zuffy

I just saw Memento and a bit confused. I did a search but it looks like the Memento spoiler threads are gone already. Anyway, is Sammy a real character or just a make up from Leonard's head? The scene near the end where he gave an insulin shot to his wife had me thinking.

csim

Sammy is himself, his wife was the one who needed the drugs.

WiccanPagan

you can't really say whether or not he was real or made up. he might have been a figment of lenny's imagination as teddy was implying. i am not of this train of though, though, it could be believed. the guy had mental problems and seeing ti is a movie there is no actual way to say what was real and imagined.

caligulathegod

I believe Sammy was real and had a case similar to Leonard's but over time (and conditioning) the story had incorporated details from Leonard's own case.

RKillgore

I believe that Sammy was Leonard. His was condition was that he couldn't retain new memories. He still had other brain capabilities: his old memory up to assault, he could still fantisize (at the end of the film, he imagines himself with his wife and his "I DID IT" tattoo), so I believe he still has the capability of making false memories.
As we know, false memories are a verifiable occurence. People are manipulated or manipulate themselves into believing that something happened in their lives that didn't or couldn't possibly happen.
Leonard needed some way to "know" about his condition, otherwise he'd have no chance of survival, not on his own anyway. The only way he'd have lasting knowledge of it would be if he learned about it before the assault. Being an insurance investigator, he was provided with a route to which he could have encountered such a condition, in a manner that his brain could accept. His brain constructed Sammy Jenkins, building a scenario that Leonard himself probably went through: the frustration, the testing, the investigation. Of course, this means that Leonard's wife survived her assault only to be killed by Sammy, errrr, Leonard by insulin overdose.

zuffy

I was thinking of the same thing. I think Leonard killed his wife with the insulin. I need to check it again but didn't near the end there was a scene of his wife had her head on Leonard bare chest and you can see tatoo of words on his chest already. This tells me he has a "Sammy" problem already.

C Roberts

It was inconclusive... (i.e. draw your own conclusions)

Dr. Dean

He was most certainly Sammy...His wife was still alive when he lost his memory but she is no longer around at the time of the film...how did she die? Insulin OD of course just as Teddy said, "there IS no sammy Jenkins"

Dr. DVD

I am confused as to whether or not his wife died of insulin or if she just left him because she couldn't deal with the condition. Teddy never stated outright that Leonard killed his wife, just that there was no Sammy.

NCMojo

Leonard is Sammy -- I think there may have been a similar case study that Leonard learned about, maybe someone who was in a mental home, but the whole affair with the insulin needles and the disbelieving wife... yeah, that was obviously Leonard.

His wife survived the attack (which makes sense -- why would they leave Leonard alive and kill his wife?), and Leonard sort of lost his mind because he could not deal with the aftermath. When he killed her, he lost everything, and created Sammy as a way of dealing with his pain.

Goat3001

Teddy sums everything up for us at the end of the film:

Sammy did exist however he was faking his condition. After he wifes rape, Leanord developed the same condition except of course his was real. Leanord then "killed" his wife because of the condition by giving her too many insulin shots.

Sammy was real, but over time Sammys story mixed in with Leanords story.

During the movie Leonard killed someone that had nothing to do with his wife or him, (eventhough Leonard thought it did). Although long before he really did kill the "real" John G., I'm assuming that John G was the one that raped his wife. (leonard being the one that killed her)

WiccanPagan

you can't say one way or the other. teddy is a list "don't believe his lies" there is no way to tell one way or the other that he is sammy or sammy is fake or he killed his wife or anything. it is a thinking person's movie. what you think is what you get. i like thinking it lenny's way. that sammy was real and the story was true in his mind. not the one that teddy gives at the end.

Venom

i haven't watch the movie again to figure it out with that as my focus. but lenny lies to himself when teddy tells him a bunch of stuff, leading to the don't believe his lies and provides a few clues to restart the search with teddy in mind. therfore if he realized he had something bad to due with his wife, it's very possible he would trick himself to avoid knowing it. then again if there never was a sammy, how would he know sammy jenkins to remember him in the first place.

zuffy

When I saw the last 5-10 minutes of the film, my conclusion was that I was lied to. Natalie is a bad person, what Terry said are true, and it is Lenny's "don't believe his lies" about Terry that cause him to kill Jimmy and Terry.

Bizkit

I was also asking myself the same questions after this movie...I did a bit of searching and found a great analysis of this movie...
of course, you are free to believe what you want, so take this as just another opinion:

http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/...ento_analysis/

----
Bizkit

zuffy

Great article!

DVDho78DTS

You got it. You don't have to assume John G raped and killed his wife because that is a key point in the movie. He obviously did, while the movie revolves around the process of Teddy using Leonard to make a drug deal and kill the guy making him think he is the real John G. Though we find out at the end he already killed the real John G a while ago.

Staccatos

Sammy Jankis is not a mental construct. Sammy was not faking his memory loss. However, Sammy's condition was psychological and not physical like Leonard's.

As Leonard is unable to form new memories, he has found ways to remind himself of where he is and what he is doing. One of those ways is extensive note-taking and polaroid photographs. He does this by conditioning himself (doing the same tasks over and over again, where a different part of his brain "remembers" it, *not* the damaged portion of the brain controlling short-term memory). For instance, he always takes a note of anything he will need to remember, then anytime he is lost (goes into a lapse) and alone, he checks his pockets for items for his "notes". Tatoo's are a more permanent form of note, in this case.

One of the most important pieces of conditioning is found in "How does Leonard know he suffers from short term memory loss?" Roger Ebert got stuck up on this detail. The answer is conditioning. Every time Leonard meets a new person, he tells the "Sammy Jankis" story. By telling the story, Leonard is actually informing himself about his own condition. It had to be an incident that occurred before Leonard's "accident", so it had to be "real" and it happened that he had the perfect analogy in Sammy.

The short-term memory loss was not absolutely 100%. But it was close enough to total that there everything between the "accident" to present was a blank.

Things that Leonard remembers post-accident:

1. That a friend at the police gives Leonard the file on his wife's attack. The file has been "modified" to make Leonard think that his wife was killed in the attack. The modification was probably initally done by Teddy in order to manipulate Leonard into killing "his wife's murderer" (again and again). Leonard has subsequently made his own changes to the file.

2. Glimpses of Leonard giving his wife insulin shots. Although the background for the Sammy Jankis is correct, I am not sure about Leonard killing his wife. The reason why is this: Sammy's wife refused to believe that Sammy wouldn't "snap out of it" (because Sammy's condition was mental, his brain was physically capable of creating new memories). Sammy's wife believed that Sammy would realize he was killing his wife and in a cathartic moment become cured. Leonard's wife wouldn't have the same notion or conception. If Leonard's wife had the same idea to overdose on insulin, it must have been for some other reason (perhaps suicide) because Leonard had actual brain damage and couldn't "snap out of it", so there was no rationale for her to test Leonard in the same way.

Bechman 2000

I beleive that Sammy was Leonard. First off there is a point in the movie where they show Sammy in the mental hospital and then another patient walks in front of him in his wheel chair. Then, for a split second, right after the other patient passes by Sammy, we see Leonard actually sitting in the chair. I think there were other spots that pointed to Leonard acutally being Sammy, but that was the one that stood out the most. I actually had to pause the movie and go frame-to-frame to get a good look at Leonard in the wheel chair, but it's him.

I think one of us should watch the movie with the commentary on, and get the directors thoughts... then there won't be any questions. I think I'm going to do that tonight.