Director Analysis: Christopher Nolan

Here begins a special analysis series, where I take apart an actor or director's career, examine their style, and see how they've improved over the years, or if they haven't improved. For my first type of article in this style, I will be examining director Christopher Nolan, and his unique directing style. Nolan began his career with 2000's Memento, a psychological thriller starring Guy Pearce, Carrie Anne-Moss, and Joe Pantoliano. It follows Leonard Shelby (Pearce), a man without the ability to store new explicit memories. The film then shows the Leonard killed Teddy (Pantoliano), in an act of vengeance. It was critically acclaimed, and it was praised for its unique narrative structure and themes, which include those of memory, perception, grief, and revenge. It was nominated for Academy Awards, including those in screenwriting and film editing. Next was Insomnia in 2002, starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams  and Hilary Swank. Telling the story of a LAPD detective, Will Dormer (Pacino) brought in to  investigate the murder of a girl in a small Alaskan village, while Internal Affairs launches its own investigation on Dormer. It was the Hollywood adaptation of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, and was well-received by crtitics. Another film of his was The Prestige (2006), starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and Scarlett Johansson. It tells the story of two magicians, Bale and Jackman, who compete for the best illusion, ending with tragic results. It features two actors who have since become Nolan mainstays, Christian Bale and Michael Caine. It was also positively received, and was nominated for two Academy Awards. In 2010, Nolan made Inception, as science-fiction heist film. In it, the main character, Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are thieves who are hired by corporations for espionage to break into people's minds. When they are hired by Saito (Ken Watanabe) to plant an idea in Robert Fisher's (Cillian Murphy) mind, they agree and hire a new team, including Eames (Tom Hardy) and Ariadne (Ellen Page), but Cobb has flashbacks to his dead wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard). It was inspired by Nolan's lucid dreaming (self-aware dreaming, for the uninitiated.), and was originally an 80 page treatment for a horror story about lucid dreaming. It was critically acclaimed and commercially successful, and was nominated for eight Oscars and won four, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Cinematography. Of course, his only series is also a classic take on an American icon. His Batman movie trilogy, starting with Batman Begins in 2005, then 2008's The Dark Knight, and ending in 2012 with The Dark Knight Rises. Starring Christian Bale as Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, each movie has been commercially successful, with The Dark Knight one of the highest grossing films of all time, and each movie has been positively received, with acclaim for the performances of the actors, particularly for Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight, earning him a posthumous Oscar award. As a director, Nolan has had a rather eclectic palette of genres, ranging from superhero (the Dark Knight trilogy) to historical fiction (The Prestige). Nolan also has maintained many collaborators over the years: all of his films have featured Wally Pfister as cinematographer, and he has produced every film with his wife Emma Thomas starting with The Prestige, and has written every film with the help of his brother Jonathan. He also has used Hans Zimmer many times as the composer for his films, and typically uses the same actors, especially with Michael Caine, Ken Watanabe, and Marion Cotillard. No matter the film, Nolan manages to cut to the bone with many of his themes, even with his remake of Insomnia. His themes are typically dealing with human emotion and human nature, in contrast to metaphysics, as seen in movies like The Matrix. Memento is a movie that deals with not emotion or metaphysics, but memory and self perception, though Nolan does analyze one emotional theme: guilt. Guilt is a powerful concept in Christopher Nolan's movies, and are tentpoles in Inception, where Cobb reveals he has performed inception once before, on his wife Mal, at which point she killed herself and leads Cobb to blame himself, which leads to the climax. In The Dark Knight trilogy, Bruce Wayne, led by guilt over his parents' death, manifests itself into anger, which helps him become the Batman is the overarching theme of the trilogy. The Prestige is an analyzation of the human tendency to compete, and, if one competes too much or with the wrong intent, the tendency of competition to destroy a person and revert them to a primal shell of their former self. Nolan also does not shy away from making his films cerebral, offering an escape to audiences weary of the typical action-overdosed or shallow rom-com backwash of Hollywood. Nonetheless, his cinematography, often done without the assistance of computers, is visceral and defies reason. It is for this reason I say Nolan, as a filmaker, as yet to peak, and I look forward to his next films and especially his work as a producer for Zack Snyder's Man of Steel this summer.