Billion Dollar Noir: Christopher Nolan and the Reconstruction of Film Noir in Hollywood

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). 

The Dark Knight Rises: Tale of Two Gothams

The Dark Knight Rises

Directed By: Christopher Nolan

Written By: Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, based on a story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (characters created by Bob Kane)

Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Joseph-Gordon Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Gary Oldman, Matthew Modine, Ben Mendelsohn, and Nestor Campbell.

Director of Photography: Wally Pfister, Editor: Lee Smith, Production Designer: Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh, Original Music: Hans Zimmer

            The idea of “superhero movie fatigue” has been an issue raised by film critics again and again for the last few years. Another Spider-Man? An X-Men spinoff? More? Nevermind that we had three Maltese Falcon adaptations in less than ten years, but outside the point of all this yawning of superheroes, sometimes it’s forgotten why they exist in culture at all. Superheroes are myth stories. The Greeks had Achilles. Medieval times had Beowulf. And we have Superman. Sure, when you wait only three years between a film, perhaps not much changes in our perception and meaning of this myth. But the point is that a superhero can mean something different depending on time and circumstances. This is what Christopher Nolan believes. Unfortunately, I don’t know if he knows what his heroes want to stand for.

            It’s hard not to know that this weekend sees the release of The Dark Knight Rises, the third (and final) “chapter” in Nolan’s vision of the Batman myth. Such hype and speculation has fueled the world since the release of 2008’s The Dark Knight, a box office bonanza that attempted to not only take superheroes seriously, but to extract as much “super”-ness as possible. And with Inception out of the way, Nolan, writing the script with his brother Jonathan, has returned to make something of an epic in the Charles Dickens sense. The Dark Knight Rises is truly a big film—three hours long, with a good portion of the film shot on IMAX cameras, and featuring at least 10 plots that somehow mesh together at the end. It’s also a total mess of conflicting ideas and emotions and flat filmmaking, marred by it’s desire to simply do too much. But it kept me glued to my seat while watching it nonetheless.