Christopher Nolan's Useful Lies
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I don't think it's a coincidence that my preferred Nolan films seem to be the ones that I feel have more adequetely handled the "useful lie" device. In that, I mean that they are the films that more explictly show the more negative consequences: Memento and Prestige (my very favorites) are essentially tragedies, after all, and the engineered deception is at the heart of the characters' suffering. More intriguingly is Inception, a film that has frustrated me due to its reputation being so dependent on its intricate FX and the plot mechanics around the 'dream-within-a-dream' structure - all of which I consider little more than an elaborate macguffin. Beyond all of that gee-whizadry, I felt the real emotional core of the film was Mal, and the direct indictment of not only her own chosen self-delusion, but the involuntary inception of delusion, and Cobb's guilt and culpability for this intimate transgression (similar to the harm caused by Joey Pants in Memento, Borden on his wife, etc.). I wrote about this aspect of Inception quite a bit at the RT forum, and it always baffled me how little attention was paid to the fact that this is what the film was about, rather than figuring out the puzzle complexities of some dream-structured corporate espionage shenanigans.
I love his other films (the ones that play footsie with the idea of the useful lie as some sort of sad necessity) a lot more than you do, but I still agree with what you're saying here. As emotional experiences, or just as straight narratives, the ones that display the useful lie for the long-term tragedy that it is are his best-realized films. The ones you mentioned are ones where the mechanics seem to flow from the tragedy, rather than being the point of the story themselves. It's admittedly a really subtle difference, but it doesn't feel subtle, it feels profoundly different.
The Prestige is, for all its twists and turns and high concepts, feels raw, honest, and emotional the whole way through, and so does Memento. And Insomnia, as well, even though that's an adaptation. In all of these he lets his protagonist function as an addict who lies to satisfy something, rather than a hero making some good faith attempt to wield a power a little too big for them, which is what the other films mostly feel like.
Less popularly, I'm not a tremendous fan of Nolan's Batman films. I mean, they're fine, and actually my favorite among them is Begins. I think its positing of the moral dilemma of the vigilante is the most successful of the series. Here, the useful lie (or 'myth') is Batman himself, and why his compulsion to moral authority gives him a more legitimate authority than some other utilitarian sociopath. In this sense, the lie is still a burden and one Batman, presumably altruistically, chooses to suffer. As much as they try, I don't feel that the sequels add much thematically to this basic conflict. Worse, there are elements there that seem to me quasi-fascist, or at least Randian-objectivist, but I won't go into that here because it's honey for internet Poohs. I'll just say that the added complications of the useful lie in the sequels have diminishing returns for me.
Anyway, as much as I love his Batman films, and as smug and satisfied as I was to have used this philosophical throughline to predict some of what happens in The Dark Knight Rises, I agree its message on this front was muddled and the third installment left me pretty cold (even though I can see why he made the choices he did). I think maybe Nolan struggled with the idea of having to totally repudiate the core idea of the second film, so he kinda pulled the punch a little. But the opportunity was there, instead of...
WARNING: "The Dark Knight Rises" spoilers below
...the police force rising up, make it the people of Gotham. That's what the first two films were setting up. It fits perfectly. It only changed because he reportedly got transfixed by the idea of having TDKR mirror A Tale of Two Cities.
More so with Interstellar. The useful lie here felt completely contrived, almost obligatory, as if the Nolans realized that they needed one somewhere and squeezed it into the script.
Anyway, it's a nice essay, and I definitely find Nolan more philosophically fertile than, say, such dormitory epistles as the Matrix films.
This is the kind of thing my brother and I dreamed of growing up: that maybe one day all the "wouldn't it be cool if...?" ideas were brought to life by skilled directors with massive budgets, insane concepts depicted and explored at the highest level of the craft. I think it's something to be thankful for, and excited about.
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Looking forward to it. What’s the topic?
Reading This Will Stop the Robot Apocalypse
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And Insomnia, as well
Anyway, as much as I love his Batman films, and as smug and satisfied as I was to have used this philosophical throughline to predict some of what happens in The Dark Knight Rises, I agree its message on this front was muddled and the third installment left me pretty cold (even though I can see why he made the choices he did). I think maybe Nolan struggled with the idea of having to totally repudiate the core idea of the second film, so he kinda pulled the punch a little. But the opportunity was there, instead of...
WARNING: "The Dark Knight Rises" spoilers below
...the police force rising up, make it the people of Gotham. That's what the first two films were setting up. It fits perfectly. It only changed because he reportedly got transfixed by the idea of having TDKR mirror A Tale of Two Cities.
I thought the appropriation, however superficial, of Occupy memes was boneheaded enough at the time. But, speaking of Tale, the appropriation of the French Revolution by the current American left is even dumber, so I give Nolan points for prescience.
Yeah, and I like to judge these things on a curve. A lot of people like to talk down to it because it's not <insert something profoundly challenging and philosophical here>, as if that's the right comparison. The right comparison is Transformers, for crying out loud, because Nolan's got mainstream audiences lining up for this mind-bending stuff.
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