Christopher Nolan: The Godfather

A Tribute to Christopher Nolan on his 43rd Birthday...

Christopher Nolan has inspired me so much that I even get the dreams related to stories of his movies and my half remembered latest dream was a little related to "Inception", featuring a dream within a dream.

With my own experiences and after having a few discussions with some of my friends and some acquaintances, I have found that after watching the movies of Nolan, u start to think beyond the box, beyond the normal imagination and you become more optimistic than ever.

When I got to know about his upcoming movie-"Interstellar", I was very much excited and a lot of questions started striking in my mind.

So one day I was thinking about what could be the possible script of the movie, which of course no one else can even come close to the original script but still I was trying to figure it out. I was listening to the tracks of Hans Zimmer, which I sometimes do when I think something curiously, and it was the "Time" soundtrack from the Inception movie and I was listening to it again and again.

At that moment, I started developing a story in my mind which was related to Interstellar Missions and Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. It was completely a science fiction story which involved my education, my interests and my family and it seemed to be a very good story with an awesome plot and it was very much realistic, not just that, it increased my confidence to a great level.

I'm still working on it and in future I wish to see a feature film based on it...

In his college years Nolan made two short films, Tarantella and Larceny and later he made his third short Doodlebug, about a man chasing an insect with a shoe around a flat, only to discover on killing it that it was a miniature of himself. 

Nolan has made eight features in thirteen years, which apparently is quite few, in comparison with many other filmmakers. The movies are: Following (in black and white), Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception and The Dark Knight Rises.

All his movies are critically acclaimed as well as loved by the audience for the typical non-linear type story telling, the screenplay, story, acting performances, and of course the direction-all being the top notch.

An interesting thing about Christopher Nolan is that he started to do films starring his Lego figures when he was only seven years of age, with his Super 8 mm camera. It really proves that a path into the film industry can start out very basically, out of almost nothing.

Following

Following is the story of a writer who develops a fondness for the following people to get inspiration for his book until he meets a thief named 'Cobb'. 

Shot in a non-linear style, it is a typical trademark Nolan movie with such twists that are very difficult to anticipate. Following was shot on a very tight budget, only on Sundays as most of the actors in the movie had other full time jobs.

Memento

Memento, follows (in reverse) a guy who loses his short term memory. It is one of my favorite movies, it is incredibly detailed with an awesome plot. It takes a genius to make such a story, at some points it gets just hard to keep track where the movie is headed. Once you watch the entire movie, you will definitely rewind to various scenes to figure out your understanding of Memento and expect you did not get it wrong or miss out anything.

Nolan has done a stunning job of telling a story in fragments, giving the audience a sense of how Leonard (Guy Pierce) must feel.

The movie can be very confusing at times, but it is never distracting or unpleasant. The sense of confusion only heightens the tension and suspicion we feel as the movie progresses.

Watch Memento, and then watch it again, to catch the things you missed the first time.

Insomnia

This is the third feature directed by Nolan and it arguably holds the most significance to his career.

Until Insomnia, he hadn't really worked with any big-name actors and it's fair to say that his ability to create grounded, intriguing pictures wasn't enough for Warner Brothers to let Nolan decode the fate of Batman.

Insomnia was a stepping-stone needed to launch Nolan into his massive celebrity.

Out of all the films Nolan has made, this one was easily the most intense one. Insomnia features some beautiful landscapes, powerful acting with Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Its a movie every fan of Nolan should watch, as well as people into detective mysteries, or Pacino fans.

The Prestige

Here comes the mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.

The Prestige was a novel written by Christopher Priest that Nolan adapted into a film with the same title.

Priest, who wrote the novel watched the film three times since 2007. His reactions were, "Well, holy S***," then "God, I like that," and finally "Oh, I wish I would have thought of that."

Full of twists and turns, The Prestige is set against the backdrop of turn of the century London.

I was glad to see Nicola Tesla presented as such a genius in the film, far ahead of his time and Tesla's brilliance is a strong theme underpinning the film.

He makes a classic statement in the film. Something to the effect that "you can only make a revolutionary discovery in a lifetime. If you go beyond that, then you will be shunned."

I wonder how many people even imagined the possibility of Tesla inventing the technology depicted in the film. Certainly the point was made that man is prone to abuse the technology he is given.

Inception

Inception is a movie so made, that no one till date has been able to figure it out completely. 

There are many blogs/sites on the internet trying to explain the meaning of the movie-the spinning top in the end, the dream levels, the dreamer and the subconscious, etc.

Ariadne asks Cobb "why it is so important you to dream?", to which he replies "In my dreams we are still together" and then Ariadne realizes that these are not just dreams, these are memories...

The above conversation is very close to me as I can relate it to myself. Observations such as these, make Nolan an incredible thinker. The whole gravity shifting sequence, the dream levels, the kick to come up the dream levels and eventually wake up from the dream, the process of inception makes the audience to ponder over the movie for days or weeks or even months to follow, In fact Christopher Nolan is performing inception on us throughout the movie.

The Batman Trilogy

"Because he's the hero Gotham deserves,

 but not the one it needs now.

 So we'll hunt him because he can take it.

 Because he's not our hero.

 He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector.

 A dark Knight."

                              
                        - Jim Gordon

Almost many of the movie lovers must have seen Christopher Nolan's Batman movies by now. Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises are perhaps three of the best superhero movies of all time. They are so different from other superhero movies, that they seem to be in the wrong genre sometimes. This is my favorite trilogies of all time.

It goes to show that superhero movies don't always have to be typical summer flicks, which you watch, enjoy and forget. Some movies are unforgettable, you can watch them hundreds of times.

I would say that the greatness of a movie can be measured by how much the audiences discuss it after the movie has ended. If a movie stays with you after you have left the theater  you can be assured that it affected you in some way. And if cinema can effect you, it is great.

The Batman trilogy is still being discussed. Nolan crafted a trilogy that got critical acclaim as well as audience adulation. This is the rarest things for a movie to achieve.

I have watched this trilogy countless times and analyzed it to the best of my ability.

Batman's ultimate challenge is to recognize that it's not what he owes to the people of Gotham that matters, but what he owes to himself. Batman has been with me since I was a child, whether I understood his turmoil or not, and I cant imagine that any comic book film adaptation can or will match Nolan's trilogy.

Interstellar

Interstellar will be coming to our solar system on 7th November 2014.

This is a gravitational wave movie based on a screenplay by Kip Thorne, a longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan.

Science fiction at its best: Based on actual science, this movie will be an exploration of physicist Kip Thorne's theories of gravity fields, wormholes, and several hypotheses that Albert Einstein was never able to prove.

Exact plot details remain a closely guarded secret but we do know that the story moves around a group of scientists travelling through a wormhole into another dimension and that time travel may be a factor.

This movie is set to push the minds of the audience to the limit with it's script being influenced by the physicist, Kip Thorne.

Conclusion

Christopher Nolan is a man whose work should be highly appreciated, and deserves all the respect it already gets. Typical for his films are fast cuts, and that they usually starts showing parts of the end. Some look at his films as confusing and lacking emotions, but I consider most of them excellent intellectual pieces of artwork. If you haven't seen some of these films you should definitely give them a try...