Born on the 30th of July 1970 Christopher Nolan is one of the worldwide known directors who has 26 Oscar nominations and 7 awards for his films. He started creating short films in his youth, by the time he was 28 he had his first breakthrough of a film called “following” This made back over 400 times the budget of the film. Since then Nolan has created several Thrillers including DC’s Batman, well known for their success at the box office.
Nolan’s narratives in the Batman trilogy include flashbacks to reveal more about the character’s life and their motives for character’s actions another way Nolan reveals more about a character is by shifting the point of view to other characters. In “The Dark Knight” the point of view switches between Batman, the Joker, Harvey Dent and other key characters. This effects the narrative because it shows other character’s views on what is happening in the film rather than only the protagonist’s view.
Nolan uses often has his protagonist have a psychological disorder where they feel guilt and blame themselves for something that happened in their past or they want revenge for a crime committed against them in their past. For example, Bruce Wayne/Batman wants revenge for his parent’s death when he was a young boy, so he now fights crime to try and stop criminals ruining someone else’s life. Also Robert Angier from “the Prestige” wants to avenge the death of his wife and that drives him on in the film. Dom Cobb from “Inception” is haunted by his dead wife as he is unable to let her go, as he blames himself for her death. By the end of Nolan’s films, the protagonist has less redeeming factors which makes the audience begin to question the protagonist’s actions.
The settings that Nolan often uses are often edited so the background is darker. For example, the dark knight trilogy is filmed in Chicago and LA but in post-production the city is edited so that the city has elements from New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, then also tinted it so it is darker making Gotham city more desolate and dystopian making the tone of the film darker. In other films such as Inception, contemporary buildings are added so that Nolan can film more outside rather than having a green screen and a CGI background as he says “outside gives more realism to the movie”.
Nolan uses camerawork to show the importance of a character and their status at the time of the shot. For example, in the Dark Knight trilogy, Batman is often in a low shot to show his superiority but when he is almost beaten or has a lower status to the other characters in the scene then the shot used on him is a high shot to show his weakness. Nolan will often use panning shots during longer monologs to keep the audience’s attention so the picture isn’t always the same. He also tends to use more practical effects in his films rather than CGI as he believes that it makes the film more realistic. However, Nolan will use CGI to edit backgrounds or scenes where practical effects aren’t possible. For example, when a character is stabbed, the item used will be CGI so the cast aren’t hurt in the production of the film. Nolan is also known for revolving the camera around one of the film’s antagonists showing that that character should be the centre of attention.
The music used in Nolan’s films is often done by the composer, Hans Zimmer who did the famous song “Time” which was used in Inception. Hans Zimmer is well known for his use of instruments to slowly increase pace, volume and adding instruments along the way making the scene that it is used in tense as it builds suspense which is key aspect of the Thriller Genre. By using Hans Zimmer to compose music for his films he also gets the benefit of having a recognisable theme song for each film which people can easily recognise even when not watching the film. Hans also composed for Interstellar and the Dark Knight trilogy. However, in “The Dark Knight” Hans Zimmer teamed up with James Newton-Howard so they could compose different music for the Joker and Two-face so each antagonist got a different style of music making them more independent. In The Dark Knight film Hans Zimmer composes the music for the bank robbery scene where the music builds up then stops and starts again putting the audience on the edge of their seats and waiting to know what happens with the music at the front wheel driving the scene.
Anthony Edwards
