Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages (2019)

hat a certain scene is present in order to support what the film “says.” But actually a lot of what we find in films is motivated not by theme but instead by plot demands or by genre or by appeal to realism. The aim is often not to transmit an idea but o give us a particular narrative experience. And his is, I think, Nolan’s aimin his more exploratory films: Following, Memento, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. Very few contemporary American filmmakers have pursued complex sto rytelling with his thoroughness and ingenuity. Breaking up the blocks Nolan began as a mainstream fan. Born in 1970, he was captivated by Star Wars and began making Super-8mm films with his action figures. This interest in spectacle and popular genres would become the basis of his career. He applied George Lucas’s concept of “worldmaking” to his later films, while at the same time giving them recognizable genre roots. Inception, for instance, became at once a science-fiction film, a heist film, and a James-Bondish adventure. Once Nolan was given a big budget, every movie would shamelessly include explosions, chases, fights, and cliff-hanging action. He could find lingering genre impulses in superhero movies: Batman Begins was a straightforward origins story, but The Dark Knight was “a crime drama in the world of a Michael Mann film” and The Dark Knight Rises was conceived as “this historical epic” Each genre has a specific thematic and iconographic world, and Nolan was eager to build such worlds anew for each project. As a cinéphile Nolan was drawn to filmmakers who could develop genre projects in ambitious directions. Alien and Blade Runner became his fa a vorite movies (“There was a mind behind both of them”) and he developed a deep admiration for Stanley Kubrick’s work, particular 2001: A Space Odyssey. This higher-toned ambition was rein forced by his interest in high culture. Majoring in English literature in college, he was drawn to novels of an experimental cast as well as to literary criticism. To this training he attributes his interest in form. “I wrote Memento very much as a puzzle box. I was fascinated by the idea of structure.” Instead of composing outlines, Nolan says, he draws diagrams, and it shows. In his early twenties Nolan made short films, including the now-cult item Doodlebug (1997). In his noirish piece, aided by ambitious special effects, aman tries to crush a tiny version of himself, only to be crushed under the heel of a still larger version of himself. This boxes-within-boxes patern would recur in later Nolan projects. While he was finishing Doodlebug he started shooting the feature-length Following (1998) on weekends. Its premise showed his literary bent by centering on a writer who follows random people in hopes of gathering material. After Following got some fesival play, Nolan was able to find financing for Memento (2000), which established him as a significant young director in the “New Narrative Complexity” trend in independent cinema. He had the advantage of the learning curve. By the mid-1990s, a wide menu of storytelling options had already been opened up for innova tion. Network narratives, in which several major characters move through intertwined situations, had become salient in the 1970s and 1980s and became a favorite of American indies (Grand Canyon, City of Hope, Lone Star, Two Days in the Valley). So too were films emphasizing subjective states, such as Jacob’s Ladder, and flashback plots (The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs, Six Degrees of Separation). Often these films featured unreli able narration, with The Usual Suspects becoming a prototype. Most of these experiments motivated their play with time and viewpoint through appeal to the conventions of romantic comedy, domestic drama, or crime and thriller plotting. Another trend that became salient in the 1990s depended on altering story order in a more funda mental way than the usual flashback construction. Most Hollywood films tell their stories chronologically, shifting our attachment from one character to another, scene by scene. This moving-spotlight approach to narration can give the audience a wide range of knowledge, or it can suppress information by shifting away from what characters are 990s Quen inear plot could be doing at crucial moments. During the that a en into unusually long segments by sticking tin Tarantino showed bro witha single character through many scenes. Each of these blocks of action could then be arranged out of chronological sequence. In Pulp Fiction, a story that could have been told chronologically by shifting the spotlight from one character to another, is presented in discrete blocks. Three blocks are centered on hired killers Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield, another is attached to prizefight Storytelling as a Formal Project Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages + 19