On the face of it, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) is a pretty straight-forward hero: he's suffering with amnesia as he tries to figure out exactly who caused his wife's (Jorja Fox) death. It's a Christopher Nolan movie, though, so there's a lot more to it than that. At the end of the film, it's revealed that Leonard's wife survived the initial assault, but he accidentally caused his own wife's death due to his amnesia (giving her repeated insulin injections on the same day, causing an overdose). More disturbingly, after Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) informs him of this, Leonard decides to set Teddy up as his wife's killer, taking full advantage of his amnesia to construct a false narrative for himself, because it gives his life purpose and allows him to ignore the truth. Does a hero's journey get much more disturbing than that? Lenny's quest initially seems unambiguously heroic, but as he reconfigures his own hero narrative in his mind, his quest takes on a disturbing darkness, and so he only truly exists as a hero in his own mind. To everyone else, he's a sympathetic figure for sure, but in the end, also a highly questionable one.
Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes).
General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.
