Summary
- Christopher Nolan explains that he uses complex, non-linear narratives in his movies to bring back an element of mystery that television has taken away.
- The rise of home video, DVDs, and streaming platforms allow for more adventurous and dense storytelling, making complicated narratives possible and enjoyable.
- According to Nolan, the job of a filmmaker is to stay slightly ahead of the audience, creating a balance between revealing and withholding information to maintain engagement and prevent frustration.
Many of writer and director Christopher Nolan's movies feature complex, non-linear narratives, and the filmmaker now opens up about why he approaches storytelling this way. Although widely known for his work on The Dark Knight trilogy, many of Nolan's movies are mind-bending in nature. From the sleight of hand in 2006's The Prestige to the multi-layered dream worlds of Inception to the reverse entropy of Tenet, many of Nolan's movies require multiple watches to truly understand.
In a recent interview with the critically-acclaimed film Oppenheimer, Nolan addresses the complex nature of his movies. Using a line from Tenet to preface his explanation, Nolan delves into film history to convey his approach to storytelling. Check out Nolan's full comment below:
“Don’t try to understand it, just feel it. I don’t see movies in of a balance between simplicity and complexity, I think it’s really about mystery. And our expectations of films, really my whole life, but really since the 1950s, they’ve been informed by television and the expectations of television.
“And sometimes that’s unfortunate. So I often use non-chronological structures, non-linear structures. That was something that was done a lot in the silent era, in early talkies, right up until television comes along. And then television sort of imposes a more linear, a more simple approach, because of the way in which we watched television from the 1950s onwards.
“Then when home video DVD comes along and now streaming we can once again be more adventurous because you can watch something, you can stop it, you can rewind something, have a look at it. And so we can make more dense narratives, more complicated narratives.
“But ultimately, the thing about the experience in a movie theater with an audience, is it should be about mystery. You don’t want to understand the entire story right from the beginning. Otherwise, there’s nothing to unfold. And so, you know, really the film of the filmmaker, the job of the filmmaker is to try to be a little bit ahead of the audience, not too far ahead, not too far behind. When you’re behind the audience, the audience is understanding things before you’re explaining them, the audience gets very frustrated in a different way.”
Why Christopher Nolan's Complicated Movies Work So Well
While The Dark Knight trilogy is fairly straightforward narratively, many of Nolan's other works require a little bit of thinking to fully grasp. A movie like Inception, for example, which features a heist across different dimensions of subconsciousness, was the butt of many talk show monologue jokes upon its release in 2010. The complex nature of the film, however, worked in its favor for several key reasons.
While certainly not the only reason for Inception's success, the film's complexity made it a popular talking point and cultural touchstone. The different takes on the Inception ambiguous ending and the multiple dream layers made it a fun movie to revisit, with each subsequent watch uncovering new details and clues. Dunkirk is another interesting example, with Nolan choosing to tell the story of the real historical event through overlapping and interwoven timelines, creating a constantly tense atmosphere in which viewers are always on their toes.
Tenet is perhaps Nolan's most confusing movie yet, featuring characters traveling both backwards and forwards through time. A character in the film actually says, as if to the audience, "Don't try to understand it, just feel it," which is a great way to approach Nolan films more generally. Purely as an audio and visual experience, Tenet, like his other works, is stunning, and repeat watches help to flesh out additional layers. Oppenheimer is fairly straightforward, by Nolan standards, but it sounds like audiences shouldn't expect the filmmaker to stray away from making complicated movies anytime soon.
Source: HugoDécrypte/ YouTube
