Prediction: Approximately a week from now, perhaps sooner, there is going to be a war. Not a serious one, but an internet-based, opinion fueled FaceBook mud-sling between people arguing that Inception is either “the best film ever” or “a complete waste of time”. The arguers claiming that it is the best film ever will likely be hobbled by a severe deficiency of knowledge of classic cinema. Those who argue that the film was a waste of time or “too difficult to understand” were, frankly, just not paying attention.

After just seeing the film, I can by no means deny its brilliance, and for its time I do consider it at least the best film I’ve seen all year, if not the past five or so. The ease with which it presents to you ideas that should be intensely difficult to understand, with which it weaves itself serpentinely around your brain and squeezes with python strength to bend you to its will is intensely impressive. As far as films go it nears perfection, and I am not kidding when I say that as I was walking out the doors of the theater I felt welling up in my eyes tears of pure joy. No movie has ever made me do that before. It’s not that I don’t cry at movies – I’m known for regularly getting teary-eyed at the end of particularly emotional films (Where the Wild Things Are, Lars and the Real Girl, etc.) but no film I’ve ever seen before has made me cry tears of joy, of awe at its sheer brilliance. I was dumbfounded – stunned. It’s not a perfect film – but it’s incredibly close.

But then, why is it so close? I was talking to my girlfriend (with whom I saw it) about this as we were driving home from the theater, and I’m convinced it is because of not only Christopher Nolan’s skill as a director – his ability to interpose action, intrigue, and plot – but also his skill as a writer. Granted, he seems to rarely write alone and is often aided by his brother, Jonathan Nolan. But as his most recent film proves, the man is just as strong a writer on his own – perhaps even stronger.

My position in the discussion was and remains this: Christopher Nolan does not simply create movies as everyone else does, but gives what seems to me a strangely self-aware nature to every film he makes. Take, for example, his 2006 film The Prestige – a film about two magicians who go to great lengths to best each other’s acts. Without spoiling the film for you if you haven’t seen it, the plot-line is (like most of our boy Chris’ films) chock full of twists and turns. Turn being the operative word. Throughout the film there is a lot of dialogue included about the anatomy of a magic trick – narrated descriptions of the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. These bits of dialogue and narration about how a magic trick works are not in the script simply to add intellectual depth to the film or prove that the writers did their research, but are – we find at the end of the film – totally necessary pieces of information needed for the audience to fully understand what has happened by the end. The film in and of itself is, arguably, a magic trick. And a slick one, at that.

Nolan’s other films operate in much the same way. Memento works backwards and reveals to you its mnemonic devices one by one, catching you totally unaware by the end. Nolan doesn’t allow the viewer to “figure it out” in that film as well as he does in The Prestige, because it’s not necessary. The visceral experience in Memento comes from not being able to figure out what’s going on, furthering our connection with the film’s protagonist because we have no more idea of what’s happening than he does up until the end of the film.

Nolan’s Batman films don’t conform to this trend in as many easily definable ways, probably because his function here is more purely directorial – the stories for these films are already written. Still, they are expertly produced and that self-aware feeling is not lost in them. Simply put, they know they’re movies so that you don’t have to; so that when that film effect kicks in and the picture starts to warp when we are seeing things through the eyes of a victim of the Scarecrow’s serum we don’t think “wow, what a great effect” so much as we shift uncomfortably in our seats and wait for the bad trip to pass. After Batman Begins came out in theaters I asked my pastor – a film buff and a Batman fan – what he thought of it. He replied that he liked it, but he had a really tough time watching it because of some previous experiences he’d had with drugs as a young teen. The film gave him flashbacks. If that’s not experiential filmmaking, I don’t know what is.

At the heart of Christopher Nolan’s ability to make films that are inexplicably tangible, affecting, and visceral is, I think, his ability to understand his craft. Just as a composer attempts to express deep emotions, specific settings, and everyday sounds through music, Nolan makes movies that are truly about their subjects – so much so that they mirror those subjects and become them. Inception isn’t just a film about dreams – it is a dream on film (not a spoiler, don’t worry). It’s not as though this is a new concept to the world of film, but due to the skill of the writer/director I would argue that it has never been done so thoroughly and successfully. An hour after seeing Inception I found myself examining the wooden frame of a painting on the wall of my girlfriend’s house and doing my best to appreciate just how intricate and real it was. Inception made me at first question my reality, and then appreciate the realness of the world around me – the universal truths of physics. It is a powerful film made by a powerful director, and Christopher Nolan undoubtedly deserves an Oscar – if not for the fact that he created such an incredible film, then because of his obviously deep love of what movies are, and his contribution to demonstrating what they should be. Now, excuse me while I pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.

Colin Flanigan is a writer, musician, and artist. He currently studies English and Media studies in the Chicagoland area, heads up the band The Aches and Pains, and blogs at The Syllabus.

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