The third opening I'd be working on analysing is a film from 2000 called Memento. Going into this one, it's a little bit simple compared to the others in terms of things to talk about but it's not any less effective. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhlTXyBxPM
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The clips starts with a black screen, where credits fade on and off it for about thirty seconds without any change to the black screen. It allows a rather slow non-diegetic soundtrack to build it's way in but apart from that, it doesn't show you much. This is so the credits doesn't divert from the rest of the scene and adds build-up too. It allows for enough of the music to hit a rather high point by the time the background changes, a slow but effective payoff that a mystery film will use commonly to have a lighter start.
As the title fades on, the colour of it changes and it also gives an opportunity for the black background to crossfade with a close-up of a photo being held. Not only does this editing allow for a transition that feels relatively natural, but the changing of the text colour foreshadows the current scene. Even a slight premonition the viewer can get for something coming up from a clip is common of the mystery genre and it hints at the fact the audience need to pay attention and work things out for themselves. The photo is of a murder scene, as evidenced by the body and blood. This hints at the sub-genre of murder-mystery being prominent throughout the film, even from the beginning. This contrasts the pace with how quick the murder is being introduced with how slow the opening is.
The foreshadowing I just mentioned becomes apparent now with the same shot moved on a bit. The shot lasts a minute and a quarter with no edits apparent at the start. As a mystery film, it can be very subtle with the information it gives you and doesn't need to be explicit with it. The audience is expected to be able to work out things for themselves because it allows them to become more engrossed with what's going on in the plot. In terms of what's happening, we see the photo being shaken and it becomes less clear. 
This doesn't make apparent sense at first, due to the nature of the photograph meaning that shaking it should be clearer. From an intellectual stand point, it seems like it was intended to confuse the reader but it can also serve as evidence. This contrasts ideas portrayed by Se7en with it's less in your face style and it's more unexplainable singular show. The lack of editing gives more time for the viewer to try and piece it together, giving them more of an easy start.
A tilt close-up then follows the photograph where it is put into a camera, it flashes indicating a photo has been taken, the camera is lowered and a man looks at what the photo was taken of. Those first two actions of this shot don't make sense logically unless you reverse the order of the entire scene so far. Man looks at murder, takes picture of it, takes it out of the camera and shakes it until it becomes clear. The entirety of this sequence is now clearly reversed and if you didn't pick it up from the picture clarity, this is your first indication of how the film is going to hide the mystery and make you think. Reversing the order of events shows you what has happened but not why they were caused, it makes you feel more like a witness at first before showing you exactly what made it like this. As such, you can make preliminary assumptions about the mystery from any evidence you see without being told who did it immediately. However, as the shot moves to his face, we do see blood on him. This means he's not a witness to the crime but rather an eye-witness. However, the fact he isn't reacting to potentially any other people in the room means he's the only one alive, not surprised by what he's seen, meaning he's likely the killer. This makes things interesting, as with most murder-mysteries we're meant to try and work out who's the killer, yet we're practically told in the first scene (made even more blatant in a second). As such, we realize this is where the films second genre comes in, psychological thriller. With the reversed shots and no real sense of a mystery to go on, we're left with a killer and I believe the mystery aspect comes from understanding this characters true nature. The mystery genre likes to combine with not only its various sub-genres but also other genres entirely, allowing its mystery to contain varied elements.
Blood is shown retracting in a extreme close-up tilted on its side followed by a close up of a single shell of a bullet on the ground. From this, a viewer can interpret that the murder is recent due to the reversed flow of blood and that the murder weapon was a pistol. We assume pistol due to there only being a lone shell on the ground. The use of these close-ups allows the audience to focus on a single piece of evidence without getting an information overload. However, the tilted shot can still make the viewer disorientated and unable to realize what the blood is at first as it appears to them that it's flowing upwards. Likewise, if the shot was in reverse, in chronological order, the blood would be flowing downwards simulating blood dripping, a common sight on a murder first being discovered, showing that the tilted shot has two reasons for existing. There's a couple similar shots after: a close-up of a bullet shell and bloody glasses with blood dripping on the walls. While not changed in anyway like the tilt, they provide vital evidence for the viewers to get an idea of what's happened, letting them piece together the murder for themselves before it's shown. The next shot contains a close-up of the back of the victims head and everything on the floor next to it. At this point, if the viewer hadn't figured it out this is where they would due to how blatantly explicit it is.
In the next shot, a pistol is seen flying into the hands of the killer and it tracks him as he crouches down, lining up the gun. Over the next couple of shots, the bullet and glasses are seen flying before the victims head comes up, the gun fires, the bloods gone and the victim screams. As you may be able to tell the sequence is reversed and the actual order of events are the man shoots the victim, the shell flies out, the glasses go to the floor, he stands up and throws the gun down. As the viewers reward for learning about the mystery, the genre trope allows for them to see how it all went down. However, it keeps to the clips theme of being in reverse and that makes the shot seem much cooler as it looks like he has something similar to the force when the gun seemingly flies into his hand. While he clearly doesn't have powers like this, it makes the audience question what this character can do. If he's able to kill a man in cold blood, what else is he willing to do? Does he have something mentally strange with him? Questions that won't be answered but the viewer yearns for them to be and they will be carried throughout the film. Despite one mystery having been solved, this tells the viewer that there is many more that need to be answered, setting up the premise for the entire movie. Memento's opening carries the idea of hiding things in plain sight, but by a method very Brechtian, it was out of order and required some effort to be figured out. Key details were there, some were told but some were told oddly. However, the way it was able to hold a shot for 75 seconds shows that it was willing to go at it's own pace and that this would be the easy part.
