Originally published at Audiences Everywhere on 11/4/14
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It’s been said that across his or her career, a writer is only telling one story. They deceive readers into thinking it’s a new tale, by dressing it up in different ways through changing the characters, structure, genre, and events. But the essence of those stories, the way the writer views people and the world, remains relatively unchanged. While I’m not convinced this is entirely true, I think there is truth in this notion and what can be said of writers can also apply to directors.
Nolan has offered many visions to us, presented in such a manner that even his adaptations carry the weight of being “A Christopher Nolan Film”. And these visions have elicited a variety of emotions from audiences, all coming from a variety of thematic notions. But if we were to look closer, perhaps we’d find that the themes in his different films are not independent, and what we’re watching is Nolan striving to find the perfect tapestry on which to display the essence of his one story.
*Spoiler Warnings Apply For All Entries
Bonus: Doodlebug (1997)
Themes: In its brief runtime, Doodlebug explores the very literal nature of self-destruction. This theme emerges in many of the features in Nolan’s career. Most often it’s the figurative form of self-destruction by willful ignorance, but sometimes it’s in the more literal sense (The Prestige).
Impact: The short’s use of a Twilight Zone-esque twist would become one of Nolan’s signatures. The actor in the short, Jeremy Theobald, would go on to star and produce Nolan’s first feature. Even within its small space and budget, Doodlebug displays Nolan’s penchant grappling with large ideas and memorable visual techniques.
- Following (1998)
Themes: Nolan explores the dangers and attraction of voyeurism in his neo-noir, Following. Given that filmmaking and audience membership is a type of voyeurism, Nolan allows us to be followers as well, but he makes our peeping a bit harder through the incorporation of flashbacks. While the present-tense story does most of the plot work, it is the flashbacks that do most of the character exploration and highlight the mentor-apprentice relationship between the burglar Cobb and The Young Man.
“Everyone has a box,” Cobb tells The Young Man early in the film. It is this idea of private, personal boxes containing the essence of a person (mementos) that come into play over and over again throughout Nolan’s career. Sometimes these boxes are physical, and other times they are mental. The flashbacks are these little boxes for the film, giving us glimpses into the characters, the same way that Cobb and The Young Man are getting glimpses of people by breaking into their apartments (the boxes in which they live). But these glimpses, as we discover don’t always have to be entirely honest or fixed.
We never get a look at Cobb’s box, he’s entirely a mystery aside from how he presents himself. We may think we know The Blonde because the characters spend a lot of time in her personal space and with her belongings. But she’s not completely who she presents herself to be and once she’s revealed, we see that her essence is distorted, but the objects and emotions that make up her box remain the same. And, our Young Man completely reinvents himself once Cobb tells him that his box is more or less empty, that he is simply playing at giving himself an identity. So the Young Man becomes more like Cobb in appearance, but not in terms of intelligence or motive. The Young Man can only see the box for its physical materials and not for what those objects represent or really say about a person (we first get a hint at this when upon breaking into an apartment for the first time, he is concerned with stealing the expense stuff—the things that seem valuable but don’t really mean anything to the owner). And because of his blind voyeurism, The Young Man is doomed to fail. Following allows us to play witness to a crime by deception, a feat that Nolan would make progressively complicated as his career continues.
Impact: Beyond being his first feature, Following was also Nolan’s first venture in non-linear storytelling that would become one of the defining traits of his career. The use of a twist ending, the mentor-apprentice relationship, and the “box” would be used again in his later films. While it is his lowest-grossing film, Following has the distinction of being the only Nolan film to be released on Criterion. And one final fun fact: the burglar and primary antagonist, Cobb, would later share his name and profession with the lead protagonist in Inception.
