard is a psychotic murderer who brutally kills people and takes Polaroid pictures of the corpses.
He doesn't have a memory problem - he remembers *everything*, he acts as if he forgets, which is part of his psychosis.
This movie is brilliant in that by making us empathize with him though out most of this movie, it in fact takes us in to his world, his mind - the mind of a killer - where he is somehow manages to justify his actions and seeks sympathy for himself

until Kenney presents arguments which forces him to doubt the delusion he has created for himself... which he overcomes by murdering Kenney.

many people complain that the movie leaves too many questions unanswered at the end - but the point is, it doesn't matter. These are just questions in the mind of a mad man, thus they are not real; he may or may not have killed his wife, his wife may or may not have been diabetic, he might not even had a wife, it could all be the delusion of his psychosis.
In retrospect, observe that what he did from the beginning are the actions of a madman; who in his right mind would would *tattoo* cryptic "facts" on his body. Who in his right mind would search for his wife's killer, knowing his condition and knowing the risks of killing the wrong person.
his record keeping is just as shoddy, his notes are confusing - but this is deliberate, he doesn't need any of these pictures or notes, because he remembers. They are just props which he uses to populate his psychotic world.
If he really did have a memory problem, he wouldn't be able to do any of those things he does in the movie, he won't be able drive - once on the road he wouldn't know where he is, where he is going or where he came from.- he would be totally helpless and would - like Sammy Jenkins - sit in a room forever, every moment, new.
He doesn't keep a calendar, as he wants to get lost in his mad repeating day, waking up everyday imaging he can't remember where he is, going through all the motions of opening the drawer and looking at the Gidian bible.
however, note that although he is mad, he does pay attention of self-preservation. At suitable times he "feels" that this is not his room etc, since he doesn't want to pay for the extra room in the motel, and "knows" that he has to attack the gangster who runs in to him while taking a shower, and finally refuses to kill him because he knows to do so would be to let himself be used by another person - he also steals the car and the money from one of his victims.
Leonard is an utterly frightening individual, who can go on killing people, taking pictures, every time, his psychosis will lead him to destroy the last picture of the corpse and then continue to find the next "George G.", ad infinitum...