Christopher Nolan

There is a diagram inside every Nolan film, and the diagram is the attraction. Memento runs its scenes backwards because the man at the centre cannot hold a memory longer than fifteen minutes; Inception nests a dream inside a dream inside a dream and runs each level at a different speed; Dunkirk keeps three clocks going at once over one evacuation. Nolan shoots this at enormous scale with as much as possible actually happening in front of the camera, and delivers the explanation while everyone is running. The feeling underneath is nearly always a wife or a child who is gone. You spend the film assembling the shape, and you get there about a second before the film does.

Signature

• A structural conceit announced up front as the premise.
• Practical effects and large-format photography over digital construction.
• Crosscutting between timelines running at different speeds.
• Exposition delivered on the move, under score.