2. Memento (2000)
Themes: Memory is a fickle thing, difficult to rely on for much accuracy. It’s even more difficult for Lenny in Memento. Memory, while inaccurate, allows us to heal. By remembering something, we can move past it. But because of Lenny’s condition, he is unable to move past the death of his wife, therefore it remains a fresh wound in his mind. The short story, “Memento Mori” by Jonathan Nolan, upon which the film is based, begins with a quote by Herman Melville: “What like a bullet can undeceive.” The quote is taken from Melville’s Civil War poem “Shiloh-A Requiem.” In theory, nothing tells the truth quite like death; it is the great judicial leveler and as time passes the bodies are only bodies, no longer host to our ideas of morality and sides. Because Lenny can’t move past his wife’s murder, he can’t stop looking for a villain, he can’t let the bodies lie. And by creating a puzzle for himself, he can allow his bullet to tell him the truth he wants to be told.
“I’d rather be mistaken for a dead guy than a killer,” Lenny says. The truth is that he’s both. During the Renaissance, mementos were skulls kept around so that people could remember their mortality. Only later were mementos keepsakes attached to a certain moment or idea. In the short story, Lenny buys himself a bell as a joke because centuries ago bells were hung over graves so if a person was buried alive they’d be heard digging their way up. We see the bell in the form of a ringing phone in Memento, which provides Lenny with information and a puzzle to solve in order to bring him back to life. Lenny is unable to remember his mortality, unable and unwilling to recognize he’s wasting his life on finding a killer that’s already been found. This in turn makes Lenny a murderer, and worse yet, a serial-killer of the most untraditional nature. The great tragedy of Memento is that Lenny is forever a snake chasing his own tail, like the depiction of Ouroboros, because he’d rather deny evidence for momentary happiness.
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Impact: Memento put Nolan on the radar as being one of the most original young filmmakers in the industry. It also cemented his brother, Jonathan “Jonah” Nolan’s status as a screenwriter. Wally Pfister’s work as Nolan’s cinematographer would continue though The Dark Knight Rises. With this film, Nolan plays around with story structure more than any other. Memento continues the themes of reinvention, and the “box” (in this case being Leonard’s file), and first explores the cost of obsession.
You can read Jonathan Nolan’s “Memento Mori” here.
- Insomnia (2002)
Themes: Insomnia, the only Nolan film that he did not receive a writing credit for and his only remake, offers a little less in terms of repeated themes. The central question Detective Dormer faces is whether or not the ends justify the means (this would become one of the foundations of The Dark Knight Trilogy). Like Lenny in Memento, Dormer denies and withholds evidence for a chance at happiness. But unlike Lenny, he is unable to live with it. And so it is his guilt that prevents him from sleeping, and his guilt that eventually undoes him. While Insomnia is far more of a traditional narrative, it makes an interesting foil to Memento in its exploration of a character who does in fact come to terms with his own mortality and redeems himself.
“You don’t get to pick when you tell the truth,” the murderer Finch tells Dormer during one of their confrontations. And yet, Nolan’s entire filmography is filled with characters who prove this notion false. Nolan himself, a master of the sleight of hand, uses each one of his films to choose when he wants to deliver the truth (if he wants to deliver it at all). There is only one other film in Nolan’s filmography that presents Finch’s words as truth: Inception.
Impact: Insomnia proved that Nolan could handle a studio-film and work with big-name Hollywood actors. The flashbacks here are less pronounced, but it’s clear Nolan is still interested in playing with structure. It is also the last small-scale film Nolan worked on before his move into grander ideas and larger budgets in which to explore them.
- Batman Begins (2005)
Themes: Nolan’s first Batman entry takes a more grounded approach to superheroes by exploring the icon through the lens of contemporary America. The film uses the status of legends, and fear to explore terrorism and counter-terrorism methods. Both Bruce Wayne and Ra’s al Ghul commit themselves to becoming more than simply men (the mentor-apprentice theme from Followingresurfaces). Both are obsessed with reinventing themselves in order to achieve their goals, goals that can only be accomplished by using fear as a weapon. They very much represent America and the Middle-East in the wake of 9/11, or more specifically the U.S. military and Al-Qaeda (both operating on principles that transcend individuals). Wayne’s journey to becoming Batman relies on his ability to harness his own fears (bats, but also the thought that he is responsible for his parents’ deaths) in order to turn himself into a deterrent for criminals and corruption. Ra’s also seeks to root out crime and corruption, but his methods involve the total destruction of Gotham and the death of everyone in it so the city can restart itself (“what like a bullet can undeceive”). Where Wayne wants to build, al Ghul seeks to tear down.
