I decided to do my formal film study on director Christopher Nolan. When I was younger I had seen the film The Prestige and Batman Begins. These came out in 2005 and 2006 so I was about ten years old when I went to see these films. I had no idea they were Nolan films because I had no idea about films back then. All I knew was that I really enjoyed these movies at the time. When the Dark Knight came out, that's when I found out that he had directed those films that I had seen and Memento (which I had seen a little bit after I had seen Inception). But once I had realized who the director was, I was amazed by his talent. So I decided to study Memento, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises.
The style of Nolan's films are very noticeable. If you watch a Nolan film, you can tell it's him. But out of these three films, I feel like TDKR (The Dark Knight Rises) and inception are closer in style than Memento. Let's start with Memento. This is Nolan's oldest film of the three and definitely had the smallest budget. Memento had an "indie" feel to it. It seemed a little grainy. The flashbacks were in black and white, during the colored scenes, the colors seemed faded. Overall, it was a dark film. A lot of close shots in Memento. Since he had a small budget for this movie, it seemed to come out that way, but for this type of movie, it seemed to work. It was a thriller where no CGI was needed. Just pure camera work and actrors. With TDKR and Inception, Christopher Nolan had a huge budget to work with. If i could describe the style of these two films in one word, the word would be massive. These two films are massive. What I mean by that is that the action is huge and when it comes to setting, he uses an enormous visual scope to portray where these characters are located. For example in TDKR, when they're in Scotland in the beginning, the setting looks beautiful and enormous. There are also a lot of air shots filming the city of Gotham. Same goes for Inception. In Inception they are in a lot of different settings, including places of their dreams, which includes a lot of CGI. But these places are shown in a grand scale. Both Memento and Inception have a non-linear story line, a common thing that Nolan likes to do in his films. Also talking about the style of these films, Nolan does a lot of fast cuts and even has people talking still while he jumps to the next scene. The technology is pretty stellar in these three films. In Memento the most important technological aspect is the editing. Because of the non-linear story line, this is crucial. I feel that cinematography in TDKR and Inception are very important just because they are grand scale films. These films portray revenge, redemption, and reality. The three R's. I feel like in these three films, the characters always have psychological problems. In Memento, the protagonist has short term memory loss. In Inception, Leonardo Dicaprio was obsessed with his wife and reality. And in TDKR, Bruce Wayne has lost everyone he's loved and feels like he owes everything to his beloved city.
The overall big thing I have seen in these films is that all his characters have an obsession. Bruce Wayne is obsessed with being Batman. In memento, he is obsessed with finding his wife's killer. And in Inception, Leo is obsessed with his wife, going back to his kids, and realizing reality. Overal Nolan's films make you think a lot.
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