Cultural Studies On Christopher Nolan's Movie

Christopher Nolan is one of-the most eye-catching Hollywood directors in the global movie circle.Born in British,this young director formally entered into Hollywood to start directing the movie since the end of last century.For almost 20 years up to now,his successive nine formal movies have won both benefits in reputation and box-office and generated major influence on world movie to certain extent in narrative structure,and philosophy.While he combines the perfect advantages between "the author's film" and Hollywood industry system,he appropriately integrated the elite culture and the mass culture into his own movie by presenting the wonderful narration and thinking of characteristics of the postmodern culture,creating several classical works with Nolan characteristics and commonly recognized in the movie circle,industry and the audience.Christopher Nolan was highly praised by fans as so-called statement that "Cameron is responsible to make innovation of movie technology and Nolan is responsible for the movie structure" and the young Nolan and his nine works are able to take up extremely important artistic status in the movie circle.Therefore,in the process to systematically discuss the culture of Nolan's movie,we should treat it as the atypical Hollywood works with narrative wonder as the external carrier,the future modern cultural trait as the major content and the cultural communication Heterotopia as the major presentation way.Just practicing this logic and starting from the comment of the great director Steven Spielberg on Nolan "the last Hollywood movie director",the narrative culture presented in Nolan's works is interpreted from key points of narrative theme,morality,identity,narrative way and suspension in a comprehensive way.Furthermore,the cultural characteristic of Nolan's movie is analyzed to receive deeper and more comprehensive understanding for Nolan movie such as the reflection of post-modernistic culture,the gambling between the elite culture and the mass culture,etc.Besides that,Nolan movie is also placed in the context of cross-culture communication and examine Nolan's movie works from the cultural gene of "cultural imperialism" and ideology violence hidden in Hollywood movie.Of course,Nolan's works is also reviewed from the perspective of Chinese movie development and it is hoped to explore the cultural characteristic from his works to help the rapid development of Chinese movie to contribute some theoretical force for the future development of Chinese movie.There are five parts in this paper:The topic reason,present study and study thought and method are emphasized in the introduction part.We shall treat Christopher Nolan a research subject with research value and his artistic achievements have been listed in the top international movie directors.However,confined by the short director career,there has been little systematic research for his movie works that there is no comprehensive treatise nor deeply interpreted doctorate thesis.Compared with other directors,there is the periodical literature for his movie works and thesis in master's degree and restricted to narrative discussion for movie works.Therefore,there is greater exploration space in research of Nolan's movie culture.The construction way of individualized movie culture is explained from the interior of Nolan's movie works in the text analysis and discussion of special theme of narratology,the history of movie,postmodern culture and cross-culture communication,etc.Starting from the "film author",the origin and development for this term of "film author," is described in detail in Chapter I;furthermore,why Spielberg gave such comment to Nolan and its difference from the traditional "film author" is described centered on "film author".For Christopher Nolan,his different growth experience generates great influence on his career as the movie director in the future.So Christopher Nolan's growth experience and career has been settled in this paper to lay the foundation to research the culture of his works.Of course,the development of Nolan's nine movies is also emphasized in this Chapter,after all his innovation for narrative movie is the main support for his movie culture.Besides that,Christopher Nolan is the movie master to balance the art and business that he is widely approved by critics,peers and the common audience and also has obtained excellent box office in the history of movie,which is the rare achievement in the whole movie circle.Therefore Christopher Nolan and his movie culture are the artistic objects full of research value.The presentation of the representative wonderful narration in Christopher Nolan's movie works is described in Chapter ?.Although Christopher Nolan brings great changes to the modern movie,his innovation in movie structure particularly the narrative way is still the most symbolic significance of his works.In his nine shown works,Nolan repeated the narrative theme of wandering and back home and presented it into the scenes between the actual and unreal reality which creates more possibilities for his story in the movie and also greatly expands the presentation space of the narrative theme.Nolan's movie is not the traditional works which is mainly reflected in his