Rewatching Memento now vs early 2000s hits completely different in the context of our hyperpolarized culture

I randomly started thinking about Memento recently, hadn't seen it since it came out in the early 2000s. Back then I was so focused on the backwards narrative structure /gimmick, but in 2025 after everything society has gone through, especially culturally in the US, in the past 10-15 years I realized Memento is like a premonition of our entire polarizing cultural climate today.

Some examples:

Leonard can’t form new memories, so he literally builds his reality out of:

• Polaroids
• Sharpie notes
• Tattoos of “facts” he chooses to trust after each "reset" and not question later

This feels similar to how people build their political identities now. We don’t sit with nuance anymore or deep, probing critical thinking. We grab a screenshot, a headline, a tweet, a TikTok clip, and treat it like it’s the whole truth. Just little ideological Polaroids we carry around like proof. You hear people reference these "tattoos" in debate. (e.g. have you seen the clip of Don Lemon on CNN trying to explain how women reach their prime in their 20s, 30s, and sometimes 40s citing Google as his evidence?)

Leonard, the movie's protagonist, says:

“We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are.”

Modern culture takes that literally. Instead of mirrors, we have algorithms and influencers constantly reflecting back the version of ourselves we already want to believe in. And if something contradicts that? We just forget it. On purpose.

What's really prescient is realizing Leonard is basically choosing his own reality. He keeps the “facts” that keep him emotionally stable and discards anything that threatens the story he needs to survive. That’s the real twist: he doesn’t actually want the truth because he wants certainty.

This feels like american politics now.

Structurally, the movie even mirrors how discourse works. You don’t move from facts –> conclusion. You start with the conclusion (my side = good) and work backwards to grab whatever fragments support it. Same inverted logic as the film itself.

And then there’s the line that feels like it was written in 2025:

“You don’t want the truth. You make up your own truth.”

Leonard and an entire culture built on curated memory, selective evidence, and outsourced thinking.

By the end of the movie, Leonard isn’t free – he’s the easiest person in the world to manipulate. And the scariest part is that he thinks he’s thinking for himself the entire time.

Feels like Nolan made a movie about humans and social media before social media even gained momentum. This could have a current film about current times.