Over the recent weeks, I've been reading The Nolan
Variations book by film author Tom Shone, which includes interviews that he conducted
with the director, giving us a lot of information on Christopher Nolan's beginnings, his filmmaking
style and the overall process.
My last two videos in this series focussed on how Christopher Nolan built a
fascination over being a director and how he orientated the audience with the ideas
he wanted to approach.
In this video, I'm going to be reflecting on the third chapter of the book and focussing
more specifically the director's thoughts towards fighting time, with references to
Memento.
But before I get into it, if you want to see more updates and videos on the work of directors
like Christopher Nolan, alongside further videos on the Nolan Variations book, then
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But without further ado, let's dive into how Christopher Nolan and his early fascination
with time.
So we begin this new chapter in the Nolan Variations by transitioning from the previous
video essay which was based on how the director orientated his audience to the ideas
he wanted to implement.
We discussed how Nolan wanted to challenge the audience, but we also learnt that the
filmmaker was trying to work out how he would do that in a unique way.
Well, in chapter 3 entitled "Time", we begin to see the early transitioning into the director's
first film, Memento, and how he started building the focus through orientation that we have
seen develop throughout his career thus far.
In the beginning of this chapter, Nolan references a real story in which him and his brother
Jonathan Nolan failed to recognise the true details
of a violent situation that they witnessed.
Jonathan Nolan expressed that he thought he was present at this memory and Christopher
Nolan stated that he couldn't remember if his brother was actually there.
This leads into the formula of Memento, a uniquely structured neo-noir with scenes that
run in reverse order, each one ending where the last began.
It also derived from his brother's short film and the key difference that the feature film
version holds is that it realises how vulnerable Leonard's condition would make him and how
he could be exploited by others.
Unlike Following, which he wrote in straightforward fashion on his father's typewriter and then
re-organised afterwards, Memento was written straight through, so Nolan could experience
it as Leonard does.
As we said in the last video, Nolan wants to challenge the traditional point of view,
but create one which is relatable and convincing at the same time.
In the Nolan Variations interview for this chapter, he says, "I wrote the script totally
from Leonard's point of view.
I would put myself in his position, and start examining and questioning my own process
of memory, purely subjectively, and the choices you make about what to remember and what not
to remember.
Once you start doing that it gets a little tricky.
The systems that Leonard employs were a very sincere and categorical response to 'How do
I live my life?'.
Leonard Systematizes this and that's very much the way the script was written, extrapolating
from my own memory process".
This all comes back to exploring what is crucial about Nolan's fascination with film and in
particular, time.
He goes on to say that "It's back to this thing about fighting time.
You're trying to break the tyranny of the projector, which is the ultimate linearity".
Unlike Following, he wrote Memento the way the audience would watch it.
You have to be under the illusion that Leonard Shelby is under for the film to be bearable.
It's using the Noir framework to make it acceptable for a structure to take place, and that structure
takes hold of the audience as they follow Shelby weaving in and out of his
own memories.
Along with challenging the perspective through time, he also kept familiarity with the trademarks
of the genre from the femme fatale, to the rhythms of character and
plot development.
But while using these recognisable traits, it was telling the story backwards that became
the eureka moment that Nolan needed, withholding the information from the audience the same
way it is withheld from the character.
Nolan explains that it was from this moment on that the idea for memento poured out of
him, as he wrote script pages in motels in Southern California, relating to the half
of the movie that is in fact set entirely within the confines of a single motel room.
He had completed the script and shown it to Emma Thomas, his wife and producer, who Nolan
points out as crucial in giving him a response.
"She's very, very clear on what the audience are capable of taking in and when you're just
spinning your wheels".
Another eureka moment came following this, that had Nolan thinking... "well, Leonard
has already done it, and of course, that's the key and drive for the end of the movie".
And when filming came along, the film was shot in a variety of locations in the LA area
from a dinner in Burbank, to a derelict refinery in Long Beach and a courtyard motel
with prison-like bars on its entrances.
Nolan was in search of gloomy locations to fit his noir story, giving an almost overcast
and diffused sensibility.
Something that feels like it is operating within the constructs of the character's memory
and perceiving of time, with all the elements of the film fitting that tone.
Along with Cinematographer Wally Pfister, who Nolan had met at the Sundance
film festival while showing Following, Nolan had Memento shot on a Panavision Gold II camera
with anamorphic lenses, a format usually used for epic landscapes rather than
claustrophic thrillers like the film he made.
It was almost as if he was setting the frameworks for the bigger films he would
make down the line, which would still encapsulate similar themes and usages of time.
But the main reason this setup was used was for a focus on Guy Pearce's face with a
shallow depth of field, allowing for Nolan to create a physical connection to Leonard
Shelby.
Creating this intimate feel between the audience and
the character was crucial for the director and also a fitting comparison
to the films showcase of time and memory, which he primarily deals with.
Leonard's sense of memory is his only proof that he exists,
the one slim reason holding his identity in place.
It's a feel of the world that the film presents through his viewpoint and the projector allows
the audience to witness that through a projected period of time and make
their own mind up surrounding the events that take place.
The smaller details in the film and particular scenes only elevate this effect.
