Key conventions comprising works of writer and director christopher nolan

Chapter 1 – Introduction

“I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today’s movies. They believe everything they’re hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up.” (The Auteurs, 2010)

Christopher Nolan made his feature debut with Following in 1998 but it was the cult classic Memento, released in the autumn of 2000, which lead to his breakthrough in Hollywood. Despite only a handful of subsequent box office successes later, Nolan had soon established himself as both a blockbuster writer and director of the highest calibre. With Nolan rapidly constructing a key signature of his work that chronology would take a back seat to character with an identifiable undertone of film noir, is Christopher Nolan an auteur of the 21st century or merely a product from the likes of David Lynch and David Fincher? Consequently, this assignment will aim to answer this very question and will make a judgement on whether Christopher Nolan is in fact an auteur.

In order to make a final judgement the dissertation will pursue the following procedure:

Chapter three will aim to define what characteristics constitute an ‘auteur’, and will thus provide an informative analysis of the cinematic theory so that a context for the discussion can be established. This dissertation will benefit largely from the combination of both Alexandre Austruc’s relatively elementary definition of ‘auteurism’ as well as Andrew Sarris’ and John Caughie’s more modern, in-depth interpretation of the film theory. Employing approximately 50 years worth of academic analysis in regards to ‘auteurism’, a precise and thorough definition of an auteur will be produced, essential when drawing an accurate conclusion.

Similarly, Chapter four will provide a brief summary of both the history of film noir and the neo-noir motion picture, informing the reader through an analysis and development of the genres codes and conventions. Joan Copjec’s publication explores the origins of this classic period of Hollywood cinema and offers a perspective upon the films themselves, viewed in light of contemporary social and political concerns, and from new theoretical insights. She also analyses the re-emergence of noir cinema in recent years and how neo-noir remains a popular choice for the big film studios. Another publication which has been hugely beneficial during my research is that of Dr Frank Krutnik. Krutnik’s book combines both theoretical and historical research through the examination of individual films through a generic framework. In a lonely street is an extremely valuable text as it is especially successful in combining both historical research and textual analysis. It is important to note that Chapter three and four of this dissertation are effectively the foundations before producing a smooth transition into the rise and success of writer and director Christopher Nolan.

The vast bulk of the evidence gathered will be contained between Chapters five, six and seven.

Chapter five will observe a number of Nolan’s cinematic trademarks, beginning with ‘non-linear narratives’. The International Society for the Study of Narrative states that “narrative is the telling of a story or communication of a chain of events, fictive or real. Aspects of narrative include how the story is told, the context in which it is presented, and the construction of the story” (Narrative, 2010). Therefore, in order to achieve an in-depth deconstruction of the non-linear narratives of Nolan’s first two motion pictures, Following and Memento, the aid of a narratological theory will be required whilst an analysis of all aspects of narrative must also be attributed. One narrative theory which has been specifically chosen is that of Tzvetan Todorov. Lacey (2000) argues that one name has become synonymous with that of Narratology over the years, Todorov, who simplified the concept of narrative while allowing a more complex interpretation of film texts with his theory of Equilibrium and Disequilibrium.

First proposed by Russian Formalists, there should be two individual narratological traditions: thematic and modal. According to research by Professor Meir Steinberg (Narrative, 2010) the former is largely limited to a semiotic formalization of the sequences of action told, while the latter examines the manner of their telling, stressing the importance of voice, point of view, transformation of the chronological order, rhythm and frequency. Numerous academics however, have insisted that thematic and modal Narratology should not be investigated separately as they both undoubtedly benefit one another especially when investigating the function and interest of narrative sequence and plot. Therefore, one must ensure that both a modal and thematic stance has been incorporated into the investigation of each text.

The study will then progress on to observe the role of the ‘morally dubious protagonist’, a feature which dominates the majority of Nolan’s texts. For this purpose, Memento, The Prestige and Batman Begins have all been chosen for evaluation. This chapter will also undertake a vigorous breakdown of recognisable ‘mise en scene traits and themes’ which will be identified throughout the volume of Christopher Nolan’s films. It will be this section of the study that will ensure a balanced debate as we look at the impact of other members within the production process such as Wally Pfister, a cinematographer, who Nolan has hired for all but one of his feature films. We also consider the influence of Chris’ brother, Jonathan, who has helped co-write several texts.

The introduction to the conclusion, if you will, will help summarise and determine the significant influence the noir conventions that have been stated throughout this discussion have had on the development and originality of certain Nolan films. The dissertation will then conclude that despite the fact that Christopher Nolan, like many of his predecessors, has inherited a vast wealth of cinematic codes and conventions, his body of work, all be it relatively small, provides a unique stamp thus establishing Nolan as an auteur alongside the likes of Scorsese and Spielberg.

Methodology. (3 pages)

The following Firstly the information collected for this dissertation will be purely qualitative rather than quantitative as it focuses upon film theory through the form of textual analysis.

The Secondary research will specifically involve the consultation of academic textbooks on the dissertation topic. This will be essential in developing prior knowledge on the subject and will allow discussion in order to reach the overall aim.

