You may have seen Following, Memento, the Prestige, the Batman trilogy, or Inception but do you know the writer and director of them? Christopher Nolan has written and/or directed all of these movies and has won many awards for them. How are his movies so great? What sets him apart from others? Through many different technical elements from camera shots to background music, Christopher Nolan creates unreal yet spectacular films.
Nolan’s techniques are sometimes subtle to completely obvious. When you first watch a Christopher Nolan film, you may realize that there are little to no credits in the beginning. He jumps straight in to keep your attention and to get you more into the movie. Heres a view of the beggining of one of his greatest movies. The way he jumps from scenes with hard cuts and crosscutting scenes is obvious. How he uses music throughout a lot of the movie. Sometimes the music is prominent and loud or subtle and barely there. None of the music has words, it’s all instrumental. Nolan studied English literature at University College London where he was in a film society. There, he learned about guerrilla techniques and used them on his first film Following. After that, he had enough standing that he got the funds to make his next film, Memento.
A common theme is present in all of Nolan’s film; a protagonist who stands for the right and justice in this world. They usually lose something dear to them and that puts them into a vengeance seeking stage. Often times, he makes the characters face some sort of psychological stress. Like in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne looses his parent and seeks revenge and Dr. Krane uses a hallucinogenic spray that makes everyone face their biggest fear. In Inception, Cobb looses his wife and has an issue with whether or not he is awake or in limbo. Also, most of the protagonists use force to get information. In the Dark Knight, Bruce uses abuse to get the joker to talk and in the Prestige, Angier buries Fallon to get information about a trick. There is more to the movie than you may think.
As you may notice if you’ve seen his films is, he uses a lot of the same actors and they majorly aren’t American; Michael Caine is in 5 of his 8 films. He uses famous actors like Leonardo DeCaprio or Christian Bale. They all give off a stunning performance which builds to the film.
Nolan tries to use as little Computer Generated Imagery as possible. As he said in an interview with Jeffrey Resssner in the spring of 2012, “I believe in an absolute difference between animation and photography. However sophisticated your computer-generated imagery is, if it’s been created from no physical elements and you haven’t shot anything, it’s going to feel like animation. There are usually two different goals in a visual effects movie. One is to fool the audience into seeing something seamless, and that’s how I try to use it. The other is to impress the audience with the amount of money spent on the spectacle of the visual effect, and that, I have no interest in. We try to enhance our stunt work and floor effects with extraordinary CGI tools like wire and rig removals. If you put a lot of time and effort into matching your original film elements, the kind of enhancements you can put into the frames can really trick the eye, offering results far beyond what was possible 20 years ago. The problem for me is if you don’t first shoot something with the camera on which to base the shot, the visual effect is going to stick out if the film you’re making has a realistic style or patina. I prefer films that feel more like real life, so any CGI has to be very carefully handled to fit into that.” (Wikipedia 2012)
He also tries to use actual film compared to digital video. “For the last 10 years, I've felt increasing pressure to stop shooting film and start shooting video, but I've never understood why. It's cheaper to work on film, it's far better looking, it's the technology that's been known and understood for a hundred years, and it's extremely reliable. I think, truthfully, it boils down to the economic interest of manufacturers and [a production] industry that makes more money through change rather than through maintaining the status quo. We save a lot of money shooting on film and projecting film and not doing digital intermediates. In fact, I've never done a digital intermediate. Photo chemically, you can time film with a good timer in three or four passes, which takes about 12 to 14 hours as opposed to seven or eight weeks in a DI suite. That's the way everyone was doing it 10 years ago, and I've just carried on making films in the way that works best and waiting until there’s a good reason to change. But I haven't seen that reason yet.” (Wikipedia 2012)
Christopher Nolan has many awards. For his second movie made, Memento, won 46 awards, 22 just for Nolan. The Dark Knight won 2 Oscars, 94 other wins, and was rated 9 out of 10 stars on Imdb. With Inception, they got 4 Oscar awards and 81 other awards, a Roger Ebert said, "Nolan tests us with his own dazzling maze. We have to trust him that he can lead us through, because much of the time we're lost and disoriented."
I have not seen all of Nolan’s films but I intend to. I heard he is making Man of Steel which will be released in 2013. It is the new superman and I personally, can’t wait to see it. I will always be inticed to his amazing film writing and screen play. I hope you love Christopher Nolan’s films as much as I do.
