Time as a Truth Keeper
First, the director dictates very clear rules: if you try to distort time, then you have to expect direct consequences on reality. But with Nolan, you quickly can imagine there are several realities. Even though it’s up to each interpretation, I like to think there is only one reality in Nolan movies. Only one reality but it is our vision of it that differs and evolves according to when you’re living it. Understanding reality more like factual truth, you can have different approaches based on your life experience. According to your life background, your doubts & certainties at the moment T, you realize a reality in certain way that will differ in T+1.
This is on this main aspect that the director builds his plot mechanisms. Indeed, based on this idea, the editing is built in a nonlinear way. Almost a signature, Nolan uses many flashbacks or likes to show events not in the chronicle order. For example, in Following, it starts at the end, the chronicle order is completely rearranged, as flash images occur in the middle of development, first like transition but then make sense put in their context along the film. Despite seeing all the elements in front of you, it is only at the very end that you will be able to understand. All the clues are here since the first scenes, but you have to make all the way through to discover the truth. You have to let time flies, the magic operates until you get there.
Before they can live again in the reality they rejected at the first place, Nolan’s characters have to transform
it, take the time to distort it by all means going through deep amnesia, dream abysses or a wormhole. But the viewer stays the first to experiment this mechanism. In “The Prestige”, you have no idea how Roberts & Alfred’s (Hugh Jackman & Christian Bale) magic trick is done, but there is one. As Socrates claimed “the only thing we are sure about is we do not know” with Nolan you can add “the only thing you are sure about is we do not yet”. It is only 2 hours later that you understand, that truth is revealed.
In the end, distorting, manipulating or reversing time: Do you have any certainty left? Everything becomes relative, right? Everything is about perception, isn’t it? Although time was a reference, almost unalterable, like the guiding principle of the movies plots, it is actually a great opening to several perceptions and multiples interpretations. Indeed, with all could be time related, Christopher Nolan manage through his movies to offer an intense sensory journey s for the characters as for the audience. Brought through a story where all rational certainties are no more – original temporal situations, distorted perception of time flying by and new opportunity of fulfillment – you can only trust yourself based on your feelings and emotions that can make sense “for you”. Then, experiment a movie of Nolan becomes quite unique and very personal. Each one can appropriate his own reality and understand his truth. Being in such a situation might be confusing, since you only trust your gut, how to be sure to get what the director meant? Did you well understand what the director insinuates? Do you have well interpreted the clues left at the end of the film?
Small thought for the people who told me they did not get a film of Nolan “I have switched off, especially at the end, is he in a dream or not? No one can tell, right?” As I mentioned before, it might be the issue here, most probably voluntary done this way by Christopher Nolan (as he explains during the Interstellar Premiere click here). What matters is your own interpretations, your own wondering and how the characters introspection get to your own certainties.
The director gives some insights but it is still up to the viewer to choose if the pin is still spinning or nor, if Cooper will find Doctor Brand one day. This undone feeling for some people is actually only the repercussion of a mechanism set up since the very beginning of the film thanks to time notion. The circle is not complete, when you leave the theater, you are still wondering, bringing with you all the questions raised up along the movie. It almost like the movie still live through the viewer, ceaselessly, like it is never ending…
Conclusion
To conclude, time is a thematic that suggests many linked issues. All raise many questions which is the base of the rich and complex scenario of the director. But is time the truth answer of the equation?
All these « mathematics » might not deliver the truth. Live is a long questioning accumulation, where you fall to better rise. Thanks to magic of cinema, viewers experiment the same journey that live Nolan’s characters. Viewers is also in the same wondering process; about the spinning-top, the bulk or Roberts & Alfred magic trick, that make your interpretation unique.
As Doctor Brand exposes, maybe the exceptional thing in your life, in our relationships to others is the love we care for them. Love as an timeless link that survives across ages,adapts itself to every reality, goes beyond a simple equation. Is it the ultimate data that can resolve all quantum formula and explain the unknown of the world/ existence?
Christopher Nolan has just started to expose the issue in is his latest film, let’s give him the time to explore it in his next films…
