Christopher Nolan doesn’t always follow the archetypal tropes of heroes and villains. Unless of course you count The Dark Knight trilogy, but we’ve already discussed that in a previous blog. With films such as Memento, Dunkirk, Interstellar, and Inception, there is a common enemy but it’s not exactly a physical threat, instead, it’s more metaphysical.
Time and space are common elements found throughout Nolan’s work, such as the backward nature of Memento, the ticking soundtrack of peril with Dunkirk, and almost literally with Interstellar as we explore both time and space.
The suspense and the anxiety are caused by these concepts and not from any explosions or monologuing megalomaniacs.
The human element is always present with the heroes, but with the villains, the emphasis is on the things outside the realm of human nature.
Christopher Nolan loves a good mystery. With the film Insomnia, you feel just as dazed and confused as Al Pacino’s protagonist, then there’s the illusionary performances of Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale in The Prestige and only just last year with Tenet we had John David Washington literally playing a character called The Protagonist. The sense of mystery is always established early on and these characters go on a journey to discover who they are. It’s a common trope that is now pretty well established in Nolan’s films.
Throughout the various films of Mr. Nolan, there’s a focus on the realism within the story. Christopher Nolan doesn’t care for fancy CGI or Visual Effects. He wants us, the audience, to feel the story and live through it. The beach scene in Dunkirk is one good example, as he places the character, Tommy, in our shoes and we live through the scene almost in real-time, with the sound effects and scope of the scene displaying a life-like version of the real events depicted in the film. The “hero” in this sense is merely a conduit for the audience. Then there are the enemies.
It’s very easy to put a human martyr-like figure in a war film, but Christopher Nolan isn’t interested in a battle between two power-hungry Men. Instead, he wants the main character to fear the impending doom and demise of his fellow soldiers. The same can be said in Interstellar. There is no particular human threat throughout the film, instead, the threat comes from knowing that time is moving fast and unpredictable against the character of Cooper, and in his search for another home planet. At the end of his films, there is always a happy resolution, but the journey that the heroes take is perilous and grounded and that’s what makes his films so engaging.
It’s odd to be making a Heroes & Villains blog without a clear black and white case of who is good and who is bad. It’s a nice change of pace and this is what makes Christopher Nolan’s films stand out above the rest.
You don’t know what to expect, with twists and turns everywhere from start to finish. In the years to come, it will be interesting to see how far he can push the notion of time and space in his films, but there will always be the main character forced to reckon with the consequences of these metaphysical threats.
Thanks for reading today’s blog!
Alex Murray, the Head of Eyesight Productions
コメント