Christopher Nolan (Director Profile)

This is the fourth entry in my Director Profile series.

ABOUT CHRISTOPHER NOLAN

Inspired by my appreciation for Inception, I have decided to devote an entire director profile to Christopher Nolan, who in the past 10 years has established himself as one of our most imaginative and captivating filmmakers. He has devoted films to playing brilliant mind games with the audience (Memento, The Prestige, Inception) and he has also made some of the best straightforward thrillers and action films in recent memory (Insomnia, both Batman films). He is a rare case of a filmmaker able to bring big ideas to big-budget films, and he has set the table for a one-of-a-kind career which is likely to place among the more important to ever do the job. This is not a retrospective of a great director, but one who is going to be great for a while.

The only film I will not discuss is Following, a 1998 film he made on a shoestring budget that very few have seen.

THE FILMS

Memento (2000)

A run-of-the-mill revenge story gets the Nolan treatment in his first major feature, told through the eyes of a man with short term memory loss. He remembers everything up until the murder of his wife, but since then he has been unable of forming new memories. He does not remember anyone he meets, and on top of that the story is told backwards. This is the first example of the technique Nolan would use often in future films: The experience of the characters becomes the experience of the audience. Our memories are tested as the film goes on, just like Guy Pearce’s character Leonard we only know what we are told at any given moment. We see every character different as the film goes on, and just like Leonard we are not able to see anything beyond the present. Nolan wastes no time in showing everyone that he was the kid who could tear through a Rubix Cube in thirty seconds. Heck, he probably built them as a hobby. If you dismiss the narrative as a cheap gimmick you are missing out on an incredibly absorbing and unique experience.
(Rating: 4/4)

Insomnia (2002)

Now, here is a film I did not anticipate loving as much as I did. The premise sounds shallow: Al Pacino plays a world-weary veteran cop (yawn) who is sent to Alaska to help solve the murder of a local teen girl. One way or another I found myself completely engrossed in the film, and Pacino is not playing his usual over-the-top breed of law enforcer, but instead is more subdued, and thus delivering one of the more impressive performances of his in recent films. Robin Williams also is incredibly effective in a more serious role, and Hilary Swank does an admirable job as the innocent young cop. This is the only Nolan film in which he has had no part in the writing process, which leads the film to be less of a head game and more of a straightforward story, but this story is told with such style and an emotional punch to boot that I loved it. Nolan is not as successful at projecting Pacino’s insomnia on the audience as he is Pearce’s memory loss in Memento, but as a basic cop thriller they don’t get much better than this.
(Rating: 3.5/4)

Batman Begins (2005)

Big-budget Hollywood came a-calling and Nolan was drafted to return Batman to the big screen in Batman Begins, and at the time this was an amazing achievement. However, in the shadow of what was to come in the form of The Dark Knight it seems a bit dwarfed. A good film is a good film, however, and Nolan is finally able to make Batman the dark figure he is meant to be. Batman is not intended to live in the Tim Burton-Pee Wee on drugs universe (which might make an interesting Inception sequel: an acid trip within an acid trip within an acid trip?), but instead he meant to be a morally ambiguous character. Even good superhero movies give us the hero, the villain, and in the end they battle it out, but in Nolan’s Batman films he often has multiple villains all for the purpose of moving the story of Christian Bale’s Batman forward. In retrospect this film might seem like table setting for the next Batman film, but you can’t see where it goes without seeing where it started.
(Rating: 3.5/4)

The Prestige (2006)

The Prestige is well-made and entertaining, but darn it all if it all seems a little shallow and unimportant. Not surprisingly, it remains one of Nolan’s more polarizing films. It tells the story of a pair of magicians (Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman) who devote their entire lives to the longest one-upping contest in history. I was absorbed in the movie throughout, and then we reach the ending. Well, I’ll admit I did not see it coming, but it didn’t click for me. The explanation of the twist was a tad long-winded, but the final few shots were able to give the end a bit more power, and if every movie ever made ended with Thom Yorke’s song “Analyse” I’d be perfectly fine with that. The process of the magic trick is explained often throughout, describing the three acts: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige. The film itself works in that way as well, and the first two acts are performed greatly by Nolan, but the Prestige didn’t pay off quite so well. Either way, Nolan is always five steps ahead of the viewer in each of his films, and that doesn’t change here, but this time I didn’t want to go the whole way, though it’s still an enthralling film for nearly the duration.
(Rating: 3/4)

The Dark Knight (2008)

What Christopher Nolan achieved with The Dark Knight cannot be understated. I have a hard time even referring to it as a superhero movie, because I’m not sure it is. Sure, it’s about a character that is easily recognized, but Batman does more harm than good to Gotham City in this film. Most films about vigilante characters tend to idolize them, but Nolan never strays from taking the more complex route. The Dark Knight is a tragedy, not a popcorn film, and most recognize its heart (or black hole of a heart) lies in the Oscar-winning performance of Heath Ledger as the Joker, the movie villain to end all movie villains. He sees anarchy in all around him, and sometimes you just need to pop the lid off to let all the chaos out. He proves more right than anyone could imagine. Audiences were stunned as well, and The Dark Knight became the second-highest grossing film of all time. (It later dropped to third, because of a little film called Avatar.) At last a movie was made that mixed big ideas with big-budget blockbuster elements, and he’s just getting started.
(Rating: 4/4)

Inception (2010)

You might have heard of it, and my review is here. I also wrote a bit more here, and a bit more here. Also, a look at the music here. I don’t think I need to say more. I have now not only beaten the dead horse, but I now gaze upon an unrecognizable pile of flesh.
(Rating: 4/4)

CAREER GRADE: A

I was hesitant to go all the way to an A, simply because of the smaller sample size than most, but when you go six films without a rotten one in the bunch that is saying something. Each film is worth seeing, and most of them are some of the best pieces of work cinema has seen in the past decade. If he stays on this path I believe he will represent the best of an entire generation of films. His next film is going to be his third and final Batman movie, and he says he is going to end the story there completely. Hopefully it’s half as good as The Dark Knight, but more importantly I look forward to the movies he has waiting for us. Some will be as complex as Memento or Inception, others will be straightforward narratives, but no matter how high the ambition his films are always entertaining. With the box office success of Inception, I don’t think he’s going to have any budget problems, and that means there will be nothing to hold back this one-of-a-kind talent.

Other Director Profiles
Oliver Stone
Quentin Tarantino
M. Night Shyamalan