CHRISTOPHER NOLAN – AN ANALYSIS

BY KIRA MARGENOUT

THE DARK KNIGHT – TYPICAL NARRATIVES

• Business man Bruce Wayne's alter ego, vigilante hero Batman, patrols the streets of the city of Gotham to help its citizens from an evil villain called the Joker who has a personal vendetta against Batman and will stop at nothing to get his sadistic revenge.

THE DARK KNIGHT - CHARACTERS• Bruce Wayne / Batman – His character is portrayed with an air of mystery and misery due to his past

pains from losing his parents which pushed him towards his life of a vigilante and crime fighter. He is constantly shown to be in the dark and troubled with inner turmoil about his path to make the city a better place.

• The Joker – The audience is given very little information on the character of the Joker which adds to his already wary and disturbing portrayal, as he is shown as not only being mentally unstable but also a very credible threat to the city of Gotham and Batman’s and his friends futures.

• Harvey Dent / Two Face – This character changes throughout the film from a hero into a villain, as shown by his most famous quote ‘You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.’ Which also works as a metaphor to show how the city is slowly deteriorating under the influence of crime and the Jokers oppression.

THE DARK KNIGHT - SETTING

• The city of Gotham is constantly portrayed in a dark and menacing way to further show how the influence of crime has darkened the morality of the not only the people of Gotham, but it has also bled into the physical building and architecture.

• Bruce Wayne’s Batcave is a contrast to the intimidating and shadowy figure that Batman represents as it is illuminated by bright white lights and different shades of light grey which shows an inner conflict between Bruce Wayne’s ideologies. On one hand, he wants to protect the city and what is important to him, but on the other he has to commit crimes that go outside the law to achieve the peace he wants.

THE DARK KNIGHT - MUSIC

• Batman’s voice is used to create suspense as it adds mystery and suspicion to his already shady character. The difference between Bruce Wayne’s voice and Batman’s is that it’s lower and more gravelly which not only hides his identity but also shows a clear division between the two characters and how they act and sound, as one remains in the light and the other in the dark.

• The dark knight also uses music to build suspense, one scene where this is used is when Batman has to decide who to save, Harvey Dent or Rachel, the music in the background, mainly composed of strings and brass slowly builds into a crescendo to reflect the suspense and the impending disaster.

THE DARK KNIGHT - CINEMATOGRAPHY

• The film takes advantage of cutting and panning to create suspense and unease in the audience, one example would be when Batman is chasing the Joker at the end of the film, and it’s the climax of the chase, the camera is constantly cutting to and from a close up of Batman’s face to a medium long shot of the Joker to show the two contrasts between the characters.

INTERSTELLAR – TYPICAL NARRATIVE

• An ex-fighter pilot must choose between saving the human race to avoid their extinction and travel to far away worlds, and never seeing his children again or staying and living with his children in their last moments and doom humanity.

INTERSTELLAR - CHARACTERS• Cooper – The main character is a typical male protagonist stereotype, a single father with a troubled past

and fears that must be overcome to save his children or in this case humanity. His character is one that the audience, especially parents, are intended to sympathise with and support. His love for his children is one, if not the main character trope which sets out the rest of the film and gives hints as to how it will end.

• Murph – The daughter of the protagonist plays a crucial part in the evolution of the plot, as even when she is abandoned by her father to go and save the human race, she later is one of the main minds who solves the problems of gravity and is able to get the remainder of humanity of earth and safely to another planet, which was her father’s job to pick out. She is another character that the audience is meant to sympathise with as she was a young girl when her father left her alone.

• Professor Brand – This character changes from saviour to deceiver throughout the film as he originally promises a salvation for humanity but later turns out to be a fraud and that there was never a way for the humans left on earth to survive, which he reveals using his last breath.

INTERSTELLAR - SETTING

• The film switches between two pivotal places, earth and space, one of which is completely composed of CGI but does not fail to deliver a haunting atmosphere which causes the audience to feel as isolated as the main characters.

• While the scenes in space are usually filled with whites and bright colours which contrast with the darkness of space adding an awe inspiring element to the landscape, earth is usually painted in muted browns and plain colours, which reflects the bleak life that the last of humanity have to endure.

INTERSTELLAR - MUSIC

• The main element of the soundtrack is the use of a strong organ base which adds a sense of fear and creepiness to the atmosphere, and reaches a crescendo when tense moments take place which draws the audience’s attention to the dire situation that they are in a the danger of their mission.

• The music used on earth is far more subdued and less wary compared to the constant uneasiness the audience feels when the cameras focus on the spacecraft with Cooper on it which shows the difference in their situations.

INTERSTELLAR - CINEMATOGRAPHY

• The use of very long, or establishing shots is used liberally in the film to showcase the multiple different planets that Cooper goes to in the spacecraft in hopes of finding a viable planet for the continuation of the human race.

INCEPTION – TYPICAL NARRATIVE

• A thief of thoughts and ideas must venture into the subconscious of others minds to clear the suspicions against his name that he allegedly killed his late wife and threatened death upon his children.

INCEPTION - CHARACTERS• Dominic Cobb – Throughout the film Cobb is constantly trying to clear his name for the murder of his

late wife who killed herself after she and Cobb spent 50 years in Limbo Inception and once out of it, couldn’t tell the difference between real life and the mindscape. His troubled past unravels throughout the film which makes the audience intrigued by this aloofness towards the other characters.

• Ariadne – She functions as Cobb’s conscience through the film and is recruited to be the teams architect, in charge of creating believable mindscapes to make the dreamer believe their actually awake. She acts as a person who the audience can relate to, a person who had no prior knowledge as is learning as the audience does.

• Arthur – He is Cobb’s best friend and right hand man, and acts as the brains and the information collector about their targets. Although his past is revealed somewhat throughout the film, much of his past is still unknown, as with most other characters.

INCEPTION - SETTING

• The fact that most of the film takes place inside the mind, and therefore has no physical limitations, the concepts of the landscape are constantly changing and defying the laws of physics to make the audience more tuned in to the film and less aware of their physical surroundings.

• The most iconic scene that bends the fabric of space is when the city folds over itself and shows the possibilities of the mindscape and how powerful it is, this causes a mind shattering revelation to the audience who, up until this point, hadn’t witnessed the full power of going into a dream and into inception.

INCEPTION - MUSIC

• Music is used throughout the whole film, even in scenes when there is nothing particularly interesting happening, but the music is used to show significance or used to outline the plot of the characters and the story and to show its progression.

• In the final scenes, when everyone is coming out of inception, the music is used to create a tense atmosphere and to make the audience fear for the characters safety by using loud strings and creepy brass which enhances the audiences enthrallment

INCEPTION - CINEMATOGRAPHY

• Inception uses many long shots to showcase the exceptional work that has gone into creating the mindscape and dream world and making it believable and yet slightly off putting, which is showed through long panning shots which make the audience slightly unnerved by the perfection of the dream scape and its ability to convince people that they are awake.