Presentation script: Is Christopher Nolan an Auteur due to his Non
Linear narrative?
Projector: Image of Christopher
Nolan shown on screen (item 16).
Speaker: My research project is based around How Christopher Nolan uses Non Linear narrative in many of his films and how this makes Nolan an auteur. My intention is to talk in depth how my selected films, Memento (1), The Prestige (3) and Batman Begins (2), are hugely influenced by non-linear narrative and how Christopher Nolan creates these films to back up how he is an auteur. Nolan is a master of creating non-linear narratives (7) and this can be seen in the movies that I have selected to talk about when answering if Christopher Nolan is an auteur due to his non-linear narrative. “The auteur theory is a way of reading and appraising films through the imprint of an auteur (author), usually meant to be the director.” Andre Bazin was the founder, in 1951, of Cahiers du cinema and is often seen as the father of auteurism because of his appreciation of the world-view and style of such artists as Charlie Chaplin and Jean Renoir (11). Auteurs have their own approach to the movies they direct and I think Nolan is an auteur due to his non-linear narrative.
Projector:
Memento (1)
Speaker: This film also backs up my reasoning for
Christopher Nolan being an auteur due to his non-linear narrative as this whole
film is not played in non-chronological order. The first scene of this film is
also the last scene and the rest of the narrative is the main character trying
to find clues in order for him to regain his memory so he can find out who
killed his wife. Noted for its unusual
narrative structure and amnesiac protagonist (4) perfectly backs up how the
narrative in this film is not linear because by the main protagonist having
amnesia we get an in depth that the protagonist will be a complicated character
and by having an unusual narrative structure it implies that narrative is more
likely to be non-linear rather than linear narrative. In Memento,
whole scenes and sequences appear out of order (5) so this shows that the
structure of the movie can’t be linear because having scenes out of order would
imply that the movie is non-linear as the movie is not in chronological order. The man who acts as a cinematic
clinician, taking a step back to objectively explore these emotions through a
quantified, ordered narrative framework (the backwards structure in Memento)
(8) shows that Christopher Nolan does not make simple films and instead changes
the narrative framework to make it non-linear making his film in a way harder
to understand but tries to get the audience to think when watching the movie
and not just have everything in chronological order so it’s easy to follow and
that you can afford to switch off. Christopher Nolan’s first film was the
following and that has a rearranged chronology that prefigures
Memento (14) so this shows how the chronology in Memento is not in order
compared to the following so you could say that Memento has a more complex
narrative by it being non-linear. What gives Memento the aura of an independent
film, more than the sparse sets or the use of black-and-white photography, is
Nolan’s use of reverse chronology in the narrative structure (12). This shows
that what stood out more in Memento was the way Nolan reversed the chronology
in the narrative structure and this was put to effect more than black-and-white
photography and the narrative structure forces the spectator to take a new
approach to making sense of what happens, and in doing so, it exposes the
fundamental deception inherent in spectatorship itself (12) so as an audience
we have to try to understand the film in a different way and we have to think
about the film a lot more than if it was chronologically in order. In Memento, for example, the story is told from both ends at the same
time (6) showing that the narrative is non-linear because the opening scene in
the film is the last scene played backwards which shows how the narrative is
not chronologically in order and also shows the audience how the movie is
complicated. Christopher Nolan said in an interview on Memento “effectively
tell the story backwards, that way we don’t know just like the protagonist if
he has met that person before” (10). Nolan does this because he wants to keep
the audience engaged in the movie as if we don’t know what’s happening then we
will want to keep on watching to find out and we do find out as Nolan also says
“The story is told backwards as a series of flashbacks” (10) so it’s through
those flashbacks that we find out what happens and who the main protagonist has
met before and because the movie is told through a series of flashbacks it
makes the narrative non-linear. Memento’s Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) deliberately uses
his amnesia to fool himself into comforting delusions – literally to forget the
truth (13) so as an audience we see that this protagonist is a complicated
character and because he is complicated it makes it easier for Nolan to use a
non-linear narrative as he can play on the flashbacks of the main protagonist
to explain the narrative.
Projector: The Prestige (3)
Speaker:
This film also backs up my reasoning for Christopher Nolan being an auteur due
to his non-linear narrative as the first scene in the film is also the last
scene in the movie and the rest of the narrative is showing us how they got to
the last scene and also the rivalry between the two magicians. The Prestige, which strikes this critic as Nolan’s most personal—and
perhaps greatest—film to date. It is, like so much of the director’s work, a
marvel of scrambled chronology, with a narrative that runs along two parallel
tracks (15) shows how this movie has a non-linear narrative because of
the scrambles chronology which implies that the narrative is not
chronologically in order meaning that the narrative is non-linear and by having
a narrative that runs along two parallel tracks, this also shows that the
narrative is not in order and that it
cuts to two different stories throughout the movie so it keeps the audience
thinking what is happening. As in Nolan’s earlier films, Following and Memento, time does not follow a linear chronology in
The Prestige (12) and this is because Nolan wants the audience to be engaged in
the story which is why the first scene is also the last so the rest of the
narrative is us finding out how the two main protagonists get to the last scene
and the rivalry between them so because the narrative is not chronologically in
order it makes the movie non-linear. In The Prestige, the film is split
into two stories that are from the perspectives of two different characters,
and as events in one storyline occur, they add clarity to events that happen in
the other (6) so this shows how the two stories of the main protagonists run
side by side so the narrative cuts from one to story to the other to keep the
audience engaged.
Projector: Batman Begins (2)- scene of flashback to Bruce Wayne's parents being shot.
Speaker:
This film perfectly backs up my reasoning for Christopher Nolan being an auteur
due to his non-linear narrative as throughout this film there are many
flashbacks to when Bruce Wayne was a child and also flashbacks to him growing
up and also dealing with the loss of his parents. The film deals with mental
issues that Bruce Wayne has to deal with and flashbacks that Wayne has when
dealing with the loss of his parents at such a young age. One scene during the
film is when we see a flashback of when Bruce Wayne goes to see the head
of organised crime and after, the scene cuts back to normal time and
shows how Bruce deals with his issues. In Batman
Begins,
Nolan uses flashbacks heavily in the exposition to bring the audience up to
speed about what we are watching while also continuing the main storyline
starting from a point in the future (6). This allows Nolan to run two stories
side by side with one being flashbacks and the other being the main story
narrative and Nolan does this so the audience know what is happening in the
main story narrative. This will help the audience keep up with the
narrative of the film and understand the background of the main protagonist. You
need to explain the story of the main character (9) is a quote Christopher Nolan has
used before and this implies to us that Nolan thinks it’s important to explain
the story of the main protagonist and through Batman Begins, Nolan does this by
using a series of flashbacks of the mains protagonists life so we know the
background story of why the character does what he does in the narrative. We see at the start of the film a flashback of when his parents are killed and how Bruce Wayne watches it happen at a young age and because of what sees, he wants to get revenge for his parents death which sets up the rest of the film of Bruce Wayne training to be The Batman. Nolan
