How Nolan Handles Violence
Christopher Nolan is known for exploring thought-provoking themes and ideas in his films. He especially loves a non-linear storytelling approach, which is also something his fans admire about his films. From war movies to spy thrillers, he uses ‘time’ to intensify the threat in his movies.
However, have you ever noticed that there’s always something special about the way he uses violence in his films? Like the usage of ‘time’ to narrate the story, there is also a specific way in which he showcases violence.
In this article, we will discuss the way Christopher Nolan uses violence in his movies and how it is distinctively consistent and different from other directors.
1. Negligible use of gore
The first thing to notice about the way Nolan depicts violence is with almost no gory scenes and extremely rare interactions with blood. Nolan tends to approach the violent scenes with a sense of restraint and doesn’t linger on them for the sake of shock value.
While the showcasing of gore and blood seem to be obvious choices to be used in all the new films, Nolan takes a completely tangent approach.
Let us compare two films- Spiderman: No Way Home and The Dark Knight Rises. Both of the films have rocked the box office, and both of them contain the world’s two most loved superheroes — Spiderman and Batman. Based on the comics as well as the previous movies, it is a well-known fact that Batman is a much darker character than the friendly neighborhood Spiderman.
Now take a look at the fights between Spiderman and the Green Goblin and between Batman and Bane
Spiderman ends up getting into a much more brutal and bloodier fight.
Many people believe that this was done because Nolan wanted to keep a PG-13 rating for his films, but I don’t believe that's the case. 2022’s The Batman was also a PG-13 movie with much darker, brutal fight scenes throughout the film. I feel that it's just Nolan’s way of keeping away from lesser important visuals so that the audience can ‘wow’ their minds over the mind-bending concepts.
2. Letting the viewer connect the dots by imagination.
Ambiguity, symbolism, and open-ended storytelling are just a few techniques in which directors let the audience fill in the story gaps by using their own imagination. And while these techniques are not rare, they are all typically used in times of climactic and suspenseful moments.
Nolan, however, uniquely uses such techniques to direct his violent scenes. Take, for example, this scene from The Dark Knight-
The joker breaks a pool stick, throws it on the floor, and asks the 3 gang members to fight among themselves. And right after this, the film cuts to a new scene. What happened to the 3 guys? Who lived? Did they all die? It’s for the audience to decide :)
Another example of one of the main characters in a film is how Dunkirk decides the fate of Tom Hardy’s character.
He is shown staring at his burning fighter plane while you can see some soldiers coming toward him right as the scene concludes. Did he survive? Did he escape? Did he die? Again, it is up to you to decide!
3. Focusing on more important themes
Many times when directors showcase violence in their films, the focus of the audience might subconsciously be more attracted towards the blood than the story arc. This might play well when violence is a great part of one’s story (like in Tarantino’s films); however, when the director is trying to convey a deeper message, it might be nothing more than a distraction.
In general, Nolan’s films are already pretty cryptic. Viewers need to have their entire attention on the story. Even missing out on a minute can cause confusion in understanding the rest of the film. Moreover, a common audience needs to watch a Nolan film atleast twice to fully grasp the concepts and themes of his story. So, adding gore might act as a distraction for the audience and might be unnecessary for the story.
Nolan deliberately avoids using gore so the viewers will be able to focus on the important bits of the story. Imagine if Tenet had more bloodier scenes, would there have been any different effect on how the audience viewed the entire film? I don’t think so, as the film’s main idea was to explore the ‘time inversion’ and use it to show amazingly edited shots.
Conclusion
Even in films where blood and gore seem to be a necessity, like war and thriller films, Nolan manages to handle violence in an appealing way in spite of the minimal or no use of blood. This way of creating movies with no gore and low blood might serve as an inspiration to upcoming as well as low-budget filmmakers.