The opinions of film academics and authors will be utilised in order to validate or oppose various issues raised within the dissertation. By using published or peer reviewed sources it increases the reliability of the information referenced and in turn the dissertation.

The dissertation will also consist of narrative analysis of moving image.

Stokes states that “narrative analysis involves very close reading and is best conducted on a limited number of texts” (2003, p. 69) which is why the dissertation particularly examines and deconstructs the works of a sole director and writer. However, there may also be a negative effect of investigating the work of one artist as Stoke (2003) claims there can become a danger of bias by steering away from a critical approach if you admire the work of the particular auteur. She states that one must go through a process of developing a critical distance and a way of watching which is detached and dispassionate. Therefore in order to ensure that the investigations results are as reliable as can be, one must aspire to analyse with complete objectivity. Whether or not this is entirely possible is another matter.

Stokes (2003) also offers seven steps in order to conduct narrative analysis effectively. These guidelines will be extremely useful when deconstructing the narratives of Following, Memento and Batman Begins.

Chapter 3 – The Auteur Theory.

More than a theory.

In 1954 film critic and film director FranÃois Truffaut coined the term ‘auteurism’, a concept which would later provoke much controversy and debate within the world of cinema.

The ‘politique des auteurs’, later referred to as the auteur theory, originated in 1950’s France as an abstract aesthetic rooted in the works of prestigious film journal cahiers du cinema. The fundamental works of this cinematic movement were Alexandre Austruc’s ‘Un camera stylo’ and Francois Truffaut’s ‘Une certain tendance du cinema FranÃais’. Both of these concepts promoted the idea that as the ‘author’ of a motion picture, the truly great directors must have a distinct visual style and identifiable themes which ingrain all of their work. (REFERENCE)

Alexandre Astruc in his celebrated essay ‘The Birth of the new avant-garde: the camera-stylo’, announced that:

The cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression, just as all the other arts have been before it . . . After having been successively a fairground attraction, an amusement analogous to boulevard theatre, or the means of preserving the images of an era, it is gradually becoming a language. By language, I mean a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts, however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions exactly as he does in the contemporary essay or novel (cited by Corrigan and River, 1999, p.159).

Caughie (1988) states that as a term, Austruc’s camera-stylo (camera pen) failed to take root, however the insistence on film as an individual self-expression, had a considerable polemical importance, forming the basis of Franca Truffaut’s cinema d’auteurs. Traditionally, the reference to the auteur in French film criticism was associated with either the author who wrote the script, or, in the more general sense of the term, the artist who created the text. Before too long the latter sense came to replace the former and the title ‘auteur’ was attributed to the artist whose personality had been ‘written’ in the film.

Inspired by the critics of cahiers du cinema, US film academic Andrew Sarris demanded a more detailed definition of the term ‘la politique des auteurs’ and would later transform the notion of an auteur into an acclaimed cinematic theory. The auteur theory was never, in itself, a theory of the cinema, though its originators did not claim that it was. “The writers of Cashiers du Cinema always spoke of ‘la politique des auteurs’. The translation of this into the ‘auteur theory’ appears to be the responsibility of Andrew Sarris” (Caughie, 1988, p.24). In his ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962’, Sarris proposed three key traits in order to identify an auteur; the first being “the technical competence of a director as a criterion of value”. The second; “the distinguishable personality of the director. Over a group of films, a director must exhibit certain recurring characteristics of style, which serve as his signature”. The third premise refers to a more mystic ‘interior meaning’:

“Interior meaning is extrapolated from the tension between a director’s personality and his material. This conception of interior meaning comes close to what Astruc defines as mise-en- scene, but not quite. It is not quite the vision of the world a director projects nor quite his attitude to life. It is ambiguous, in any literary sense, because part of it is imbedded in the stuff of cinema and cannot be rendered in non-cinematic terms.” (Cited by Pearson, 1997)

It is fairly evident when scrutinising the words of Andrew Sarris, that there are in fact numerous weaknesses in regards to his academic approach towards the auteur theory. The first two traits are fairly self explanatory, as he claims that a director mustn’t simply be a master of his craft but that he must also present a style which is clearly distinguishable as his own. The weakness in Sarris’ approach however, lies in his third and final point, as he produces a vague description of what he defines as ‘interior meaning’. This definition is simply too unclear making it near impossible for other film academics to evaluate and measure an auteur’s ‘interior meaning’. This point is indisputable as Sarris himself claims that his third principle is in fact “ambiguous” (Cited by Pearson, 1997) to say the least.

Once Andrew Sarris had developed the notion of the auteur theory, he began to break the boundaries set when analysing auteurism in cinema. He took note of films within Hollywood and the commercial system where a large number of directors whose work, displayed a consistency of under-lying themes and a style which Caughie believes was unusual as it was difficult for a director to express personality and uniqueness within the industries constraints:

In fact, the struggle between the desire for self-expression and the constraints of the industry could produce a tension in the films of the commercial cinema which was lacking in the ‘art’ cinema, encouraging the auteurist critics to valorise Hollywood cinema above all else, finding there a treasure-trove of buried personalities, and, in the process, scandalizing established criticism. Uniqueness of personality, brash individuality, persistence of obsession and originality were given an evaluative power above that of stylistic smoothness or social seriousness (Caughie, 1988, p.10).