exquisite design of the figures in the story.Generally speaking,the figures created by Nolan in his movie do not have the explicit real moral logic nor receive the approval for their own identity.Particularly for the later point,although figures in Nolan's movie commonly have multiple identities,those figures present the dislocation in the sense which makes people puzzled.Of course,the wonderful narration in Nolan's movie also mainly depends on his extreme pursuit for the narration including multiple narrative ways in organic combination and interlaced designed complicated suspense,the perfect combination of complicated imagination and simple film editing and also involving in time difference and spatial construction.It could be said that the wonderful narration in Nolan's movie realize all-round breakthrough for the movie.Under the common effect of much innovation in narration for the movie,Christopher Nolan's movie both realizes metaphor,conversion and trigger of the cultural content of the works and also makes it the artistic works without mechanical duplicate in cultural industry times,finally laying the solid foundation to reflect his movie culture.The interior cultural characteristic of Christopher Nolan's movie is mainly described in Chapter ?.In this paper,those cultural characteristic is mainly presented as the post-modern cultural criticism that it could be treated as the major creation intention and also the growth foundation of Nolan's movie.Nolan's public shown nine movies are taken out for deep interpretation(among that,"The Dark Knight Trilogy"are treated as a research subject).Among that,the uncertainty of binary opposition system breakdown is reflected in Inception;the hard-to-persist principle and authority is presented in "The Dark Knight Trilogy";Nolan's criticism for rationalism is presented in Memento and Nolan's doubt for the identity of the traditional thinking mode is expressed in Interstellar.Although director's philosophy and reflection for post-modern culture is full of in Nolan's movie culture,this does not move the movie far from the audience,thanks to Nolan's excellent treatment of elite culture and the mass culture in the movie that he makes the two factors mutually compromise and accomplish in the collision.Based on cultural analysis,Nolan's movies are also treated as the "Heterotopia" of American culture that it fully displays American culture and also innovates and presents it to finally present a special space to the audience containing American cultural characteristic.Christopher Nolan's movies are reviewed in the context of cross-culture communication in Chapter ?.Under the help of new media and the globalization,movie is not only the cultural product of a country and nation that it could reflect more cultural values and significances if placed in the context of cross-culture communication.Due to the inherent complicated economic and political relationship,Hollywood movie is usually treated as the synonym of "culture imperialism".Therefore,many countries including the Europe think that the invasion of Hollywood movie brings huge impact on the national culture and traditional society of the country and also the contained characteristic of American culture has the ideological violence to finally and inevitably influence on the living way and values of other countries.However,seen from this perspective,Nolan's movies,represented by his Hollywood works,are popular among audience in the world because he better treats the relationship of common culture with the universal value as the core and the cultural difference with the cultural subjectivity as the content to finally realize their "harmony in diversity" and maximum play their own roles in the specific movie works.The focus is placed on Chinese movie in this stage and the problems and reasons of Chinese movie in the cross-culture communication process have been analyzed in this part by comparing Chinese movie and Hollywood movie.It is thought that Chinese movie aroused more concerns from the world in 1980s relying on its cultural nationalism and also generated the remembered classical movies.But in today with globalization cultural nationalism has become the major barrier to kidnap Chinese movie that it restricts the internationalization of Chinese movie and also exerts deep influence on Chinese movie.Therefore,if seen from the big pattern of the soft cultural power,Chinese movie must look for the balance point to connect with cultures of various countries in the world based on spreading Chinese culture that only starting from this balance point could Chinese movie really enter into the communication order of the world culture.Meanwhile,Chinese movie should also review itself again in the narrative art and technology to improve the appreciation experience of movie works by carefully considering the narrative logic and narrative way.Only in this way,Chinese movie could reduce the "culture discount" to the greatest extent and finally realize the cultural submit to compete with Hollywood movie.In the Conclusion part,the writing purpose is recalled to summarize and improve the existing value of Christopher Nolan's to highlight his great contribution to the history of movie and the movie world and confirm his important research significance.