5. The Opening Scene Isnt As Reversed As You Think
One of Mementos most memorable scenes is its opening sequence. The film appears to be playing backwards, as a polaroid picture fades away and retreats back into a camera. We then see a blood flow back towards a corpse, a bullet jump back into Leonards gun and Teddys glasses return to his face. Teddy returns to life, begins to stand up and starts yelling. As you may not know, this has been cited as the most difficult scene to film. And its not quite as backwards as you think. Although many wouldnt notice the difference, all the sound effects except Teddy shouting No! are actually played normally despite the action running backwards. Some of the action is shot forwards, too. For example, a close-up shot of bullets shell casing sliding along the floor was originally created by a crew member getting on his hands and knees and blowing the casing into the cameras field of vision, to create the elusion of it sliding backwards back towards the gun it came from. It kept slipping out of view, though, causing some confusion on the set. In the confusion, the camera was rigged to shoot backwards, so Nolan ended up with a shot of a casing being sucked slowly away form a gun, rather than blown back towards from it. What youve seen in the final film is the result of a bit of editing trickery its essentially a reversal of a forward-running practical effect that was designed to appear as a reversal but was accidentally shot backwards. Confused? Me too.
