Memento (Nolan, 2000, US)

When the Memento opening sequence starts the first 10 seconds are filled with silence. The one word that appears is the production company name. Quietly soft orchestral music begins to play, making the audience feel sorrowful and a little uneasy. The musical score is slow and drags on for 29 more seconds until the title of the film appears. The titles are blue against a black background, again making the audience feel sorrowful and depressed. This links with the music, creating a cold atmosphere and the audience begin to question ‘what has happened to make the music so depressing?’

The first shot we see is a hand holding a photo of a dead person; the audience immediately thinks ‘what has happened?’ This is very abrupt, going from a black screen to a photo of a dead person, and this sets a macabre atmosphere. The shot is a close up and we see the person holding the photo has a tattoo on their hand, making the audience ask more questions. The musical score is still the same, making the viewer think that maybe this man is sorrowful for what he is seeing.

As the clip goes on the character begins to shake the picture and it begins to deteriorate, this could symbolise that the character wishes this memory could ‘deteriorate’ from his memory, making the audience feel as though the character could have done this. A few moments later we see the blank piece of paper go into the camera, meaning this camera is a Polaroid, this means that the clip we have been seeing is in fact rewinding. The previous clip is longest clip, this could mean the film wants us to build up tension and constantly ask questions.

The characters face is obscured, which tells us that he is hiding from what he is seeing and may feel ashamed or sorrowful. We assume that he is an investigator as he is taking a picture of a crime scene/murder. We finally see the characters face and he is sweating, this could show he is nervous or he has just been in a fight, further emphasised from the cut on his face.

From here on the shots begin to speed up, telling the audience that we are about to discover something interesting. The next shot is an extreme close up of blood flowing then a bullet. This instantly lets the audience know that this death has happened very recently, we put the evidence together and thanks to the continuity editing we work out that the male character must have done it. The shots then speed in up and we see a gun fly into his hand, telling us that he committed the murder. The musical score has stopped and the dead man comes back to life but then at the very end the clip is playing in normal, this could show that the character wishes he didn’t commit the murder but even if he turned back time then he would have killed him again. We never see the mans face as the film doesn’t want to reveal that yet.