Nolan's movies hugely inspired by the traditional 3 act story structure. And mostly the contents of the theme hooked in the beginning in his movies. And he is the one who knew how to make astonishing visuals to impress the audience.Major elements of magical realism appeared in those visuals.So let us examine the opening shots of Nolan movies.And how they tell the story of the film.
Prestige: Clones and Twins
These pictures are the initial frames of the first scene in prestige. And those are brilliantly placed at the narration of Michael Caine. We see a bunch of caps lying on the ground and the next shot birds with similar appearances. While story moving forward we know that they are cloned caps of Angier. So the first shot represents duplicates of Angiers are clones and Bordens duplicates are twins it symbolically represented by the birds in the cage.Headless magician caps meant the died clones of Angiers. It is not different from the story and even caged birds have the same looks but they are not clones same like Borden's case.
Memento: Reverse shot
The Polaroid photo vanishes itself and gets back to the camera and the bullets also do the same thing. Of course, it is the reverse shot for the purpose. And it tells, the story of the movie will be told in a reverse manner by the director like these scene. Nolan placed some metaphors in this scene. The vanishing photo stands for Leonardo's vanishing memories and his memory conditions. And we see the dead man in his polaroid photo before we know that he is the murderer of that man same like a conflict of the movie he is the murderer of his wife.
Interstellar: Memories
Christopher Nolan hugely obsessed with the cinematic language of time and space. So what is the factor that connects time and space? That is memories, They can connect those elements. From classic to modern every writer used books, diaries, Memorable gifts to interconnect the character's memories. We see diaries in prestige and memento for connecting the space and time. And watch in inception and interstellar. Cooper gave a watch to his daughter which stands for love and that is the memory object which also used to show the time. The initial frames filled with books in the shelf and the rocket doll. Which refers the Cooper behind that bookshelf.
Inception: Half remembered dream
Cobb lying in the beach, half water, and half ground. If we observe the whole movie we can see water symbolism used for portraying the deep subconscious of the cobb. When dream collapsing cobb gets back from the water in the bathtub.But the first scene not placed in the underwater so it means his half-remembered dream. And his children hallucinations show his desires. So total situation can be framed by this sentence," A man in half-remembered dream looks for his children". His children are the ground so he must get back the land instead of lying the water.
Prestige: Clones and Twins
These pictures are the initial frames of the first scene in prestige. And those are brilliantly placed at the narration of Michael Caine. We see a bunch of caps lying on the ground and the next shot birds with similar appearances. While story moving forward we know that they are cloned caps of Angier. So the first shot represents duplicates of Angiers are clones and Bordens duplicates are twins it symbolically represented by the birds in the cage.Headless magician caps meant the died clones of Angiers. It is not different from the story and even caged birds have the same looks but they are not clones same like Borden's case.
Memento: Reverse shot
The Polaroid photo vanishes itself and gets back to the camera and the bullets also do the same thing. Of course, it is the reverse shot for the purpose. And it tells, the story of the movie will be told in a reverse manner by the director like these scene. Nolan placed some metaphors in this scene. The vanishing photo stands for Leonardo's vanishing memories and his memory conditions. And we see the dead man in his polaroid photo before we know that he is the murderer of that man same like a conflict of the movie he is the murderer of his wife.
Interstellar: Memories
Inception: Half remembered dream
Cobb lying in the beach, half water, and half ground. If we observe the whole movie we can see water symbolism used for portraying the deep subconscious of the cobb. When dream collapsing cobb gets back from the water in the bathtub.But the first scene not placed in the underwater so it means his half-remembered dream. And his children hallucinations show his desires. So total situation can be framed by this sentence," A man in half-remembered dream looks for his children". His children are the ground so he must get back the land instead of lying the water.
