I’ll be honest with you that I
will not exaggerate the facts this time. But back in 2005, when the first movie
of The Dark Knight trilogy came, I was excited. Not because of Christopher Nolan
whom I didn’t even know back then, but because it was Batman. I was 13 years
old back then and not really much smarter for my age. I really did'nt know what Batman trully stands for and for me he was just another superhero fighting bad guys with his high-tech and sophisticated gadgets. I was always fascinated
towards the Batman but I wasn’t until the sequel (The dark knight rises) came
out. I knew this is going to be epic in every sense. Not because it was
Christopher Nolan at his best but because it had the most charismatic,
disturbed and the most wicked villain of all time, The Joker, as they call him.
By the time the third and the final part surfaced, I was already half way
through my engineering, I was struggling hard to keep my personal life and
academics together and it was during this time period I sensed a drastic change
in myself. No sooner I came to a stark realisation of how this character, a
fictional entity that was the brain child of Bob Kane and the legacy of Tim
Burton and Bill Finger had influenced my life lately and how it had carved my
ethics and morals. Even before I could see that what I was doing was walking along
the line of an imaginary character I became completed indulged and in was
drowned completely in the philosophy of Batman. And it wasn’t just the “The Bat”
which altered the core of my soul but what completed it was the Joker himself. How
often does it happened that you sympathise and feel a immense love for a psychotic
madman who is adamant to destroy every form of order and instigate chaos just
because he finds it amusing. Now that’s what I would call a real badass. Fuck
automatic rifles or bazookas. This man held an entire city hostage just at a
knifepoint. There was no point in hating this character even before Heath
Ledger made him immortal with his portrayal. The Joker was to Arkham what
Batman was to Gotham. And ever if you travelled down the dark and corrupted
lanes of the Narrows you will come to know about a madman who had no definitive past or
origin. The man came out of nowhere and went to become the greatest scoundrel
the world has ever known. Yes greater than Lord Vader, Hannibal and T-bag. Another
reason for growing admiration and love for batman was how every single portrait
involved had a story line to back up the cause and the reason to act. However by
this time I had really began to read about Nolan himself and all that he does
with his movies. But that a flicker missing that was still to be ignited the
immense respect and praise I had felt for the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Martin
Scorsese, Alfred Hitchcock, Peter Jackson and Francis Coppola. I need some
fodder to make that happen, a robust push to make me fall for any title that
carried the name of Nolan and that is when I came across The Prestige. Although
I made an appearance just two years before The Dark Knight I had never heard of
that. But my quest to find the shear brilliance and appreciate the true genius
that Nolan is took me deep into the very dungeons I never tried to dwell into.
The Prestige not only put forth two of my most beloved creatures The Wolverine(
Hugh Jackman) and The Batman( Christian Bale) under one banner but also worked
out a script that had twists and turns more than complex and perplexing then an
Mobius Strip no matter how plain and
apparent it may appear. As one of the user at IMDb reviewed, “the secrecy with which the intricate story approaches them makes
it impossible for the viewer to slot them in protagonist vs. antagonist
positions, and indeed they are given almost the exact same screen-time and
voice-over narration throughout, a subtle and brilliant accolade of Nolan's”.
As if The Prestige wasn’t enough to give me a series of
sleepless nights and countless sessions of deep thoughts while sitting on
toilet seats for hours the mind-numbing and an intellectually disturbing Inception
was thrown to the world from the Nolan’s camp. More than Prestige or Memento or
be it Insomnia this movie was so complex that it literally felt like a Limbo or
some higher order of composite labyrinth. Layer within a layer as it continued this
movie still continues to reveal a new hidden spot for many. The impetus and the
after-effect of it were so intense that it still continues to resonates through
the skull of Ishaan would often calls me in the middle of night whenever he
finds something new in it which otherwise went unnoticed before.
By this time Nolan had became a regular name for every even a
casual movie goers of a tier-2 cities and everybody would wait in anticipation
what intricate mathematical equation bone would Nolan throws next to them.
Last night, I spend hours watching, rewinding and figuring out
the Interstellar. And it was the first time since I watched it last November, I
saw a lot of doubts that were lingering in dark to be highlighted and made
clear but I could still feel like there is more than I believe I am still to
find out and learn from this beautifully crafted and a treat for eyes space-time
continuum.
A particular and note-worthy stuff that Nolan did with the Transcendence
for which he was the executive producer was highlighting the theme of
Artificial Intelligence which was yet again repeated in Interstellar. I don’t know
how many people have really noticed it but I think the entire subject of A.I
got shrouded beneath all those complexities of astro-physics and space travel. The
rest of the screen was taken up by the stunning visual effects, the efforts and
understanding put forth to define the correct shape and dimensions of anomalies
such as the smart explanation about the shape of a worm-hole. But what I think
went unnoticed was how Nolan elaborated to explain the man-machine relationship
and how it is going to shape our future and aid us. Unlike his predecessor he
projected the idea of an artificially created intelligence in an optimistic
light of future where the machines like TARS and CASE will prove themselves to
be an influential force while solving conflicting scenarios with logics. Again Nolan
created a kind of contradicting situation with these two movies about the A.I.’s
where at one hand a computer system went AWOL and determined to manipulate, transform
and control every biological and machine aspect of the world the other continued
to prove that no matter how rationally and intellectually advanced that get it
is ultimately the man who has created him and even went ahead to sacrifice
himself for the greater good of humanity.
And so it goes on. While I continue to walk the path Batman chose
to learn and adapt to every ethical and moral choice he made, Nolan still
continues to thrill his audience with the same deception and theatricality that
his most pristine character employed, which now makes me wonder. Is Christopher
Nolan the real Ra’s ul Ghul hiding in plain sight or is he the real Batman ???
No comments:
Post a Comment