Thriller Project (Part 1) | Research (Section 2) | Memento

Memento (2000)

Memento (Christopher Nolan) is a psychological thriller. The opening scene is played in reverse and gives a very weird and eery feeling to the film right from the start. Throughout the film, Memento is presented as two different sequences of scenes; one being black and white clips which is shown in chronological order, and the other being in colour but shown in reverse order. At the end of the film, these two sequences meet therefore completing the story. This type of filming and editing was very unique and brought a new idea to the filming industry. This short opening scene is very vague and gets the audience intrigued as to what is happening.

Clip Analysis

At the start of Memento, the camera shows a polaroid photograph of a dead man, being held in a persons hand. As the scene continues, the polaroid photo returns to its un-developed state and then returns to the camera which had just taken the picture. The camera pans upwards from the man putting away the camera to his face which has some blood and cuts on. The camera then cuts to blood running back from where it came from. It then cuts again to an empty bullet shell on the floor. By now the audience can have guessed that this man shot the other man since he was taking a picture of the body and there was an empty bullet shell on the floor. You can figure that he isn't a cop or an investigator by the way the blood is returning to the body, it shows that the man must have died just moments before. The scene then speeds up as the man crouches down and holds his gun up. There is then an interesting shot from behind the man, looking down onto the dead body. The glasses that are on the floor fly back onto the dead man's face as he un-naturally floats up. The camera then cuts to the bullet shell going back into the gun and the gun firing with a loud noise. It then cuts back to the behind the back shot as the dead man comes back alive and screams.

Credits

The opening credits are placed on top of the video towards the start when the man is looking at the picture. The scene carries on with the polaroid photo gradually fading and the titles are shown in a blue coloured font.

Editing

Having the camera static for most of the introduction creates a lot of tension as the viewer cannot see anything else in the surrounding scene and therefore can become nervous or unsure as to what could be happening. It keeps them very much in the dark about everything that is happening in the scene and let's them try to guess what is going to happen.

Sound

The music for this sequence is slow dramatic music that helps to build up tension within the scene. It makes the audience inquisitive and intrigued as to what is happening in the scene. The sound plays an important part in establishing the thriller genre; the slow building music creates an atmosphere of tension.