Each scene begins the same way, with a distinct sound that allows us to identify it, whether
it be Leonard putting the clip into the gun or Teddy knocking at the door
to the motel.
But after Memento's production was complete, it was time for Nolan to screen the film and
try and get it on the circuit.
A lot of producers passed on it but every so slowly Nolan would get a reaction and after
the time of building that, the film was eventually picked up.
Nolan describes the screenings of the film as himself listening to the rustles and the
coughs of viewers in almost silence.
But when the cut to black ending came around that Nolan has done so greatly in many movies
that followed, he got the reaction he wanted.
He describes viewers being in shock at what the film meant before seconds later giving
a standing ovation.
It's that essence that time in cinema can have on an audience that
makes them think about something a little deeper and also make Nolan continue to be
fascinated over its concept and effect.
It's what Tom Shone calls in this chapter, "a very
Nolanesque emphasis on a very Nolanesque moment.
Not the standing ovation itself, but the few ticking seconds of silence before the applause,
when his fate still hung in the balance".
This relates to how Nolan structures his films and uses time in them to get the effect out
of the audience themselves.
Many directors have played fast and loose with
chronology in their films of course like Orson Welles, Steven Soderberg and Quentin Tarrantino.
But no director of the modern era has laid such systematic siege to what he
calls the "tyranny of the projector".
Following has three different timelines and cuts back and forth between them.
Memento cuts back and forth between two-time lines,
one running forward, the other backward.
The prestige cuts between four different timelines.
Inception cuts between five, of varying speeds, where 5 minutes asleep in the real
world equals to an hour in the dream world.
And with his latest film, TENET, we follow a protagonist through a period of time before
coming backward through that same period, with the perception of time itself in particular
sequences, played backwards.
Tom Shone says that "whole lifetimes can play out its surges and slippages, constrictions
and convergences.
Time is Nolan's great antagonist, his lifelong nemesis.
He seems almost to take it personally".
And Nolan is quoted saying that he does take it personally.
"It's terrible to say so, but your relationship with time changes over time - the flow of
time.
My view of it is very different now than it was when I started out.
It's certainly more of an emotional issue now because time is accelerating for me.
My kids are growing up and I'm getting older.
I'm fascinated by the notion that we all feel the passage of time to be unfair to us, and
yet, we are all ageing at exactly the same rate".
And yet this also relates to the way a film relates differently between a filmmaker and
their audience.
Losing 3 or 4 years to creative projects that disappear in a couple of hours, film directors
experience the flow of time at a different rate.
They have years and years to plan, to figure out what it is they are going to
put in front of them, and then they have roughly two hours to catch it as it flows by.
So to Christopher Nolan, the interesting factor is how movies work using time.
He says that "It's very indefinable.
The different elements of the narrative run at different rates, but you accept it completely.
There's kind of a dream logic.
In that sense, film can be very dreamlike.
It has a relationship to our own dreams that is difficult to articulate, but you're hoping
to make connections and find things that are hidden from you all the while you are living
your life or being in the world.
I think dreams do that for us and I think films do that for us".
Memento is of course the ultimate glass watch, driven less by an urge to subvert or deconstruct
than by an urge toward radical transparency.
Nolan continues in the closing pages, saying that he "finds the idea of not being able
to trust your own mind very creepy.
The shinning is very much about that.
I think Memento speaks to the moral relativism
of film, which is very good at getting an audience to accept different moral codes than
they would in everyday life.
In Memento, you have a revenge fantasy in which the character
cannot remember his own revenge.
You have the internal set of ethics that are largely, in cinema, defined by the point of
view.
Then you have the experience - usually, after you've seen the film - of reassembling your
mind and going... what are the ethics of that if you step out of the guy's point of view?
Memento is a film that tries to do that at various times within the film and tries to
make that tension a part of the test".
In other words, the film was made to be discussed and debated over.
And this, of course, all comes back to Nolan thoughts and fascination on time.
How he challenges the perspective of the audience using it but also challenges
himself to understand something better that cannot be fully understood.
If anything, his latest film TENET teaches us that although we may not be able to understand
it, using the medium of cinema, we can still feel it.
But they were the main details that Christopher Nolan and Tom shone gave in their interview
for the third chapter of the Nolan Variations.
I personally really found it interesting to see how Nolan has essentially
applied his feelings towards time throughout the course of his career and filmography.
TENET is of course the culmination of that fascination and it will interesting to see
how he applies similar concepts in future movies.
I would totally recommend buying The Nolan Variations if you are a fan of Nolan and
I will link it down below in the description if you want to buy a copy.
But let me know down below what you think towards Christopher Nolan and how he implemented
time in his early career, alongside the comments he made
in this interview.
We continue to learn loads about him as a person alongside being a great filmmaker,
and I can't wait to read all of your thoughts on what was said.
For more updates and content on the work of directors like Christopher Nolan, then don't
forget to subscribe to the channel and turn on your notifications.
Also if you enjoyed this video remember to leave a like rating.
I will be continuing this series on the Nolan Variations book every month with a video on
each chapter, breaking down the different elements of his career and filmmaking style,
so look out for whenever I post or update you on this content.
But anyway I hope you guys enjoyed it, I've been Cortex and as
always make some noise.