In Focus: Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan's CV still hasn't even reached the mature number of ten films, yet it feels like he has been around for decades. This man caused a social unrest in the cinematic society for one reason: he is brilliant.

It is well known that critical and public opinion seem to differ drastically (if they didn't, would we ever have had Big Momma sequels or Daddy Day Camp?) and there is a distinct divide in modern cinema between what is considered 'good' and what is 'box-office gold'. This unfortunate occurrence was thought to be the fault of the modern audience's love for mindless entertainment, which in turn led production companies to believe that the 'bigger and bolder' you make a movie, the greater the public appeal and pull to theatres will be. And there is supporting evidence for this line of thought; think Michael Bay. However, when Christopher Nolan emerged onto the fabled red carpet of Hollywood, no-one fathomed that he would be behind some of the most celebrated films of this century.

He started his career using his father's Super-Eight-mm camera at the age of seven and was eventually recognised for his award winning short film Doodlebug (below); the seams of Nolan's lust for mental instability appear to expose themselves right from the offset. Next, he wrote and directed the paranoiac The Following with a black and white cast of unknown. Nolan's cult fan base had by this point began.

Finally, we start to see him step into the water of Hollywood with low-budget films featuring recognisable faces in Memento and Insomnia. What he does isn't just remarkable because of the fantastic scripts and direction, but simply how he appears to be implicitly cultivating modern cinema by dragging the emotional and psychological depths of his origins (and therefore features of independent cinema) into them. Memento is a film based on a short story that his brother (Jonathan Nolan, with whom he has worked with almost religiously) wrote about a man with short-term memory loss. The story is told in reverse and is my favourite Nolan film. Insomnia is arguably his weakest film, however that doesn't mean it's bad by any standard.

Now, what we would expect to happen now that he is an established director would be for him to 'sell his soul' to the devil, or in this case production company, and make films that are focused soley on corporate success, which you could argue was the case with Batman Begins. However, Nolan decided to make The Prestige. This excelled at the box-office almost as much as his most recent films, yet audience and critics alike claim it to be a wonderful film. Apparently Hollywood are just starting to notice that mainstream A-List actors placed in roles with emotional depth and psychological trauma are very popular too, just to a slightly different audience. In my opinion, this can be seen through Nolan's hold on the comic-book world of Gotham. His Batman Begins and The Dark Knight highlight the cocktail of intensity and emotion that are trying to break the money-driven corporation hold on American Cinema.

This new mould has created a certain standard and criteria that now us as an audience expect in a blockbuster; we now expect to be engaged, not solely entertained. Now, this next statement may be controversial: his astounding, phenomenal epic named Inception was made to be his piece-de-résistance. It has all the ituition, imagination and original flair that Nolan seems to be practitioner of , and even has the the engaging spectacles and intense scenes, emotion and action filled to the brim, and something-for-everyone appeal that Blockbusters have. However, I don't think it did Nolan justice. Don't get me wrong, it is a fantastic film and I recommend it very highly, I simply think that Nolan can do better.

For a man that has (hopefully) brought the 'soul' back into big-budget Hoollywood, I hope Nolan remains focused on the scales that he has created; the balancing of art, action and appeal to audience/critis/production companies. If I'm right and people follow his example, the days of prat-fall, fart joked and slapstick may finally be over.

Add Comment

You must log in to submit a comment.