The credits of the film start with the name of the film company, followed by the film title; Memento and then the actors’ names. This is layered over the top of the start of the film which shows a close-up shot of a man’s hand holding a Polaroid photo in which we can see a dead body with blood spattered on the walls. This immediately tells us that a murder or killing is going to be a pivotal element of the film. The shot remains fixed on the photograph and we gradually see the photo fading to white. We see the hand shaking the photograph and it gradually fading more quickly back to white, it is at this point where the audience starts to realise that the footage has been reversed. The footage being shown in reverse tells us that something has already happened and we are going back to before it to find out what happens, for example it could be starting at the end of the film and then cutting back to earlier on in the narrative.
The credits end once the photo has gone completely blank, then we see the photo going back into the camera, a close-up of the man taking the photograph with the camera followed by a close-up of the man’s face. In this short sequence the audience has been shown lots of things in quick succession, but with the film being reversed we have to piece it all together to try and make sense of it. In this chain of shots we are shown a photo of a dead man, this makes the viewer question who he is, why has he been killed and who killed him? Then we see the person who has taken the photograph and the audience is speculating whether he is the killer.
After this there is an extreme close-up shot of blood running back up the wall, this places the ‘photographer’ at the scene of the killing. Subsequently we see more close-ups of a bullet and another of a pair of glasses strewn on the floor. The audience now begin to build up a picture of the crime scene and with every shot the viewers gain more understanding of what has happened. For example the inverted footage continues to show a gun travelling back into the man’s hand and the bullet casing flying back into the gun and the dead man rises back up before we see the shooting.
The shot of the man just after being shot is a high angle shot, point- of-view shot looking down the barrel of the gun which is pointed towards the victim- this makes the victim look minor and powerless to the killer. This is then followed by a low angle shot of the killer this, similarly to the high angle shot of the victim gives the killer dominance and supremacy.
This then cuts sharply to a black screen which then fades to an extreme close-up of a man’s mouth, the shot then moves upwards to show his nose and eyes. The audience can now recognise the face as that of the killer. A greyscale filter is used on this shot; this coupled with the fade in effect gives us the impression that we are seeing a flashback or some time before he killed the man we saw earlier. A non-diegetic voice-over is used in this shot; this starts to give the audience a narrative and further supports the feeling of it being a flashback as the voice-over is presented as his thoughts.
To conclude, the opening of memento fulfils many expectations of an opening of a thriller film. It gives a glimpse of the genre of the film by showing the killing; it shows the credits and name of the film along with the actors and producers. It presents the key themes that will form the storyline, sets the scene and shows us the main protagonist. However, it still leaves us virtually uncertain as to what will happen in the rest of the film.
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