Superb examination of the role of memory

Rating: 10/10 (25 March 2002)

Having seen this movie twice, I have come to appreciate that it is very carefully constructed, and has something important to say about both the importance of memory, and the dangers inherent in the kind of thumbnail encapsulations of others that Leonard is forced to rely upon.
Spoilers follow...please read no further if you haven't seen the movie.
Roger Ebert and others have complained that Leonard's very awareness of his own condition is a contradiction: He should not be able to even remember that he has short-term memory loss. But Leonard is, in fact, able to gradually assimilate information over time--partly through repetition. He tells us this much himself, at one point. In fact, it is this conditioning that holds the key to understanding the central surprises of the movie. Leonard has "conditioned" himself to "remember"--but this artificial "memory" is flawed: he doesn't want to face the fact that he himself was responsible for his wife's death, for example, and so he misremembers the insulin episode as having happened to Sammy. (Leonard presumably would have been nonplussed had he been asked how he knew about Sammy's wife's death: Sammy certainly couldn't have told him.) We see this "conditioning"--this propensity to remember, selectively, what he wants to remember--most forcefully (and perhaps a bit heavy-handedly) at the end, when he writes down Teddy's license plate number, effectively making him the next "John G."
Leonard's inability to remember implies an inability to forget what went before--and so highlights, by its absence, the healing power of time--which is, after all, only the memories intervening between the present and some past event. For Leonard, there are no such memories, hence time has, in a sense, stopped for him. He himself recognizes that he has no chance to heal.
Contrast this with the situation in the 1993 Harold Ramis Twilight Zonish-comedy "Groundhog Day". Here the situation is reversed: Phil Connors is the only one with any recollection of a series of Groundhog Days. It is almost as if Phil lives in a world populated by Leonards. Just as others use Leonard for their own purposes, so Phil, with his unique ability to remember, is able to use and abuse others. More importantly, Phil is able to heal, able to remake himself into something new and better, precisely the way that Leonard cannot.
Despite a few minor snags in the storyline (and Leonard's awareness of his own condition is not one of them), this is a very well-crafted tale that repays repeated viewings and reflection.
9/10