My take on the film and what happened:
Teddy was a cop, is a cop, just not what you would call a "play by the rules" kind of cop. I think in his own way he cared for Leonard, and thought what he was doing was for the best. The first time, when he helped Leonard find the real John G., it was purely for Leonard's benifit. But when he realized the knowledge didn't stay, as well as the depths to which Leonard would go for his own ends, he didn't feel the need to be so pure of intentions. More on that in a minute.
Leonard on the other hand was not at all what he made himself out to be. The first inkling I had of this was when he first explained his condition. Namely, how does one know they have Anterior-grade memory loss when they can't remember that fact? Unless a situation arose where doctors knew he was
going to have no short term memory there is no way he could have reasonably been able to explain it. For one reason or another Leonard had psycholgically-imposed anterior-grade memory loss, much like he made Sammy Jankis out to have.
When Teddy helped Leonard kill the real John G. the reason he thought it "would stick" is because Teddy knew that Leonard's problem was in his mind. And he was of course disappointed when it didn't happen. But I think something happened later, maybe before or after Leonard's wife died, where Teddy discovered that not only was Leonard locked into this fantasy delusion where he had no short term memory and his wife's killer/rapist still roamed the streets, Leonard was also capable of lying to himself in order to justify killing someone innocent, (
removing sections of the police reports, etc.) just to perpetuate his own delusion. If that wasn't enough for Teddy it was made painfully obvious how dedicated Leonard was when he took his delusion so far as to the point of overdosing his wife on Insulin. (
Replace the Sammy Jankis sequences with Leonard and his wife and you know what happened) I think Teddy found he could continue to help Leonard, prevent him from killing the innocent and make money for the both of them, all at once, by aiding Leonard in lying to himsel. As weird as it sounds, Teddy was trying to help Leonard, albeit in a twisted kind of way.
I think Teddy was simply waiting for something to sink in enough for Leonard to realize the truth about himself. Towards the end of the movie (
middle of the plot) he almost broke through, but Leonard's delusion was too strong then. And since he saw Teddy as a threat to this "perfect" life he had created for himself he lied to himself (
the himself that didn't know the truth) so he would kill Teddy. With Teddy out of the picture he could go on, forever searching for the man who killed his wife; but with Teddy in the picture he knew, eventually, he would wake up and realize he was simply an insurance investigator who apart from a brief period of mental illness had never done anything particularly exciting, returning to a life with no wife, no job, a brand as a long-time mentally ill person and millions in ill-gotten gains, not to mention the knowledge that his self-delusion had killed his wife. In his current state he was free from all of it, in fact free from everything. His responsibility for any of his actions expired every 8~10 minutes.
Finally I'd like to point out something interesting: Leonard is the liar of the story, not Teddy. Most of what Teddy says has a shred of truth to it, but what Leonard says is mostly fabrication. Except for a few times when he is truly desperate Teddy is more honest with Leonard than Leonard is with Teddy, much less himself.
So yes, I liked the movie, can you tell?
Facebook
Twitter