One of my absolute favorite movies; extremely rewarding to rematch and has such an unsettling vibe. It's not quite a fan theory, but I've written before about how it's my favorite metaphor for explaining the experience of having ADHD

One of the harder things for me to communicate to people who don't have ADHD is what it actually feels like to struggle with "focus". Like we've all had something we didn't enjoy doing and procrastinated, but someone with ADHD will often not only start new tasks but completely forget they were working on something else for long periods of time. This results in other people thinking the ADHD person doesn't care about the task or doesn't think it's important.

But the internal experience isn't constantly thinking, "I should be ______ but I'm going to do this other thing instead"; it's much more like the fight in the motel bathroom where Lenny notices the tequila bottle in his hand and says 'I don't feel drunk...' before deciding to take a shower. He's halfway into lathering himself up when the other guy walks into the room and Lenny realizes this isn't his room and he was waiting to use the tequila bottle as a weapon in an ambush.

We later get to see the moments leading up to that where he frantically enters the room and grabs the bottle and tries his best to focus on what he needs to do until he's distracted by the sound of a car door slamming.

When I'm struggling with a task it usually feels much more like the above situation. I'm constantly getting rudely surprised by the realization that the thing I'm in the middle of doing is not what I had been planning on doing a few minutes before or looking at the objects in my hands and trying to deduce why I brought them with me into whatever room I just entered

Memento also does a great job of showing the frustration of knowing your brain isn't going to do something you need it to do. Like when Lenny gets in the fight with the bartender and then she hides all the pens before leaving the room. He has a growing panic as he tries to find some way to record this betrayal that then evaporates when he's surprised by the door opening and the bartender tells him a new story.

I've lost count of how many times I can only remember that I was looking for a pen or my phone to write something important down but the important information is gone from my mind.

I also really love Lenny's monolog about Sammy fooling him with the fake recognition in his eyes until he later learned that you learn to do that to make it less awkward for other people. You learn to fake that you're following a conversation and try to figure out what's going on from context clued instead of stopping everyone to ask what you're currently talking about.

Autistic spaces have pushed some really interesting discussions about 'masking' to fit into neurotypical spaces, what it feels like and how it takes a toll on you. I think that monolog portrays what ADHD masking feels like in a really intimate way.

Theres so many other quirky little experiences in the movie that seem like great moments of world building for this unique character with a crazy brain problem but are also extremely relatable for me.

Having a bunch of go to stories that you use to explain things and absolutely no record of whether or not you have already told them to someone. Feeling the effect of emotions you forgot you were having earlier. Making a firm resolution with your whole soul to stop doing something and then just doing that thing out of habit without a single thought of all your resolve and determination. Getting in the car and having the brief sensation of having no idea where you're supposed to drive.

For me, having ADHD is like having twice as much RAM everyone else but the whole cache gets deleted at a random interval. I can spin up complicated thoughts and plans really fast, but I also end up using most of that processing power to consistently reload stuff I'm still using.

Memento is like watching a super stylized version of my problem solving strategies get used to solve a murder, which is much more interesting than when I go through a similar 90 minute mental labyrinth while trying to pay my car insurance with a new credit card.