Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan:

Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear story-telling, acclaimed writer-director Christopher Nolan was born on July 30, 1970 in London, England. Over the course of 15 years of film-making, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made.

At 7 years old, Nolan began making short movies with his father's Super-8 camera. While studying English Literature at University College London, he shot 16-millimetre films at U.C.L.'s film society, where he learned the guerrilla techniques he would later use to make his first feature, Following (1998), on a budget of $6,000. The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international film festivals prior to its theatrical release, and gained Nolan enough credibility that he was able to gather substantial financing for his next film.

Trademark:

• Begins his movies and introduces his main characters with a close up of their hands performing an action.

• Opening scenes are usually a flashback or a piece of a scene from the middle or end of the movie.

• Films conclude with the two central characters discussing the results which have stemmed from the events of the film.

• Crosscutting several scenes of parallel action to build to a climax (The Prestige (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), The Dark Knight Rises (2012).

• His films usually revolve around characters that are afflicted with some kind of psychological disorder. (Examples: Guy Pearce's short-term memory "condition" in Memento (2000), Al Pacino's titular sleeping disorder in Insomnia (2002), Christian Bale's phobia of bats in Batman Begins (2005) and Aaron Eckhart's dual personality in The Dark Knight (2008) and Leonardo DiCaprio not being able to grasp onto reality in Inception (2010)).

• Lonely troubled protagonists who are unwillingly forced to hide their true identity from the world.

• Typically ends his films with a character giving a philosophical monologue.• His films almost always end with the character's fate open to interpretation.• Enormous visual scope and heavy emphasis on location and architecture.