The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time,” al Ghul tells Wayne. The use of fear is in order to enact change (the goal of every war). And as two opposing forces using the same weapon, neither al Ghul nor Wayne can fully ensure the change they want to see. Neither can fully bring the city back to harmony. The result is a stalemate between the two powers. Ra’s al Ghul’s efforts end up creating a savior for the city in the Batman, and Wayne’s efforts to defeat Ra’s result in the partial destruction of Gotham. While it seems Batman triumphs, it is impossible to ignore the destruction of the Narrows and the train meant to connect all of Gotham. What seems like a typical Hollywood blockbuster ending is instead a somber statement about the effect of war on the impoverished and the inability to maintain a connection between classes. And as Gordon implies at the film’s end, Batman’s existence can only lead to an escalation of those problems.
Impact: Nolan successfully reignited the Batman franchise and led to “reboot” becoming the hottest phrase in Hollywood. The film also began Nolan’s long-term working relationship with composer Hans Zimmer. With Batman Begins, Nolan cemented his place within the geek-crowd and began his own legend outside of the indie and dramatic circuit.
5. The Prestige (2006)
Themes: The Prestige furthers Batman Begins’ theme of committing oneself to an ideal in the service of creating a legend. In this case that ideal is stage magic and the legend is providing audiences with a once and a lifetime chance to see something they’ve never seen before. The film is as much about the obsessive rivalry between Angier and Borden as it is Nolan’s own thoughts about filmmaking (he is after all, a director who offers very little in terms of commentary and behind the scenes features for his films in order to preserve the magic). Because of the film’s commentary
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on filmmaking, the movie is as much about spectacle as it is science. Perhaps taking a cue from Arthur C. Clarke’s idea that “magic’s just science we don’t understand yet,” The Prestige explores that fine line and is perhaps Nolan’s not so subtle suggestion that audiences not try too hard to understand the tricks of movie magic lest we come to find it’s far simpler than we ever imagined. This is the problem Angier faces in the film; desperate to find out the secret to Borden’s “Transported Man” act, he comes up with a far more complicated copy that damns him in the process (the meta argument for practical effects versus extensive CGI).
“The sacrifice…that’s the price of a trick,” Borden claims. And it is sacrifice for their art that defines the two rivals. Perhaps more than any of Nolan’s films, it is difficult to define who the protagonist and antagonist are. Both men do terrible things for their obsession, and to return to the theme of Following, both men keep these things within “boxes.” Borden’s box is himself, the container in which he must place his identity. As two men pretending to be one, he must sacrifice his desires and individual traits for the success of the trick. Angier’s box is more literal, being the water tanks where he keeps the drowned copies of himself. Both men’s containment of their identities are furthered by the men’s constant reinvention of themselves and name-changing. The Presitge is a game of masks, the clashing of two ideologies that lead to inevitable chaos. This game would be taken even further in Nolan’s subsequent films.
Impact: The Prestige is Nolan’s first dive into science-fiction of the non-comic book kind, and while it is based off of a pre-existing novel, it still feels very much tied to Nolan’s mind and interests. The structure involves nesting through the use of diary entries which makes the misdirection all the more successful because the structure is used as a distraction. The Prestige allowed Nolan to emerge as a true showman.
