10 Ambiguous Movie Endings That Had Ridiculously Simple Solutions
5. Memento
The Ambiguous Ending: What the hell happened?
Before he revolutionised Batman, Nolan was your typical indie upstart. His first film, Following, was just as perplexing as Memento, but as only seven people have ever seen that, lets look at what he did next. Famously, Mementos end is actually the beginning, showing Guy Pearces Leonard kill Teddy, giving us a film long grudge against this smiley character. At the narrative end (aka the chronological middle) we discover that Leonards quest to hunt down his wifes killer was actually resolved a year ago. With his memory stopping every five minutes or so, Leonard has just enough time to decide hed prefer to continue his hunt anyway and picks a new target; Teddy. But it still doesn't add up.
The Simple Solution: The ending spells it out for you.
No, wait. If you think about it for a minute it actually all makes sense. Leonards chosen a life of vengeance after forgetting the truth of his wifes death (he accidently killed her with insulin, something he holds onto with the Sammy Jenkis story). He does eventually find his attacker, after which Teddy starts using his friends quest to help him deal with various bad people. This is essentially what were seeing in the black and white portion of the film. The colour, backwards part then becomes pretty straightforward (if quite misleading). Due to the groundbreaking concept of the film, people failed to see this and instead thought they were missing something. As with all his later films, every clue you need to solve a Nolan film is right there on the screen.