Despite the ‘director as author’ approach becoming increasingly popular in the 1960’s, it’s weaknesses soon became apparent as it wasn’t long until the notion of auteurism had been extended to include both producers and actors. The auteur theory had now developed to the extent where it would only accept rigorous analysis of films as oppose to unclear references to themes and style; “With its emphasis on the importance of systematically analysing a body of texts, auteur-structuralism conceives of the author as a set of structures identifiable within a director’s films”. (Crofts, 1998, p. 315) Film critics would therefore now attempt to deconstruct the common themes and style of a given director rather than simply producing a vague interpretation. Caughie (1988) states that a weakness of the auteur theory lays in the fact that it requires a means in which to measure value. Sarris suggests films become valuable in so far as they reveal directorial personality. “He therefore does precisely what should not be done: he uses individuality as a test for cultural value” (Caughie, 1988, p.27).

After utilising a number of interpretations in regards to the auteur theory, a single definition must be produced in order to validate the conclusion drawn at the end of this investigation. The definition which has been selected is that of John Caughie’s as it is both simplistic yet precise. Caughie, is his text ‘Theories of Authorship’, stipulates that an auteur is purely a valued member of the production team whose personality can be traced in a thematic and/or stylistic consistency over all (or almost all) of his/her films (Caughie, 1988). It is therefore fair to suggest that a ‘personality’, arguably a synonym for ‘auteur’, simply refers to a number of unique codes and conventions which have been persistently drawn upon for a large percentage of his or her (in this instance, a director’s) work.

Chapter 4 – A History of Film Noir and it’s progression into the Neo Noir motion picture.

More than a genre

Paris, summer 1946. This moment marks an incredibly important event in cinema history, not for production but for exhibition. For this was the summer when, after the hiatus of the Second World War, French critics were again given the opportunity to view films from Hollywood. The films they saw prompted the naming and theorisation of a new phenomenon: film noir (Copjec, 1993).

Silver (2004) simply defines classic film noir as one of the most influential movements in cinema history. This definition seems rather basic, however, despite five decades of attempted classification and debate it’s categorisation still remains problematic as it is marked by what Krutnik (1991) coined as a division between opposing camps of ‘theorists’ and ‘historians’. Perhaps it is easier to suggest what characteristics constitute film noir rather than attempting to identify it wholly as genre or a period of history.

Silver and Ursini (1998) in their book ‘Film Noir Reader’ claim that the boundaries of this classic period stretch from John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941) to Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) and emerged from crime fiction in the United States during the Depression. The iconic visual style of film noir set in the 40’s usually tends to be low key lighting with use of dark, dramatic shadowy patterns. This style is particularly noticeable in Carol Reed’s The Third Man. In an analysis of the visual approach of Kiss Me Deadly, critic Alain Silver (1995, p.222) describes how cinematographic choices emphasize the story’s themes and mood. In one scene, the characters, seen through a “confusion of angular shapes,” thus appear “caught in a tangible vortex or enclosed in a trap”.

Copjec claims that this new form of cinema that emerged in 1940’s America reflected the anxieties of a country entering a new era, an era perhaps dark and ominous. Film noir had therefore become the antithesis of Hollywood’s glamour productions of the 30s. Literally meaning ‘black film’, film noir was first introduced by the French critic Nino Frank in 1946 as he noticed “how dark and often black” the settings and themes of these Hollywood films were (Wolfgang, 2003). Unlike other forms of cinema, film noir has no elements that it can truly indentify as its own. Rather, film noir makes use of elements from other forms, most notably from the crime and detective genres, but often overlapping into thrillers, horror, and even science fiction (Copjec, 1993). The primary moods of classic film noir are “melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt and paranoia” (Wolfgang, 2003).

Whereas much work has been published on classic film noirs, produced between 1940 and 1958, little criticism has been written about the newer films, produced between 1966 and 2010, defined as the neo-noir motion picture. For some there has been a tendency amongst film critics to exclusively use the term ‘noir’ for the classic films of the 30s, 40s and 50s. Although in recent years, there has been an increasing flexibility in regards to the classification of ‘noir’, especially as far as a chronological broadening is concerned. Some film academics believe that the genre has expanded from pre-World War Two cinema to the modern day phenomenon of the Neo-noir motion picture. This therefore suggests that the label ‘film noir’ now has over sixty years of film history behind it.