- The Dark Knight (2008)
Themes: Nolan’s follow-up to Batman Begins takes the idea of post 9/11 America further in the exploration of chaos and duality. The film picks up on Gordon’s fears of escalation by introducing The Joker, a much more frightening look at terrorism than Ra’s al Ghul because Joker has no motive or history. He’s the enemy that can’t be understood, the box that can’t be unlocked (he’s a homegrown terrorist, a twisted product of his surroundings). This too becomes Batman’s personal struggle as his legend increases. By sacrificing his personal life, he risks becoming locked in his identity as Batman, something that can only be understood as a reactionary product of his surroundings. In Batman Begins, Bruce told Rachel “it’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” In The Dark Knight, what Bruce does is put to the test as he struggles to uphold his code not to kill in the wake of the destruction The Joker leaves behind. His fight then is against loosing himself to the “freak” the Batman represents and becoming a singular entity like The Joker. This mirrors America’s own struggle with losing itself to the war in Middle-East, becoming an instigator instead of a deterrent. This duality also holds true for Harvey Dent, but unlike Bruce he loses himself in the process.
“You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time,” Harvey tells Batman. The Dark Knight raises the question of whether people can actually be moral examples when their surroundings are anything but. And while Joker’s ideas on morality are partially proved wrong by his social experiment with the ferries, he still manages to corrupt Harvey Dent. The film offers the idea that the people who make up society can in fact be decent and rise above, but that politicians and the people we need to be the face of our values cannot be when they are truly put to the test. Yet, still they must be held up because society would collapse otherwise. Taking thematic cues from Memento and Insomnia, The Dark Knight offers a rationalization for ignoring and withholding evidence in order to shape the world and the happiness of society. But as Nolan would later explore, there is a cost to this.
Impact: The Dark Knight’s influence is still stamped across many films that followed in its wake. Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, and the film’s sound editing won the film two Oscars and the controversy over the lack of a Best Picture nomination led to the Academy increasing the number of Best Picture nominees to 10. Nolan successfully merged his independent sensibilities, expansive ideas with the comic book adaptation zeitgeist to create the most memorable pop-culture phenomenon of the decade. And one final fun fact: this is Nolan’s only linear film.
- Inception (2010)
Themes: A grand-heist film that takes places inside levels of dreams, at its heart Inception is about a man’s journey to return to his children. The children themselves are not important, they are MacGuffins. Rather the children are used to give a physical power to Cobb’s obsession with returning home. Cobb’s journey home is a journey towards control. His wife Mal’s death was out of his control because the idea that he planted in her brain, that their world was not real, grew beyond his ability to handle. Similar to The Prestige, Inception deals with a science that can’t be fully understood, and yet is sought to be fully grasped regardless. While the film deals with dreams and takes place with dreams, it is about ideas, which are more concrete and thus more controlled. The dreams themselves even take the form of ideas as they are constructed by architects instead of existing as raw dream space. And ideas, which the film claims are like a virus, give validation to obsession’s power to destroy (the spread of ideas and their influence are seen across all of Nolan’s films). In the film we see that ideas can not only destroy lives but destroy cities and a world. While it’s far less allegorical than The Dark Knight Trilogy, its themes still harken back to benefits and dangers of technology and human ingenuity in the 21st century.
“You bring the subject into that dream, and they fill it with their subconscious,” Cobb says. In this film, dreams act as the “box” in which the character’s essence exists. The essence of Mal (her dissatisfaction with reality) and Fisher’s (his relationship with his father) are both kept inside of physical boxes, safes, in the form of a spinning top and a pinwheel. These objects, called totems, allow for the owner to determine whether or not they are dreaming (though the pinwheel is never revealed as a totem it has the same effect in that it is attached to reality.) These totems can be looked at as mementos, reminders for these characters to remember their own mortality by coming back to the real-world. But these essences, being subconscious are not controlled in the same way we see the boxes in the apartments in Following. Because of this, Inception is the sole case of Finch’s words from Insomnia ringing true. As we see with Fisher, inception prevents the incepted from picking when they tell the truth, a truth they may not even be aware of.
