A complex system of Polaroids, scribbled notes, and tattoos are the only things that keep him on a quest for revenge against his wife's murderer, who he only knows as "John G".
In telling the story backward from the moment Leonard kills Teddy—which is initially framed as the revenge Leonard has been searching for—Nolan puts us in the protagonist's shoes. We're waking up in each scene with no context, seeing end results without the lead-up, answers to questions we never got in the first place.
As the story ravels itself back together, we learn that almost everything Leonard's been told is a lie, highlighting the dangers of trusting anyone when every person you meet is a stranger. It's a cold, calculated deception that mirrors the larger one being carried out by Teddy. For a year, Teddy—an undercover cop—has basically used Leonard as his own personal hitman, directing him toward countless "John G's" and then starting the process all over again.
In reality, these men had nothing to do with the death of Leonard's wife; Teddy is just using Leonard to bust up drug deals and skimming a little money from the transaction for himself. Leonard discovers Teddy's duplicity after murdering one last John G.
One of Leonard's first tattoos reads "remember Sammy Jankis", a man with a similar memory impairment. If Jimmy Grants knows about Sammy, that means he's met Leonard before, which means nothing about this interaction is as Leonard understands. Teddy arrives and tells the truth to a confused Leonard, but it doesn't matter. He won't remember it.
But he most important lie in Memento is the one Leonard tells himself. The film ends with Leonard arriving at a tattoo shop to ink Teddy's license plate number on to himself, setting himself on a course that ends with the murder scene that opens the film. His quality of life has been severely hampered after this event, and he can now only live a comprehendable life by tattooing notes on himself and taking pictures of things with a Polaroid camera. The movie is told in forward flashes of events that are to come that compensate for his unreliable memory, during which he has liaisons with various complex characters.
Leonard badly wants revenge for his wife's murder, but, as numerous characters explain, there may be little point if he won't remember it in order to provide closure for him. The movie veers between these future occurrences and a telephone conversation Leonard is having in his motel room in which he compares his current state to that of a client whose claim he once dealt with.
Point blank in the head a man shoots another. In flashbacks, each one earlier in time than what we've just seen, the two men's pasts unfold. Leonard, as a result of a blow to the head during an assault on his wife, has no short-term memory. He's looking for his wife's killer, compensating for his disability by taking Polaroids, annotating them and tattooing important facts on his body. We meet the loquacious Teddy and the seductive Natalie a barmaid who promises to help and we glimpse Leonard's wife through memories from before the assault.
Leonard also talks about Sammy Jankis, a man he knew with a similar condition. Has Leonard found the killer? Who's manipulating whom? Sign In. Edit Memento Crucially, an extremely brief shot late in the film shows Sammy sitting in a mental institution, and in a brief flash, he's replaced by Leonard. This will become relevant later. The final black-and-white sequence shows us that Leonard has been talking to Teddy on the phone, and that Teddy is, or at least claims to be, an undercover cop.
At the film's end, when Leonard kills Jimmy, the dying man whispers the name "Sammy" — a name he would only know if Leonard had told him. This throws Jimmy's guilt into serious question, and when Teddy arrives to tell Leonard that he's killed his wife's attacker, Leonard expresses doubts. This causes an impatient Teddy to blow a fuse, and when he does, he might come closer than anyone else in the whole movie to actually telling Leonard the truth of his situation.
Teddy tells Leonard that the two of them had tracked down and killed Leonard's wife attacker over a year ago, and even shows him a Polaroid of an ecstatic, blood-soaked Leonard pointing to a tattoo-free spot on his chest to prove it. He tells Leonard that, despite this, the memory refused to take, so, with plenty of shady John G. Heck, Teddy points out, even his real name is John G.
Further, Teddy asserts that Leonard's wife had actually survived the attack, and that the Sammy Jankis story was actually Leonard's story. Leonard had accidentally killed his wife with an overdose of insulin, and projected the story onto someone else to escape that trauma. It's worth pointing out that Teddy's revelation might be totally true, totally false, or a mixed bag.
Our only real clue as to its veracity comes from the web site of Christopher Nolan's brother Jonathan, who wrote the short story upon which Memento is based via Salon. According to him, Leonard is indeed an escapee from a mental asylum, meaning that, at the very least, Teddy's story could be true.
In the end, it matters little, because before Leonard can forget said story, he takes an action that will set him and Teddy on the deadly collision course that we see in the movie's opening scene. In Memento 's final moments, Leonard makes a decision as Teddy drives away. You think I just want another puzzle to solve Do I lie to myself to be happy?
In your case, Teddy, yes, I will.
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