The upside of raindrops

I caught The Upside of Anger a few nights ago, and I know this is an absolutely trivial thing to mention, but something about the opening scene caught my eye and tainted my view of everything that followed.

The film begins at a funeral that takes place on a rainy day, with a crane shot coming towards the circle of people sitting and standing around the gravesite. Then we get a series of close-ups and/or medium shots. And then we get a crane shot that seems to be pulling back … except, um, wait a minute, are those raindrops moving up the umbrellas? I found myself staring at one umbrella after another to see if the pattern repeated itself, and it did. What’s more, I think I even noticed the priest turning back a page.

So basically, they just took the earlier crane shot (or one like it) and rolled it backwards. Were they hoping we wouldn’t notice, I wonder? Or was it a very subtle way of indicating that the rest of the film would be one giant flashback…?