Analysing the opening sequence of ‘Momento’

Today we watched the opening sequence of ‘Momento’; it was made in 2002 and had Guy Pears as the main actor and Christopher Nolan as the director. We looked at all the different areas including: the titles, shots, camera movement, generic themes, sound and mise-en-scene. The titles slowly faded in an out and the cold blue colour of the font gives a cold, eary effect. There were many different shots including a p.o.v shot, close ups, worms eye view which was used to look at specific objects, use of tilt shots and mixtures of high and low angle shots. The high shot looked over the main actors shoulder to look down on the man facing him on his knees. This showed a sense of authority, and showed which characters were in control. They also used voyeuristic shots to show a type of big brother watching you type of thing. They used different movements of the camera including tilt shots to show the blood drawing back up the wall, this was a type of retrograde effect as the blood crawled down the wall using a tilt shot then drew back up the wall. The generic themes used were murder and flash backs. All of the sound in the first three minutes was non-digetic. The mise-en-scene which includes everything in the scene used a dark setting, neutral coloured clothes, a natural setting of which were all neutral colours. The wore formal clothes which were of a neutral colour scheme so the characters did not stand out from the setting and detract any attention from the story line. The simplicity to the set gives us a feel as the viewer that there is more to the story than meets they eye. The opening sequence of ‘Momento’ was very successful and carefully used all different aspects of a film to create an opening of a thriller type genre. The flashbacks were most effective and created a greater sense of mystery.