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.

Contagion: An Infection of the Mind

Contagion

Directed By: Steven Soderbergh

Written By: Scott Z. Burns

Starring: Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, John Hawkes, Jennifer Ehle, Demitri Martin, Bryan Cranston, and Elliot Gould.

Director of Photography: Peter Andrews, Editor: Stephen Mirrione, Production Designer: Howard Cummings, Original Score: Cliff Martinez

Rated: PG-13 for seeing famous people horrifically die.

            There’s a number of minor plot strands throughout Contagion, a big budget star-packed virus thriller from master filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, but the one that opens the film is the most curious. We begin with Gwyneth Paltrow, looking a bit under the weather as she sits in an airport bar. She answers the phone and talks to a lover that is not her husband after they’ve quickly met during a layover. The talk has no discussion of “what if your husband finds out?” or any of that, and while her husband will learn, Ms. Paltrow will be dead, and nothing will come of it. But it's the discussion that Mr. Soderbergh wants us to listen to—it’s rational, good fun, the tone suggests. Nothing serious, maybe a little emotional, but mostly rational. Too rational almost.

           Contagion may be a genre picture, but the aims of Mr. Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns are both the political and the philosophical. This is a film about the battle between rationality and emotions, between doing what’s necessary and doing what’s right. The virus outbreak genre pretty much began and ended with 1995’s Outbreak and there’s not much to say in terms of the dangers organisms can cause in humans—after all, it’s not exactly very cinematic to watch people cough and die. But paranoia, as one character says “more dangerous than any virus,” is a ripe subject, especially as we near the anniversary of September 11^th, as the age of conspiracies and technology has completely changed our way of processing information. Mr. Soderbergh and Mr. Burns create a fascinating and horrifying portrayal of how our emotions can destroy our bodies.

Midnight in Paris: Love in a Timeless City, Thanks to Time Travel

Midnight in Paris

Written and Directed By: Woody Allen

Starring: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Carla Bruni, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Alison Pill, Tom Hiddleston, and Kurt Fuller

Directors of Photography: Darisu Khondji and Johanne Debas, Editor: Alisa Lepselter, Production Designer: Anne Seibel

Rated: PG-13 for sexual humor in the city of love.

            Next week, Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life will finally premiere after six years of anticipation, making it his fifth film in almost forty years. And then there’s Woody Allen, who has more films than years behind him, all of them seemingly Irish twins. However, since 2005’s Match Point, a new interest has sparked Mr. Allen’s mind, as a lack of funding sent him to Europe, where he has brought his same humor (and at times drama) to a new set of locations besides the Upper East Side.

            For his latest adventure though is his first film set in the city of romance: Paris. In a beautiful pre-credits sequence, Mr. Allen sets his camera to capturing a day through the city, watching it go from a beautiful sunny morning to a rainy afternoon to an illuminating night, lights bouncing off the wet streets and giving it a magical feel. And there’s actual magic in the narrative too, as Owen Wilson plays the surrogate Mr. Allen as he travels through time. Unfortunately, the actual magic can’t make up for the lack of it that Mr. Allen fails to capture for the heart, bouncing to easily around a loose plot without much cohesion and any real stakes.