A Study Of Tragedy Performance In Christopher Nolan Films’ Narrative

Undoubtedly, in last decade,British director Christopher Nolan was the most distinctive director in Hollywood. He had been titled "the Hollywood last movie author". More than a decade ago,he turned himself from private independent films to the super commercial movies with a shocking masterpiece "Memento". Then he got unprecedentedly success. His films are not only famous for subverting the traditional narrative, but also known as breaking conventional Hollywood rules of making happiness to please audience. Instead,his films are acclaimed by strong tragic philosophy.To some extent, the unique narrative performances in Nolan’s films become a key to stimulating the enjoyment from tragedy. In this paper, combining the movie audiovisual language, I’m trying to study his unique tragic qualities in four chapters, in the direction of the film narrative. The first chapter explores from the perspective of narrative themes, discussing the specific different tragic performance in Nolan’s films from several classic Western narrative theme. And the second chapter standing on the perspective of film narrative construction, analyses time-space narrative and the ingenious structure, and how the tragic feelings brought from it. The third chapter focuses on profiling the tragic personalities and character deep down in Nolan’s films. The last chapter is used for discussing the environmental mechanism of the tragic expression, combining the specific context to think the ideological discourse that may exist under its image expressionFrom this analysis of four chapters, I’m trying to solve these problems. Firstly, how does the tragic narrative system built in Christopher Nolan’s movies. Secondly, comparing with other intertext or traditional expressions, what’s the difference between Nolan’s tragic performance and them. Thirdly, from independent moviemaking area to commercial blockbusters, what’s the tragic context contained in Nolan’s movies. whether is it as such a comment said, his films are mirrors of reality tragic events, deeply impacted by social ideology of, for the moment.