Director’s Cut

Perhaps the most exciting names in the industry right now, Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have sort of reinvented cinema with their innovative and creative styles coupling it with good box office returns. In Nolan’s case, ‘The Dark Knight’ in all probability will be the one to dethrone Titanic from the apex of highest grossing movies of all time.

You may recognize Aronofsky as the director of this year’s Academy Award nominee ‘The Wrestler’. Aronofsky first shot to fame as the director and writer of the low budget mathematical thriller ‘Pi’. Pi created the right kind of noises for this director to get producers interested in what he was planning next. Sure enough he followed it up with a gripping drug addiction drama ‘Requiem for a Dream’. It was Aronofsky’s genius that he could present something as overdone as drug addiction in an entirely new perspective with unconventional editing and camera angles. His trademark directorial style ‘hip hop montage’ earlier seen in Pi was perfected in this movie. Apart from that, fast forwarded scenes with matching background score were also appropriately used to heighten the tension.

Another director who started his career at roughly the same time as Aronofsky was Chris Nolan who gained fame as the director of indie movie ‘Memento’. This thriller made it to the top 250 movies in IMDb within a few screenings at the movie festivals. Nolan had come up with his own original style of story-telling with the usage of jumbled order of acts of the movie. Up until then, only authors used to switch the three acts namely the beginning, the middle and the end with each other so as to make the narration interesting. Nolan incorporated the same into his movies as a result of which Memento starts with its climax sequence and alternates between the opening act and the closing act. Nolan also employs ‘hard cuts’ to curtail the movie length and make it into a taut watch, thus often ends up cutting through a scene midway between a character’s line onto the next one.

A technique common to both the directors is the frequent usage of symbolism in their movies. If Aronofsky alluded to Jewish name of god in the movie ‘Pi’ where the actual value of Pi was supposed to be the true name of the Almighty and whoever knows it shall rule the earth refers to a popular Semitic belief ; Nolan also heavily utilizes a lot of historical and psychological references in his movies. His work ‘The Prestige’ exploits as a sub plot, the rivalry between Edison and Tesla related to arguments about DC and AC current and the supposed dangerous experiments conducted by Tesla. The most recent of Batman Franchise is full of references to popular philosophical thinkers and of allusions to Roman Empire. The opening sequence shows the Joker as putting his own spin on a famous quote by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche “Whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”. There are at least 3 references to the fall of the Roman Republic in the movie. The first is when Bruce meets Harvey at the restaurant and Harvey mentions how the Romans would offer unlimited power to a single citizen to guide them through a crisis referring to Caesar. The second reference is when the Joker mentions the location of Harvey and Rachel as Avenue X and Cicero. Cicero was the Rome’s most famous orator and statesman, and was a vocal opponent against Caesar and Tyranny. In ancient times Caesar represented chaos (as evidenced by Lucan’s Civil war – where Caesar invokes Fortune or Chance before he goes crosses the Rubicon and goes to War against Rome.) much like the Joker or Harvey later on in this movie. A third reference to the Roman Republic is the fact that Jim Gordon, Harvey Dent, and Batman form an agreement. In Roman times the agreement to control the senate by Caesar, Pompey the Great, and Crassus (the financier of the venture) was known as the first Triumvirate. Batman, Gordon, and Harvey are similarly trying to control Gotham.

Even with this similarity the two directors have very different styles of film-making which will determine the future course of the LA industry. With the likes of Scorcese, Soderbergh and Gus Van Sant already the veterans, these two very well might be the guiding force for Hollywood