Christopher Nolan

Media Studies | Ben Land

Christopher NolanChristopher Nolan was born on July 30th 1970. He is currently married to his wife Emma Thomas and lives in Los Angeles, California. Nolan started filming at the age of 7 and is famous for his two short films ‘Tarantella’, ‘Larceny’, ‘Doodlebug’ and the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy- which has set a record as having the highest weekend gross at $158 million. Nolan’s movies often focus on a male protagonist coming to grips with his past by overcoming challenges; this can be seen in Batman and Interstellar.

Fun Fact:

Nolan doesn’t like to use mobile phones or an email address. He actually prohibits the use of phones on set of his movies.

Christopher has directed Thriller films such as:

• Memento (2000)

• Batman Begins (2005)

• The Prestige (2006)

• The Dark Knight (2008)

• Inception (2010)

• Dark Knight Rises (2012)

• Interstellar (2014)

Nolan has won 122 awards. He has been nominated for 3 Oscars and 163 other awards including the ‘Golden Movie Of The Year’ and ‘Movie Of The Year’.


The Dark Knight

Basic Detail:

The Dark Knight (2008) was directed, co-written and produced by Christopher Nolan. The film was nominated for 8 awards and won 2 which consisted of ‘Best Sound Editing’ due to its immense reproduction of the Batmobile’s engine sound. It was also recognized to be very successful due to its special effects and editing which really bought the classic comic book action to life. It was made in 2008 with a budget of $185 million a small sum to the $1.005 billion it made.

Plot:

In the Dark Knight Gotham is overrun with new evil mobs led by The Joker. The White Knight- Harvey Dent sets out to repress this evil but by the end become another antagonist Batman has to face.

Just as Batman and Lieutenant James Gordan successfully take most criminals off the street The Joke, a sadistic criminal mastermind, appears creating a new wave of confusion and chaos. Eventually Batman’s fight with The Joker ends up in the death of Rachel, Batman’s beloved, which creates the fight that much more personal thus forcing Batman to go against everything he stands for (minimal violence) in order to defeat The Joker.

Review:

“A sound like a batgloved fist smacking into a cupped palm is what this film delivers: only deafeningly amplified and clarified with crisp, digital precision. It is the sound of all other recent super-hero movies getting their asses well and truly kicked. The Dark Knight is strange, dark, grandiose and mad; it is overlong and overhyped but hugely entertaining. In a simple, physical sense it really is huge, with cityscape sequences filmed on Imax technology, that demand to be seen on the vast Imax screen. Watching the first dizzying, vertiginous overhead shot of the glittering skyscrapers and minuscule streets, I literally forgot to breathe for a second or two, and found myself teetering forward on my seat - timidly, I had chosen one high up at the very back of the auditorium - as if about to topple into the illusory void.


The Dark Knight is the continuation of British director Christopher Nolan's reinvention of the Batman story and it takes the story up to his primal confrontation with the Joker, the villain who among the wrongdoer-gallery ranged against Batman is first among equals: here leading an unspeakable cabal of wiseguys. The caped crusader himself (although this camp designation is now not used) is again played by Christian Bale, clanking around in a kind of titanium-lite exoskeleton and making use of a heavy-duty Batmobile so macho and military-looking it makes a Humvee look like the kind of Prius driven by Gok Wan. Otherwise, he bops around town on a brutal motorbike with wheels the size of rubber boulders, cape fluttering in the slipstream.

The Joker is played, tremendously, by the late Heath Ledger. His great grin, though enhanced by rouge, has evidently been caused by two horrid slash-scars to the corners of his mouth, and his whiteface makeup is always cracking and peeling off, perhaps due to the dried remnants of tears, making him look like some self-hating Pagliaccio of crime, sweating backstage after the latest awful spectacular. Ledger has a weird collection of tics and twitches, kinks and quirks; his tongue darts, lizard-like, around his mouth, a little like Frankie Howerd, or perhaps Graham Kerr, the galloping gourmet of 1970s television.

Batman is still a reasonably novel figure in Gotham city as the action begins. They still refer to this dubious vigilante with a retro-sounding definite article: he is "the Batman". And there is a new, conventional crime fighter in town: the handsome, dashing district attorney Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, a man who believes that the rule of law has to be upheld by a democratically accountable person, not some shadowy figure of the night. To the chagrin of Batman and his far-from-mild-mannered alter ego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, Harvey is dating the love of Batman's life: legal eagle Rachel Dawes, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Gary Oldman plays Lt Gordon, before his historic promotion to "Commissioner" status. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman provide droll performances as Wayne's ancillary staff, his butler Alfred and his Q-like costume designer, Lucius Fox.

