Following Nolan

It is an interesting coincidence that the first six letters of Christopher Nolan’s name spells the son of god. And just like the Almighty, it seems this man, too, at present, can do no wrong.


One cannot but also help notice if deep down the surface of his latest offering Nolan has somehow depicted an inverse allegory (if such a term exists) of today’s Hollywood—a filmdom where remaking, rehashing, and recycling rule the roost. In the microcosm of Nolan’s universe that is portrayed in ‘Inception’ any foreign idea is rejected by the mind. Exactly opposite to what Hollywood is known for today. Originality seemed to have exited, stage left.


With the diminishing box-office returns of superstars such as Hanks, Cruise, Roberts, Washington and the like, Hollywood seems to have resorted to the tried and tested technique—importing from foreign shores or simply imbibing its own. Well-known classics, not-so-well-known B-flicks, TV shows, even action figures have not been spared. In such a scenario, where every other week a film that is released is actually a 're-release', one wonders what Nolan had in mind when he presented his spec script about stealing ideas for ‘Inception’ to the studio guys.

There were many who, after ‘The Dark Knight’, had exclaimed ‘What next?’ There was a tone of incredulity underlying that exclamation-cum-query. It, indeed, is beyond the dreams of most of us to even ponder upon a thought of following up a film that is almost unanimously considered the best superhero film ever made. But Nolan has succeeded. Simply because each of his films fit into his universe as seamlessly as Ledger slipped into the character of Joker.


From ‘Following’ in 1998 to ‘Inception’ 12 years later, the total of seven films that he has made fit into a pattern—a pattern that is as labyrinthine as the plots of his films. The most obvious similarity is the questioning of reality. In ‘Memento’ short-term memory loss caused Leonard (Guy Pearce) and the viewer finding the line between what’s real and what’s not starting to blur. In 'Insomnia', the protagonist suffers from the titular disorder and to solve a crime lands up at a place where the sun does not set. With loss of sleep, the grip on reality loses as well.

Widely touted as the weakest of all his films, ‘Insomnia’ had quite a few interesting aspects to it. The name of the protagonist for example—Will Dormer (Pacino). In what could have been so easily relegated to corniness in other—less confident—hands, the use of a word associated with sleep (‘dorm’ of ‘dormitory’) as part of a surname actually became some kind of a foreboding for eventual occurrences in the film.


Is it a coincidence that Leo’s character is called ‘Dom’ Cobb? Knowing that almost everything in Nolan’s universe is interlinked, chances are it most probably isn’t. However, while the first name of Pacino’s character’s name was quite benign, Leo’s character’s surname harks back to Nolan’s second film—‘Following’. In it, Alex Haw played a character named…Cobb. And his profession? He was a burglar! In ‘Following’ Cobb’s interest is in the personal belongings of his targets. What the Cobb of ‘Inception’ steals is truly personal, possibly the most personal of them all—an individual’s ideas.


The Nolan universe just completed one revolution round its axis!

Quite obviously, in a film about inimical illusionists, reality and illusion will blend into one another. Here, too, Nolan’s predilection for names and meanings came to the fore. The two rival magicians named Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) had no semantic interplay hidden in their names. Instead, their initials spelled ‘AB-RA’ as in ‘Abracadabra’.


If so much can be hidden within the names of characters in films that Nolan remade (‘Insomnia’ from a Swedish film) or based on previously published material (‘Memento’ and ‘The Prestige’), it goes without saying that a screenplay that he had worked on for over a decade will have the same traits. After all, it belongs to the same universe!


So, we have Ariadne (Page). In Greek mythology, Ariadne was known for creating a maze. In ‘Inception’ Page plays an ‘architect’—she designs dream spaces. Then there is the disruptive force named ‘Mal’ (Cotillard)—a more obvious and less subtle reference to a French or English prefix. Since we are on the topic of names, it might be mentioned that in 'Inception', one of Cobb's employers is named Cobol. That was the name of one of the earliest programming languages of the world in the 'domain of business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments'. Cobb and his team program people’s minds so that they can steal ideas.


If one thought it’s easy to ascertain Nolan’s characters based on the pointers provided by their names (where applicable), one needs to think again. That, possibly, is the single-most important contribution of Nolan as far as cinema is concerned. He has singlehandedly brought the cerebral aspect back in cinema.


While in most cases, Hollywood urges us to leave our brains behind, Nolan’s universe is set in the mind. And for that reason alone he should be christened as the first ‘thoughteur’ of this millennium. There were others—Bergman for one one, Fellini, and Goddard. But what separates this recent entrant in that Ivy League is that his films somehow interweave the brain with box-office bravura.


Duality is another motif in Nolan’s cinema. He himself holds a dual citizenship—of the USA and the UK; and supposedly carries both passports on his person all the time. It is thus of little or no wonder that his characters, too, have a sense of duality ingrained in them. A short-term memory loss patient who in fact might be the very killer he is looking for; a cop who allegedly murdered his partner for selfish reasons; Bruce Wayne/Batman; the ‘two faces’ of Cobb in ‘Following', the secret harbored by Borden, and the master thief in 'Inception' whose 'life' has been stolen.