Like a number of Nolan’s other entries, in the end Inception is about building and controlling a world you can live with (depending on how you take the ending) For me, the top has always kept spinning because it fits in with Nolan’s previous characters ignoring evidence in order to construct their own reality. I believe that like Lenny, Cobb no longer cares what is real or what is not (this may be his subconscious essence). But while Lenny needs the journey to continue, Cobb needs the sense of completion.
Impact: Inception proved Nolan’s box-office draw beyond the Batman films and displayed how far he could take his imagination with the right resources. His work with an A-list cast also made him one of the biggest draws for Hollywood talent. Inception also has the infamy of giving us the “BRAAAM” sound during summer movie trailers.
- The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Themes: In the finale of The Dark Knight Trilogy, Nolan explores Dickensian social unrest and uprisings brought about by mistrust of the government. The themes in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight naturally build towards this. We see a revival and escalation of Ra’s al Ghul’s goals and we see the chaos and moral degeneration that results when people discover the truth that their leaders cannot be trusted. The divide between classes (mirroring Occupy Wall Street) creates the perfect environment and distraction for the destruction of Gotham. Wayne, a member of the 1%, attempted to solve Gotham’s problems with his wealth and failed. His rise can only be achieved by his being stripped of his comfort and brought down to the level of the common people. Selina Kyle claims that no one gets a fresh start, but this is exactly what The Dark Knight Rises displays, fresh starts without the total annihilation that al Ghul believed was necessary. The Pit (a figurative version of the comics’ Lazarus Pit) allows for Wayne’s rebirth by reminding him of his own mortality and that Batman is bigger than one man. So while Wayne’s fall and rise is a necessary character journey, Batman must remain an undefeatable force (like Ra’s al Ghul in Batman Begins he disappears for a while, but returns). Batman is beyond Wayne’s obsession and humanity; it’s a legacy.
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“No one cared who I was ‘til I put on the mask,” Bane says, and while it is a theme that stretches across the entire Batman trilogy, it is also true of Nolan’s career in some ways. What The Dark Knight Rises truly explores is the nature of immortality. Pop-culture icons are already awarded a certain level of immortality, and Batman and his supporting characters have endured through numerous reinventions since 1939. There’s a running joke in comics concerning the idea of the Bat-God (the notion that Batman is entirely undefeatable and far too prepared for every contingency for a mere human being). The film tackles the idea of Batman as deity by exposing Batman not as something made of flesh and blood, but an idea. And similar to Inception, this idea has the power to destroy lives, cities, and ultimately enact change. We see a return of the mentor-apprentice relationship with Batman and John Blake (Selina as well, to some extent), and we see the continuation of Ra’s through Talia and Bane in which ideas are passed down. While much has been made about Wayne quitting the suit in the end, Batman did not truly triumph and become the legend he set out to be until the end The Dark Knight Rises. If nothing tells the truth quite like death, then by letting go of his ego, his obsession, and choosing not to die as Batman, Wayne ensured that the truth behind Batman would not be revealed and end as the efforts of a man, but rather the undefeatable power of a legend.
Impact: While it lacked the same water-shed moment as The Dark Knight, the film proved equally successful if not as culturally memorable. By taking our knowledge of pop culture, Nolan allows audiences to re-examine the immortal nature of conflicts beyond the simple boundaries of good and evil. After all, the complex nature of world politics cannot be divided amongst these lines so why should our pop-cultural reflections? The Dark Knight Trilogy as a whole is Nolan’s way of asking audiences to not only ask for more in their entertainment but to think more as well.
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With Interstellar opening this week, it will no doubt be interesting see which of these themes carry over and how Nolan will alter them within the space of a much grander tapestry in order to tell the story he wants to tell, a story of what people are willing to do for their obsessions and beliefs. We can look at Nolan’s filmography as a box, one that attempts to capture the essence of not only himself but also aspects of humanity. Inside is a mixture of truth and lies, an exploration into the known and unknown. To borrow from Angier’s final lines in The Prestige, what is central to Nolan’s box is the powerful idea that “if you can fool them, even for a second… then you can make them wonder. And you get to see something very special.”
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