The term Neo-Noir was first coined by Todd Erickson in the 1990’s in his widely credited essay ‘Kill Me Again: Movement becomes a Genre’ where he claimed that neo noir only became a genre in the 80s, when it emerged from its ’embryonic’ state in the sixties and seventies (Silver and Ursini, 1998). He also discusses the emergence of noir motifs in films subsequent to the canonical period and suggests studying them as a new genre. “Contemporary film noir is a new genre of film. As such, it must carry the distinction of another name; a name that is cognizant of its rich noir heritage, yet one that distinguishes its influences and motivations from those of the bygone era” (Silver and Ursini, 1998, p.321) Erickson expanded on his definition stating that Neo Noir encompasses films released after the classic period which fulfil central aspects of the genre but take other different generic approaches (Lee Horsley, Crime and Culture). These central aspects of iconography, to which Erickson refers, are: The visual style, in terms of cinematography with the use of symbolic lighting on certain characters to portray a particular characteristic. Academic David Watt (2002) highlights these codes and conventions within a framework of David Fincher’s Fight Club. Watt argues that Fincher has accomplished a particular style of lighting through the relationship between the central characters. “In various scenes, Jack is in the foreground of the shot lit in high key with Tyler in the background hidden by shadows, thus representing that Tyler is hiding something from Jack” (Watt, 2002). Another piece of iconography within the narrative structure is the common use of flashbacks in film noir where the protagonist will narrate their own story. Watt states that “Fight Club fulfils this narrative device and plays on it through creating a flashback from another flashback, setting the film further back and expanding on the convention” (Watt, 2002). The third and final key element of film noir is the inclusion of certain ‘Character types’ who the audience recognise as a recurrent motif of the genre. For example, perhaps the most identifiable ‘character type’ in film noir is that of the anti hero, a convention that will be discussed in greater detail later in this study. Watt proclaims in his dissection of Fincher’s Neo Noir Blockbuster that the anti hero:

Poses as the central character but does not follow the rules of society in the diegesis and contrasts heavily to the typical high concept ‘hero’. Fight Club immediately introduces the audience to the anti hero through a typical film noir convention of the introductory close up. Fincher has taken this convention to its extreme though and begins the film from literally inside the protagonist’s brain and then spirals out, disorientating the audience as they are forced to identify with this nameless character. Jack acts as the anti hero but his traits of the character type are expanded and again, took to their ultimate extreme. He does not trust anyone and is a loner, so much so that his name is never clearly identified and he is only recognised as ‘Jack’ through the narrative voice over of “I am Jacks wasted life” (2002).

The similarities between both the protagonist in Fight Club and Christopher Nolan’s Memento will be hugely evident when we analyse Nolan’s use of the anti-hero in his own Neo Noir epic.

If we return briefly to the genre itself, many of the Neo-Noir films, especially of those created in the 70s and 80s, including for example Chinatown released in 1974, are what Lacey (2001) considers as pastiches that knowingly, and fondly, recreate the style of earlier noir cinema albeit in colour and with a modern sensibility. These films express a “retro and nostalgic avoidance of contemporary experience with the intention of escaping from contemporary issues” (cited by Wolfgang, 2003) Horsley (2002) corroborates this statement by arguing that in recent years one question is frequently raised in critical debate, pondering whether the fashionable trappings of neo-noir are themselves symptomatic of commercial postmodern nostalgia. He moves onto suggest that the sense that ‘noir’ created in the 70s and 80s was a ‘retro’ and nostalgic avoidance of contemporary experience has been encouraged by the often-cited essay, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’, in which Frederic Jameson assigns to film noir a central role in the vocabulary of commercialized postmodernism.

However, Lacey (2001) claims that there are also numerous Neo Noir motion pictures which push the genre forward and avoid pastiche. One director whose films arguably fit this mould is Christopher Nolan, a writer and director whose work has instigated this very investigation.

Leaving aside for the moment the matter of nostalgic pastiche it could be argued that Neo noir is not so much a genre of film but rather an identifiable visual style which has been adopted by a large number of contemporary film makers. As an aesthetic and ideological set of principles, the traditional conventions of noir are very visible in the works of modern auteurs: David Lynch, Michael Mann and David Fincher. However, there is still an obvious difference between both Film Noir and Neo noir as they each have their own underlying social and political context which undoubtedly affects a films perspective. As stated earlier, Film noir is very much a response to post war disillusionment and can be categorised into certain distinct phases, Neo noir on the other hand is far more difficult to isolate as the genre itself continues to evolve. Despite the 60’s and 70’s providing some telling illustrations of Neo noir, it was not until the early 80’s that the genre gained widespread acceptance and credibility. This could arguably be down to the success of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner which would later be followed by other influential directors David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive) and David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club).

As Lee Horsley suggests:

The contemporary refashioning of noir themes is a manifestation of the flexibility and responsiveness to social change that have characterised noir from its inception and of the continued vitality of the form. The transformations of the genre in neo-noir have helped to clarify some of the constant, recognisable elements of ‘the noir vision’, most importantly the moral ambivalence of the protagonist and his (or in neo-noir often her) ill-fated relationship with a wider society that itself is guilty of corruption and criminality. (Horsley, 2002)

One director whose body of work notably contains ‘recognisable elements of the noir vision’ is that of Christopher Nolan. Thanks to his unique, stylised, time-bending reformation of film noir conventions, Christopher Nolan has established himself as a creator of psychologically demanding films that defy categorization. When Nolan spoke to journalist Chris Roberts in October 2000 he was asked ‘Have you always loved film noir?’:

