Cut to Black

In spite of the diversity of Christopher Nolan's body of work, the director's experience of time, memory and identity have perhaps remained an integral part of his filmmaking. From 'Following' (Christopher Nolan, 1998) to 'The Dark Knight Rises' (Christopher Nolan, 2012), his films are debatably rooted in a cinematic experiment to interrogate the construction of time and the malleable nature of memory and identity. It is this examination of time and identity that unites the wide range of Nolan's work. Indeed, in many respects Nolan has arguably sought to develop a filmic language that concretely resembles the abstract structures of memory function and systems of identity.
With this in mind, this book examines the representations of time, memory and identity in Nolan's films in order to attain an understanding of identity in contemporary cinema and thought. The book considers the reflexive strategies and implications behind Nolan's obsession with identity, not only in terms of his body of work, but more importantly, in terms of what it can reveal about the cinema's own relationship to issues of identity. More specifically, the author contends that the insights of scientific, psychological, sociological literature on identity and memory, and those of contemporary filmmaking are engaged in communicating the complex relationships amongst memory, identity and post-modernity.