#365DaysOfWriting — Day Eighty-Three
Two very special birthdays today.
Happy birthday, Richard Linklater and Christopher Nolan.
Today’s post is going to be a tribute to these two fine gentlemen. Both are my favourite directors, who’ve given me some of the best films I’ve ever seen. I’m going to discuss just one aspect of their direction today though.
For me, they are both Masters of Time, in wildly different ways.
Linklater and Nolan seem to have a great understanding of time. Linklater’s genius lies in the way he uses time as a side-effect of life. Time may move linearly in Linklater’s world, but that astounds us in the most natural, relatable ways possible. He grounds his characters in reality, and time affects them like it would all of us.
Nolan, on the other hand, goes completely lateral. He plays with timelines and turns clocks anti-clockwise. He loves going back and forth in his movies, juxtaposing the past with the present, showing us how similar they actually are. He shows us possibilities of what might be, if time was flexible like clay. He shows us an alternate reality.
Here are a few of my favourite films from both directors, that show the above qualities.
Let’s go with Richard Linklater first.
The Before Trilogy
Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight — three films, spaced out evenly between two 9-year gaps. Before Sunrise first introduced us to Celine and Jesse in 1995. Their love story continued in 2004 with Before Sunset, and it was followed with a final(?) chapter in 2013, with Before Midnight. How did a film that had only conversations turn out to get such a cult following?
Only conversations, you say? Let’s see — ever noticed how time passes when you start chatting with your lover, or best friend? You may start a conversation at 12 noon, and ‘5 minutes later’ when you have a look at your watch, it’s 6 PM! This is where Linklater’s genius lies with the Before Trilogy. In every movie, once you are engrossed in Celine and Jesse’s conversation, you don’t know how time passes. Their relationship also follows a natural path over 18 years, and every single time you’re left with a feeling — hey, that could’ve been me! It’s one of my top movie trilogies, although my personal favourite from the three films is Before Sunset.
Boyhood
I had written about Boyhood at length in a blog post of mine. You can read it here. All I had said is that while it works beautifully as a coming-of-age film, what completely slips your mind is the fact that Linklater used the greatest CGI trick of all-time — TIME ITSELF. Yes, why indeed would you need a young boy grow into a handsome hunk who looks nothing like the boy? ‘Time constraints’, right? Richard Linklater made a film over 12 years WITH THE SAME CAST. Unbelievable, you think? It’s like he used the camera as a mirror to our own lives. As Mason grew, so did we. There was also the inevitable question — what happens next to Mason Jr.? Linklater, with a twinkle in his eye, replied, “Maybe he gets on to a train to Vienna…”
Now, we move on to Christopher Nolan.
Memento
The movie that announced Nolan to the world. He had made a pretty handy debut feature, Following, before this one. But this put Nolan on the map. A seemingly simple story about a man searching for his wife’s murderer becomes complicated because he suffers from anterograde amnesia, or short-term memory loss, to put it simply. He rearranged the rules of typical neo-noir films and gave the audience a deeply satisfying, compelling, and sometimes head-scratching result. The use of black-and-white sequences, going chronologically forward, interspersed with colour sequences, going backward, made for some heady viewing. It’s as if you were seeing the movie from the protagonist’s POV. Thank you Jonathan Nolan for the short story Memento Mori, which inspired this film.
The Prestige
RIP, David Bowie. I discovered your genius thanks to this movie.
On the face of it, The Prestige seems like a linear story of two magicians trying to outdo each other in London during the early 1900s. But here’s where Nolan used the ‘back-and-forth’ technique. He tells us the story juxtaposing the past of both magicians with the present — so much so that in the third act, he actually pulls off a ‘Prestige’. And if you’ve seen the movie, you know every magic trick has 3 parts — The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige. Nolan cleverly uses time in a different way here to weave a compelling tale around magic.
Inception
A movie that gave a whole new definition to ‘WTF’ endings. Nolan plays with time in this one using the concept of dreams. How differently does time movie in reality, and in a dream? How much can you deep dive into a dream before you reach a state of limbo? And more importantly, can you change the course of history by planting an idea in a dream? It featured a brilliant ensemble cast, and while there are allegations that this doesn’t touch an emotional cord with the audience, I feel it’s one heck of a directorial masterpiece. Creating those dream worlds and screwing around with the time in them — magnificent.
