In this month's issue of the Journal of
American Studies of Turkey, I have a published piece on Christopher Nolan
and his very problematic adaptation of the genre of film noir. Because it is
published, I am not allowed to put the entire thing on this blog. However, I
can provide a brief excerpt. Please visit the
journal's website in order to read the entire thing, though I'm not sure
its online yet. Enjoy:
The apex of Nolan’s career, his $200m dollar sci-fi spectacle
Inception, certainly shows his most self-conscious attempts to bring out
noir motifs. It is no coincidence that the heist genre has been
celebrated in works like John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and
Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1958), both of which feature a one
last job, as the protagonist Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has here. Nolan
certainly shows a craft is subverting some of the main tropes—Cobb’s job is not
stealing something but instead putting something inside a vault. Additionally,
the significant portion of the narrative takes place inside the psychological
plane, where existential fears can manifest themselves into physical threats
(the basis of film noir). The central threat, and perhaps the most unique
character Nolan has put on screen, is Mal, the dead wife of Cobb (Marion
Cotillard). Cobb is overwhelmed by guilt of leading his wife to suicide,
one that he feels responsible for enough that she becomes a dangerous and
malicious figure whenever he enters the dreamscape. She literally becomes
the femme fatale, a dangerous female that is the manifestation of the
anxiety of the protagonist. As Mark Fisher notes, she “represents a
psychoanalytic Real—a trauma that disrupts any attempt to maintain a stable
sense of reality, that which the subject cannot help bringing with him wherever
he goes” (42).