Very much. I’m a big fan, but interested in making those materials live for this time, this place. To create something new, whilst not abandoning the things I love about the genre. Which include the intrigue you can get out of that triangular relationship between three main characters. Who does what to whom is the driving force of both the narrative and the psychology. You judge them on their actions, rather than a lot of back-story and conversation. I just think it would be a marvellous thing for film-makers to have some of the narrative freedom that novelists have had for hundreds – well, thousands – of years. In other media, it’s always been accepted that you don’t have to tell stories chronologically. In films, you have the flashback concept, but Stanley Kubrick and Nicolas Roeg were pioneering and pushing other boundaries in the Seventies, and it seems criminal to me not to keep using the freedoms they hard-earned. You should always be a little ahead of your time. I don’t mean in a medicinal, here-take-this-it’s- good-for-you way, but keeping people on their toes is a fun thing to do. Citizen Kane pushed things forward ambitiously, but in a real, instinctive, not gimmicky sense. And some of the aggressive, avant-garde devices Godard patented are accepted mainstream tricks now (Roberts, 2000).

This insightful interview helps display some of Nolan’s key influences and motivations and yet the man himself remains in many respects an enigma. Before discussing the key conventions which comprise his work, let’s begin with the man himself.

Chapter 5 – The Rise of Christopher Nolan

More than a director

Christopher Jonathan James Nolan was born in London on the 30th July 1970 as a child of a British Father and American Mother. Nolan’s introduction to film production began as early as seven when he began making war movies with his older brother using his father’s super 8mm camera and an assortment of male action figures. His passion for films increased with age whilst he is said to have been influenced to produce short science fiction films in the same vein of George Lucas’ space saga, Star Wars.

After spending his childhood years residing in Chicago, Nolan returned to England to attend boarding school at Haileybury College, he then progressed to University College London where he studied literature. While an undergraduate, Nolan shot the surreal shorts ‘Tarantella’ and ‘Doodlebug’ with young actor and friend Jeremy Theobold starring in the lead for both films. Theobold would also take up the role in Nolan’s first feature film, Following, a no-budget black-and-white movie produced in London over a one year period. This ultra-low budget indie received wide acclaim receiving numerous awards such as the prestigious Rotterdam International Film Festival’s Tiger Award and the Slamdance Black & White Award.

Despite Nolan’s success within Europe, it wasn’t until he wrote and directed Memento (2000), a cult classic revenge story with its unique narrative structure, which held him up on the global stage. Hailed by critics, Nolan’s reputation almost changed overnight leading to him becoming a highly sought after talent. Returning in 2002 with Insomnia, a remake of Erik Skjoldbjaerg’s 1997 film of the same name, he proved he could direct some of the world’s top actors such as Al Pacino and Robin Williams. It was in 2005 however, with a reimagined take on a long-defunct film franchise, Batman, that propelled Nolan to the upper tier of Hollywood directors. His dark, brooding take on the avenging crusader was much more aligned with its original intention than any other subsequent incarnation. (Screenrush, 2010) With more recent box office successes, The Prestige (2006) and The Dark Knight (2008), Nolan has undoubtedly secured his reputation as a one of the top directors and writers working in Hollywood today.

Now we know the man behind the lens, let’s start dissecting the key conventions which comprise his work. We begin with Nolan’s use of the non-linear narrative.

Chapter 6 – Narrative

More than a story.

When Christopher Nolan released Memento in the autumn of 2000, few suspected the impact it would have on cinema goers worldwide and its significance not only on neo-noir as a genre, but also its effect on how audiences and critics perceive narrative within film.

As a fragmented, non-linear narrative structure, Memento is a text which has received broad investigation in recent years. It’s ‘true’ meaning however, if in fact there is one, remains very much an enigma even a decade after its initial release. Nevertheless, the use of a non-linear narrative is nothing new, as stated earlier, as it has often been used in the past by noir directors to slowly reveal relationships among characters and circle the story back to a key precipitating event. What makes Memento special however is that its non-linear narrative structure puts the audience into the shoes of the protagonist. Through this device the viewers become detectives themselves. For the most part the audience struggle as much as Leonard does, creating a coherent narrative out of all the evidence they witness. Nolan gives the film noir genre’s tendency to confound the viewers’ expectations a conceptual twist by linking the flow of the narrative to the condition of the protagonist. (Wolfgang, 2003)

Memento would not be the first film Nolan would experiment with narrative structure as his first feature film, Following, applied this tool by using “visual clues to aid the viewer in re-ordering the story chronology”. This device “would be something Nolan would return to in Memento, using the scratches on Leonard’s face as a marker-point for the time-line, rather than indicating the passing of day or night” (Mottram, 2002, p.78). Christopher Nolan gives an insight into his trail of thought during the production process:

When I had written the script, which seemed to work on the page, the feeling was if you’re going to use this unconventional structure, such as the three time-lines in the Following, then my impulse at script stage was to teach the reader the structure, to do it very quickly with small scenes, so that in the first ten pages you have an idea of the structure throughout. What I found with Following and Memento, when you come to watch the film, was that’s counter-productive. It becomes too baffling for the audience. The audience has to have a period in which to just connect with characters” (Mottram, 2002, p.85)

As Nolan claims himself, this unconventional structure is perhaps disorientating for the audience however in Memento, less so in Following, this confusion leads to the viewer truly connecting with Leonard, the protagonist, as he suffers from anterograde amnesia which means his brain is unable to store new memories. Each scene throughout Memento breaks away from the idea of a linear progression of thought and so in order for the audience to understand its content they must look at the scenes to all sides of it. When applying the narratological model of Tzvetan Todorov, Memento can be highlighted as a truly unique text which turns its back on traditional cinema storytelling as Todorov claims narratives follow a model where they begin with an equilibrium followed by a disruption (disequilibrium) to be concluded by a new equilibrium. In contrast, Memento not only begins but also carries a continuous theme of disequilibrium throughout the text. Liza Blake (Blake, Snapshots of Memento) states that Leonard’s experiences depend not on a logical progression but on the current moment, the context, making things make sense in the present.