At a more broader level, in ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘The Dark Knight’, Nolan has molded a superhero who is lot closer to reality than his characters in other films who always seem to teeter on the precipice of hyper reality.


Moreover, in his films, the method of recording reality is always questioned. Borden and Angier’s diaries in ‘The Prestige’, the veracity of Polaroid photos in ‘Memento’, the eponymous insomnia, and the layered dreams in 'Inception' are cases in point.

Another common thread linking all of Nolan's protagonists is guilt. Beginning from 'The Young Man's' guilt at rummaging through strangers'  personal belongings, Leonard's guilt propelling him towards finding his wife's killers, Will's subconscious knowledge that the shooting of his partner might well have been intentional, Borden's guilty secret, Wayne's feelings towards his father's beloved Gotham turning into a crime-infested area, to Cobb's belief that he caused his wife's death—guilt encompasses all his protagonists, and act as the main motivation for their actions.

Coming back to 'Inception', if the dreamscape created by Nolan ever has a map, then one has to say the map is in flux. It is like the mirror reflections of Eames (Tom Hardy). The image does not correspond to the body.


In fact, one might even say that Eames' character, who plays a forger (at two levels—the literal one where he can forge documents and references so that he can become anybody; and another at a more metaphysical level, where he actually can become an image of anybody, aided by the memories that others have of that individual) embodies the film itself. Just like Eames, the film can take any form based on individual perceptions. And it is this ethereal quality that makes each and every film by Nolan so debated, dissected, and demanding to watch.


One of the basic demands a viewer has while watching a film is getting ‘closure’. Possibly, that is the reason after watching ‘Inception’ I was hanging on to two scenes in the film. In the first, while explaining to Cobb why a group of people visit a clandestine place everyday to be heavily sedated, an elderly man says 'They come here to wake up. The dream has become their reality. Who are we to say?' It indeed is true. One man’s dream can become another man’s reality, and vice versa. Especially in Nolan’s universe.


Then there was the scene where Michael Caine’s character tells Cobb to 'come back to reality'. This foreboding statement and the fact that Caine returns in the last sequence of the film might posit that Caine's character was not a fringe one as appears. He might have had a role to play—a very important one, in fact, that of planning an inception on Cobb. Planting an idea that there can be one last job that could bring him back home to his children. Possible, since it has been shown to us that information can be hidden from the ‘best extractor’ (the redacted document in Saito’s (Watanabe) safe). Also, the very fact that Caine introduced Ariadne to Cobb.


Those of us fixated with this idea will find many more clues that point to this very direction. Why did the name of the film, for example, appear at the very end? Is it because the inception has been accomplished? After all, most films have their name displayed on screen right up front, at the beginning. Is it Nolan telling us something concretely, as against his cutting the shot at exactly the point wherein it would have been apparent to us, via Cobb's totem, if he was in a dream or back to reality?


One might even want to refer to 'The Dark Knight'—another film of Nolan where the name of the film appeared at the very end—when via Gordon's (Oldman) monologue one understands why the caped crusader has become a vigilante, the ‘dark’ knight.


But this theory of mine can be disproved. And that is the fun of watching Nolan. One of the first dialogues by Cobb talks about how an idea is the world's most resilient parasite. After watching the film, when we frame our own theories, one experiences how those words leap right out of the screen and engulfs us with its veracity.


As a side note, I would like to mention that Nolan has named his production company 'Syncopy'. 'Syncope' as we know is loss of consciousness. It also is 'loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word'—the trope of something amiss is a recurrent feature of all his protagonists.


It is said that the life of a film is dependent on how much debate it can generate. Considering how abuzz the Internet has been since July 16, possibly the most apt description of the impact of 'Inception' was made by one poster on IMDB forum, who predicted that in a few years' time the film might become a religion (was he, by any chance, referring to the first six letters of Nolan’s name, one wonders!)


Cynics amongst us might want to pause and freeze the frame during a particular scene in 'Inception' shot in a hotel lobby where characters in movement are positioned in such a manner within the frame that only the 'Con' of 'Concierge' is visible. They might think of that frame as embodying what Nolan has done to the audience.


The more positivists among us would say that the film itself is Nolan's way of implanting an idea into Hollywood that there is hope for originality. The jury is out on that debate, as well.


To those who did not like 'Inception' (there are many, NY Mag's David Edelstein is one; Roger Ebert, one of the most renowned film critics around, has put in his riposte—both are marvelous reads) I want to point out one thing. Watch 'Inception' again, if not the whole film, just two sections. Both have the same dialogue spoken by two different characters. Saito (Watanabe) and Mal talk about a 'leap of faith'. And on both occasions they speak directly to the camera.


P.S. I couldn't help but notice how the posters of 'The Prestige, 'The Dark Knight' and 'Insomnia' all have a distinct blue-black tone to it. Then I stumbled upon something on the Internet. Possibly, this is what IMDB's trivia section meant when it says every film of Nolan somehow refers to his previous film.