What is the true meaning of human imperfection and love in Christopher Nolan’s films?

Christopher Nolan’s films are about human mental imperfection and a sceptical view of reason. Nolan’s films emphasise love over reason, and in doing so, convey a message of overcoming human limitations.

 

There are many different tastes and perspectives in the world. When it comes to cinema, I like films that leave the audience with a heavy head. The ones where you have to watch who destroys more spectacularly and with more destruction leave you with an empty feeling in your head.
Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar” is one of the most satisfying films in this regard. I believe that Interstellar is more than just a film, it is a work of high art that combines science, philosophy, and humanity. The awe I felt after watching Interstellar soon led to an interest in director Christopher Nolan.
As a theatre and film student once told me, “A director reigns as a king in a film.” He is in absolute control of every moment, every scene, to make sure that his values and issues are reflected in the film. If you’ve been watching movies just to pass the time, or if you’ve decided that the spectacular action and blockbuster visual effects are no longer interesting to you, why not try something new? Think about the issues that the director raises through the story, dialogue, and scenes in the film, and in the process, you’ll have a different experience that will change the way you see the world. Nolan’s work, in particular, is a great place to start active viewing because it’s so problematic. Let’s take a look at some of the common themes in his films.

First, he focuses on the human psyche.
Let”s take a look at Perception, a film about the human unconscious. The vastness of the human unconscious, also known as the microcosm, is constructed in the film, but from Nolan’s point of view, the world is never solid. It’s a flawed, fragile, and unstable world, and the film shows how easily human consciousness can be broken through the character of Mal. A simple thought planted in his subconscious mind causes him to take his own life. Inception’s protagonist, Dr Cobb, is also mentally unstable, despite his superior intelligence. He hallucinates at crucial moments during his missions and gets everything wrong. While Nolan’s use of death as a cinematic device is a leap of faith, it’s undeniable that he holds the view that the human psyche is imperfect.
Other film characters are not immune to this imperfection. This makes for one of the most troubled philosopher heroes of all time. While other heroes use their superpowers to perform spectacular action in their films, in the Dark Knight series, Batman faces many dilemmas and problems during his confrontations with villains. Between saving his lover and finding a prosecutor who will bring justice to a city, he struggles with what true justice is for the city, and he confronts his own deep-seated fears due to what happened to him as an infant. The film explores the mental and psychological conflicts of its characters, including those with physically superhuman abilities, and reveals that overcoming them is a challenge for all humans.
In many films, humans are often portrayed as clumsy, but through hard work, they overcome, compensate for, or embrace them, giving them a hopeful message. But in Nolan’s films, few people succeed in overcoming their mental flaws. They either fail to overcome them, or it is ambiguous whether they do or not. In other words, no matter how physically capable or intellectually brilliant they may be, Nolan’s idea of a human being is never complete in the mental department.

Second, he is sceptical of reason.
In his films, Nolan often asks the question, “Is it really true?” about things that many people believe to be rational. This characteristic is a continuation of the exploration of the mind discussed above.
In Memento, Leonard, the film’s protagonist, has severe amnesia, losing a memory every ten minutes. He relies on photographs and notes to overcome his amnesia. In fact, many people use photographs and notes as a means of making rational judgements because they think that they are facts themselves. In order to find out who killed his wife, Leonard makes rational judgements and identifies people around him based on the factual material of photographs and notes. However, the audience is confronted with a moment when the reality of his beliefs and reason is undermined.
Even if a photograph or a note shows facts, the visible facts are subject to a process of ‘interpretation’. In the process of interpretation, it is already manipulated, transformed, and repackaged as much as possible due to the intervention of subjectivity. In addition, the ‘reason’ to make a rational judgement can be paralysed by the ‘frame’ of preconceptions and emotions, and Nolan shows how foolish it is to diagnose oneself as rational.
After Memento, which depicts a rational puppet, the film Transcendence explores the terrible problems that can arise from the often-envied rationality of science, which is devoid of emotion. Whereas this film overtly expresses a sceptical view of reason, Interstellar offers an alternative to reason.

Third, the only alternative to reason in Nolan’s world is love.
If you know Interstellar as a science fiction film about the end of the world, relativity, and black holes, you won’t understand the above sentence. These scientific knowledge are just a means of depicting the overcoming of great adversity on a cosmic scale by an insignificant human being. They are devices to emphasise the driving force behind this overcoming: love. Nolan presents two situations involving love, one of which is a father’s love for his family.
From the beginning of the film, Nolan builds up the plot with supernatural phenomena, such as anomalous gravity and books falling inexplicably. When the audience realises that these are all messages from his father, trapped in another dimension behind a bookshelf, the meaning of “love” for his family is amplified infinitely in the audience’s mind, causing a shiver.
The other is the love between Dr Brand and Edmund. When forced to choose between the planet explored by Dr Mann and the one explored by Edmund, Dr Brand insists that he must go to Edmund’s planet, where his lover is, saying
“Love is the only thing we know that transcends time and space; it’s the one thing we can’t understand, but we can only believe in.”
However, the later revelation of Dr Mann’s atrocities makes us think again about the perishability of the ‘reason’ we believe in. By contrast, the establishment that Edmund’s planet is ultimately the most appropriate place for humanity to go, Nolan suggests that ‘love’, which is believed to be ‘irrational’ on the human level, is the only ‘reason’ that encompasses all dimensions. Barcelona architect Antonio Gaudí, a genius who was ahead of his time in his belief that love trumps reason, was similar to Nolan.
“To do something well, you need love first, and skill second,” he said.
“Emotion never makes mistakes, because it is life itself.”
“It’s the head that makes mistakes, it’s just a control tool.”

So far, we’ve discussed Nolan’s values, which are evident in his films. No one knows the exact answer to what Nolan was trying to express except him. But the lack of answers allows for active interpretation. We will grow as we reflect on the various issues that the director brings to light and answer them according to our own values, and if the answers we come up with after maturing in our thinking are applicable to the real world outside the screen, we may have the opportunity to change society for the better. This is why you should use your mind more than your eyes when watching a film.