LEONARD: That’s the thing. I have this condition.

BURT: Condition?

LEONARD: I have no memory.

BURT: Amnesia?

LEONARD: No. It’s different. I have no short-term memory. I know who I am and all about myself, but since my injury I can’t make any new memories. Everything fades.

BURT: What’s it like?

LEONARD: Like waking. Like you just woke up.

BURT: That must suck. All… backwards.

Leonard raises his eyebrows in enquiry.

Well, like… you got a pretty good idea of what you’re gonna do next, but no idea of what you just did (Nolan, 2001, p.114).

This short extract from the screenplay illustrates that Leonard’s view of the world is similar to that of the audience’s view of the text itself. Thus the viewer shares Leonard’s predicament, searching for clues and becoming a detective themselves. Forcing such a subjective interpretation of the film Nolan has produced a text with numerous interpretations. Blake (Snapshots of Memento) claims that, the text does not simply have one ‘correct’ explanation as Memento establishes itself as a “Deleuzian plateau; it has no beginning or end but is always in the middle. As a plateau, it can be approached not from one angle of interpretation but from many angels of interpretation, all at once”.

The narrative is put together as follows: there is a variety of both colour and black and white scenes. The Colour scenes contain most of the plot elements which move the narrative backwards, while the black and white scenes move forward through the movie and intersect the colour scenes. Blake (Snapshots of Memento) argues that “the story, therefore, is moving in multiple directions at once, and cannot even be understood as simply backwards”. “Each scene is connected on each side not into a chronological timeline moving in one direction (be it forwards or backwards), but to scenes that are going the opposite direction in the narrative”. John Wolfgang (2003) produces an interesting analysis of the narrative stating that if we think of the colour scenes as numbers from 1-22 and we translate the black and white scenes into letters from A-V, the narrative order of events is thus… 1,V,2,U,3,T,4,S etc. This therefore corroborates what Blake (Snapshots of Memento) claims earlier, that the timeline in fact moves in multiple directions at once. When Christopher Nolan spoke to journalist Chris Roberts, he was posed the question ‘did you at any point during conception think the story and structure were getting too complex, too convoluted, for audiences raised on The Full Monty and Star Wars?’

We thought a lot about how to keep an emotional thread running through it. We realised it was something which could become very cerebral and cold, or simply puzzling. So it was a challenge to keep the audience, to give them a narrative that works backwards but has a kind of forward logic to it. I have a lot of faith in audiences. As a film-goer myself, I’m constantly frustrated by the lack of different, challenging films. But I don’t consider myself to be an ‘art’ film-maker at all. I actually have pretty mainstream tastes, which may come as some surprise. And I think there are a lot of people out there who’d like to see more interesting angles on familiar material. Memento views film noir’s tropes and symbols from a very skewed perspective. Hopefully, therefore, they’re given a fresh spin (Roberts, 2000).

Here Nolan discusses a convention of his work in great depth, highlighting film noir’s influence on his own style although as he rightly suggests, it is given a modern and original twist. He reiterates this point in an interview with BBC journalist, David Wood, when discussing his own unique approach to non-linear narratives:

Film makers should be able to experiment with narrative without alienating the audience and without creating something that’s impenetrable. I actually see myself as a very mainstream film maker and always have. Even though you aren’t going to get the answers to all of the questions in the film and it is a kind of unsettling film in lots of ways, if you watch it a couple of times it’s pretty much all in there. One of the things I’ve been most satisfied by the film – after having now watched it with various festival audiences – is that it really lives on in people’s heads (Wood, 2003).

This unconventional narrative structure is the heartbeat to the films main theme which is that of the instability and mutability of memory. As Leonard says to Teddy, “Memory’s not perfect… memory can change the shape of a room or the colour of a car…memories can be changed or distorted” (Nolan, 2001, p.135). Memory here plays both active and passive roles; it changes and it is changed. Memory rewrites the meaning of the past, and allows the past to be rewritten; in the movie nothing is stable, because the context is always changing.

TEDDY: You don’t even know who you are.

LEONARD: I’m Leonard Shelby. I’m from San Francisco and I’m-

TEDDY: (bloody grin) That’s who you were. You don’t know who you are.

LEONARD: Shut your mouth!

TEDDY: Let me take you down to the basement and show you what you’ve become. (…intimate) C’mon, Lenny- we’ll take a look at what you really are. (…Leonard pulls the trigger) (Nolan, 2001, p.108).

