Memento Opening Analysis

Memento is an American neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his younger brother Jonathan's short story "Memento Mori'' released in 2000. Staring Guy Pearce and Stephen Tobolowsky Memento is about a man, suffering from short-term memory loss, who uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife. What makes this film especially interesting is that it is composed of two separate story lines one moving forward and the other moving backwards slowly revealing more each time. An amazing film, most impressive for me is the editing which must have been hell.

New market production, the titles appear on the screen dramatic black background bold blue font simplistic. Memento appears on screen spaced out lettering and then the background fades out to a close shot of a hand holding a Polaroid of a blood splattered tilled corner. More titles classical sombre music, typical of thriller reminds me of David Lynch music in twin peaks, screen zooms out very slightly that it pretty much unnoticeable as the man shakes the Polaroid picture only to reveal it becoming more faded and an unclear tattoo can be seen on the mans hand. He is taking breaks and continually shaking it until it fades completely. The camera changes to the torso of the man wearing a suit and holding the poloroid in his left hand, the camera follows his hands as one gives the other the poloroid and then moves back up as it put it back into the camera. It's sucked into the machine and he pressed the flash and it takes with an overly emphasized click as it moves up to a close shot of a mans face with a sweat and blood streaked face.

Changes to a shot of the same man putting a gun in his pocket. This distorted way of shooting him is very unnerving to the audience using the continuity of the same kind of close shot but of small areas of the man. It returns back to the mans face he is gazing down at something unseen, panting. The camera

finally changes from the man to a disturbingly beautiful upside down shot of blood trickling down the floor backwards. It changes to a single bullet lying calmly on the floor before becoming upturned blood splattered glasses on a concrete dirty ground. Most disturbing of all is next a man lying face down on the floor with blood splattered around but not on him and supposedly his glasses near him. The Camera leaps back to the man in the beginning it's changed to a mid shot, he's in a dark room with a window whose bright light is obscured by a cloth sheet as a gun flies across the screen the mans simultaneously puts out his arm and catches it before knelling down the camera follows. Again we change to the bullet and the glasses but this time like the gun there are seemingly dragged by an invisible force bullet into gun and glasses onto the head of the supposedly dead body. Almost immediately as the bullet is in the gun. You hear a deafeningly loud gun shot contrasting to the calm eerie music before almost in between shots as it changes to a low mid shot of the first man gun in hand pointing down. The camera uses P.O.V. and shows what he is the man he is looking at for no more than a second he is twisting upwards a fraction of a yell and then the scene cuts.

The thing about Memento that make it good is that we are all Leonards. we bend truth and selectively take abstract mental notes and try to make ourselves believe that we are persons that we convinced ourselves we were in the first place. - Youtube user