There are some really exhilarating set-pieces, especially the one that kickstarts the proceedings: Nolan starts off with a high-tension, high-anxiety bank raid, carried out by a dodgy crew all in Joker masks, all whispering among themselves about the crazy guy in clown makeup who hired them to do the job. Why isn't he there personally? Wait - is he there personally?

With some big masculine face-offs, and a high-speed convoy scene, Nolan appears to have imbibed the influence of Michael Mann, and a sequence in Hong Kong has a touch of the Infernal Affairs movies. Various debates about Jack Bauer/24-type torture methods appear to show modern Hollywood discovering, if not a conscience exactly, then a certain self-consciousness. But the film is better at pure action - particularly one awe-inspiring chase scene Nolan later contrives between Batman on his bike and the Joker at the wheel of a enormous truck. The conclusion to this sequence had the audience in a semi-standing crouch of disbelief.


Perhaps the most bizarre moment comes when the Joker has evidently abducted some unfortunate from the local psychiatric hospital to "impersonate" Batman's lost love: this man does appear to resemble Maggie Gyllenhaal: a joke of considerable malice, sophistication and lack of taste.

Nolan has made an enormously profitable smash with the Batman franchise, but at the risk of sounding priggish, I can't help thinking it may be a bit of a career blind-alley for the talented director who gave us brilliant and disquieting movies like Following (1998) and Memento (2000), whose inventions still linger in the mind. The Dark Knight's massive box-office success has surely given Nolan the means to write his own cheque, and in addition something sweeter still - clout. I hope that he will use it to cultivate movies that are smaller and more manoeuvrable than that great armoured Batmobile.”

-TheGuardian

In short “There are some really exhilarating set-pieces, especially the one that kickstarts the proceedings.”

The Genre:

The Dark Knight fits the Thriller genre because it has a complex storyline accompanied with complex characters. To add to this in the opening scene there is a plot twist (one of the goons is actually The Joker)-this makes the plot more mysterious making it interesting for the audience.

The Dark Knight also uses many conventions such as diegetic and non-diegetic sound. An example would be the Batmobile. Its engine is diegetic, because the characters can hear it, but the soundtrack in the background is mon-diegetic, because the characters cannot hear it-this is used in order to add suspense to the atmosphere.


Close Study:

Mice en Scene

The use of Batman’s dark costume goes against Thriller stereotypes because the protagonist is often in white, or other bright colours and the antagonist in black. Batman however is in black and The Joker is in brighter colours. This shows the audience that Batman is not a ‘hero’ but will do anything necessary in order to defeat the villains in Gotham. Because of this the character of Batman is able to do dark, brutal things, like defeating a mob with his bare hands, and the audience won’t be surprised. To add to that it adds a twist to the expected and challenges the ‘hero’ view as it implies there is no such thing as a ‘hero’ as everyone has a dark side.

The bright clothes worn by The Joker make the audience more likely to trust him. This is because we are used to the protagonist wearing bright clothes so we think he may have good in him. For example when he makes a deal with Batman the audience believe he will keep his word. This is key to The Jokers character as he makes many tricks and deceptions that would not make sense if the audience didn’t believe him.

Camera

In the scene where Batman infiltrates a skyscraper I China in order to kidnap an antagonist a close up can be seen when he shoots a timed explosive onto a window. This allows the audience to see how much time Batman has to steal the antagonist making the situation a lot tenser.


Editing

During the fight scene, when Batman is disarming the guards in the skyscraper, slow paced editing is used in order to make the fight easier to follow. This is so that the audience are not held in disbelief that Batman could singlehandedly take out four armed guards as they are able to easily see that it was possible and he did do it thus making the film more believable and therefore more enjoyable.

Sound

The overhead sound of the plane being flown by a fellow protagonist makes the audience aware that something will happen and that Batman has a clever, exciting plan to help him with his escape. To add to that it shows the audience that Batman has the situation under control, as he is in a closed off room with many guns pointing at him, and that he will survive.

Education

Christopher Nolan