TEDDY: So you lie to yourself to be happy. Nothing wrong with that- we all do. Who cares if there’s a few things you’d rather not remember? (Nolan, 2001, p.218)

Another clear example of Nolan’s film questioning the fallibility of memory is when Teddy tells Leonard that his notes may be unreliable. His reply is thus:

Memory’s not perfect. It’s not even that good. Ask the police; eye-witness testimony is unreliable. The cops don’t catch a killer by sitting around remembering stuff. They collect facts, make notes, draw conclusions. Facts, not memories: that’s how you investigate. I know, it’s what I used to do. Memory can change the shape of a room or the colour of a car. It’s an interpretation, not a record. Memories can be changed or distorted and they’re irrelevant if you have facts. (Mottram, 2002, p.47)

It is important to note that both the presentation of non-linear narratives and psychological themes is evident in the vast bulk of Christopher Nolan’s work. Despite focusing on his landmark success with Memento it was in fact his first feature film, Following, that Nolan began experimenting with these conventions. This brought a flattering comparison with British auteur, Sir Alfred Hitchcock. When film journalist Michelle Bryant, raised this issue during the promotion of Following, Nolan was quick to dismiss such a comparison:

What I like about the Hitchcock comparisons, I think the film is basically a film noir type. So I like the references because it’s a little bit different because that is when to me the reviewer is noticing the things that I think are the most interesting about the script. These kinds of concerns which Hitchcock certainly dealt with-voyeurism, transference of identity, and that kind of thing. Those are the things that really drive the script. Whereas the film noir thing is more of the genre and atmospheric devices. So yeah, the Hitchcock references are great (Bryant, 2002).

Nolan suggests that his main influence is in fact film noir rather than any particular director or writer. His use of the typical noir convention, non-linear narratives, has been utilised in all of his texts with the exception of Insomnia. Michelle Bryant also puts the question ‘when you wrote the script, did you write it in a broken timeline, or was that done in editing’?

No, it was written more or less like the finished film. It is actually a little more complicated on the page. The thing we did wind up playing around with was the length of time in each timeline. We ended up simplifying it a bit in the end and in the beginning. But it was always intended to work in this way, with three timelines. And in distinct states the protagonists is in following these people (Bryant, 2002).

This chapter has demonstrated that non-linear or fractured narratives can be traced as what Caughie (1988) called a thematic and/or stylistic code throughout a large percentage of Nolan’s films. This goes a long way to arguing that Christopher Nolan is in fact an auteur as although he utilises a typical noir convention in the flashback as film academic Allan Cameron (2009) states, Nolan “goes beyond the classical deployment of flashback, offering a series of disarticulated narrative pieces, often arranged in radically achronological ways via flashforwards, overt repetition or a destabilization of the relationship between present and past”. To further the debate and make it appear more conclusive this study will now investigate the role of the ‘anti-hero’ which is largely apparent in a considerable number of Christopher Nolan’s films. This convention will now be discussed in the following chapter.

Chapter 7 – The Morally Dubious Protagonist

More Than a Hero

As stated earlier, academic David Watt (2002), claims that one of most recognisable motifs of film noir is that of the ‘anti-hero’ and it is a convention which is also easily identifiable in the work of Christopher Nolan. Watt (2002) also states that characteristics of an anti hero have made both the character type and film noir popular “through the existentialist ideologies and excessive dialogue related to the anti hero’s beliefs. A character’s ideology is represented through both his dialogue and mise en scene as he speaks and implies existentialist philosophies”. Utilising the words and wisdom of Watt, both the dialogue and mise en scene will be assessed within a selection of texts. These are: Memento (2000), Batman Begins (2005) and The Prestige (2006). Let’s begin with the former. As covered earlier, Memento is a psychological thriller which follows Leonard Shelby a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia, the inability to generate new memories, as he seeks revenge for the murder of his wife. As is demonstrated throughout sections of the screenplay, Leonard isn’t your typical hero as even with his disability he makes numerous judgements which are morally dubious. For instance, as noted earlier Teddy informs Leonard that his notes may be unreliable and this is clearly evident when Leonard intentionally makes an error when writing down Teddy’s license plate. He is conscious to he is in fact lying to himself and therefore knows that when he reads it later he will believe it to be the absolute truth. Since he is dependent on his “facts” he writes down, he acts upon these lies without any conflict of conscience. With this in mind, Abraham (2003) claims that “he can no longer be seen as the hero avenging his wife, but as a man on an imaginary quest designed merely to occupy his otherwise meaningless life”. This evidence has been corroborated by Blake (2002) who argues that because Leonard’s memory is constantly being erased, he becomes a blank slate upon which his persona and actions can be created. By telling Teddy that, “Facts, not memories: that’s how you investigate” (Nolan, 2001, p.135) he displays his dubious opinion that all of his facts are to be absolute truth, even though we discover that he creates his own truths. Here is another possibly instance in which Leonard has intentionally lied to himself:

TEDDY: Look at your police file. It was complete when I gave it to you. Who took the twelve pages out?

LEONARD: You, probably.

TEDDY: No, you took them out.

LEONARD: Why would I do that?

TEDDY: To set yourself a puzzle you won’t ever solve. You know how many town, how many guys called James G.? Or John G.? Shit, Leonard, I’m a John G.

LEONARD: Your name’s Teddy.

TEDDY: My mother calls me Teddy. I’m John Edward Gammell. Cheer up, there’s lots of John G.’s for us to find. All you do is moan. I’m the one that has to live with what you’ve done. I’m the one that has to put it all together. You just wander around playing detective. You’re living a dream, kid. A dead wife to pine for and a sense of purpose to your life. A romantic quest which you wouldn’t end even if I wasn’t in the picture (Nolan, 2001, p.222).

In many ways this is in fact the key speech of the film; it contains the very crux of Nolan’s argument and Leonard’s experience. His own recollections are subject to change, knowing that he will forget that he has falsified evidence. As Guy Pearce says, “Leonard ‘operates almost like a synapse really, just a nerve ending that’s responding to everything around him and trying to maintain some sort of control” (Mottram, 2002, p.47). There is also the influence of Carrie Anne Moss as the classic, femme fatale character as Nolan states “she becomes this symbol of male paranoia. He’s trying to retain facts, information, while knowing he’s going to fall straight back into this relationship, because she’s going to tell him things he wants to hear” (Roberts, 2000). This is an example of Leonard almost creating his own clues and this is exacerbated by his constant reliance on photographs. His body contains the tattoo ‘Camera never lies’ which is a complete assertion as whatever the Polaroid’s status as a tangible possession, they are primarily vessels of information that carry little in the way of inalienable factual weight. To borrow an observation from John Mottram offers the observation that the protagonist is driven by this desire for revenge, yet forever adrift in the present, Leonard must remember the past in a way that “not only continually motivates him towards his goal but simultaneously banishes from his mind his own culpability from his past. As Teddy says ‘I guess I can only make you believe the things you want to be true, huh?'” (2000, p.48).

Director Christopher Nolan also notes that it isn’t merely Leonard’s own actions which influence the audience’s interpretation of him, in fact the reversal of the plot sequence completely alters the response the spectator is expected to have to the film’s protagonist:

It’s not that it doesn’t work forwards, because it does. Technically it works, logically it works. It just becomes unbearable to watch. It becomes this horrible portrayal of this guy being abused and abused. The only way to get around that is to prevent the audience from seeing that abuse until much later in the film. People still seem to sympathise with him, they still want to view him in the way he views himself, which is as this kind of heroic avenging figure (North, 2009).

Nevertheless despite Nolan’s view that the audience want to view him as a ‘hero’, you cannot dispute the fact that Leonard is driven by revenge. It is this attribute which leads to the character being classified as the ‘anti-hero’. “As Natalie tells Leonard: ‘Even if you get your revenge, you won’t remember it. You won’t even know it’s happened.’ Leonard’s snappy is a desperate moment of self-defence. ‘The world doesn’t disappear when you close your eyes, does it? My actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. My wife deserves vengeance, and it doesn’t make a difference whether I know about it’. As he later (or earlier) explains to Teddy, in an echo of this conversation, he’s living just for revenge, ‘That’s what keeps me going. It’s all I have.’ (Mottram, 2002 p.38) One of the most poignant scenes in Nolan’s films is the shot of Leonard at the refinery burning his wife’s things, his remaining mementoes of a life he once had with her. “He murmurs: ‘Probably tried this before. Probably burned truckloads of the stuff. Can’t remember to forget you’. It’s a devastating line that encapsulates his dilemma. His feelings permanently on hold, his last memory – he believes – is of his wife dying” (Mottram, 2002, p.47) Therefore forever grief-stricken, his faulty memory is unable to accumulate new experience as part of the healing process. This is clearly illustrated when Natalie tries to tear up a photograph, destroying the evidence; Lenny immediately tells her that you have to burn them, as if he has burned a lot of photographs of his victims in his time.

This theme of guilt within the protagonist’s psyche is one which is also shared within Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006). When asked about the tone of the film Nolan responded thusly, “I think on thematic level the film says something about the role of guilt in defining morality or suggesting morality. Both characters in some sense have transgressed to cause their reacting to guilt”(Abram, 2003). This is a theme which is also shared within Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005) when Bruce Wayne feels continually responsible for the death of his parents. Nolan claims that this theme of guilt offers an element of grittiness to the protagonist; he argues that “It’s not glamorous. In so far as it has a noir-ish quality to it, it’s not a caricatured version of that” (Nolan, 2005). The similarities between Leonard and Bruce Wayne largely evident in this quotation from Nolan himself who debates that:

What’s darkest about Bruce Wayne is not that he’s utterly enraged. Or at least it’s not just that. He is driven by rage; very primal and negative impulses. But it’s also that there is this hollow quality to him. He’s damaged goods. You experience that trauma at the beginning. For my money, having Christian do this part… I think it relates a lot to Patrick Bateman. When Rachel touches his face at the end and says ‘This is your mask’, you kind of believe that. Christian manages to make him funny and charming, and there is a good sense of humour there, but you never forget what happened to him as a child. It hangs in everything he does. There’s a burnt-out quality, in moral terms, that relates to Leonard (Nolan, 2005).