Christopher Nolan - The Cinematic Engineer

I just finished watching director Christopher Nolan's Memento. The movie which was released in year 2000, actually convinced me that Christopher Nolan is a computer engineer, a computer programmer. His direction style , and the choice of screenplay that he directs clearly shows that.



In Inception, there is the concept of 'dream within a dream'. Just like that, in a computer's operating system, there are multiple layers of instructions, and there is a layer within a layer. When one layer in the OS is executed, it completes its task,and while doing so, executes another layer. This topic is covered in a subject called Operating Systems, which is a very important topic when it comes to programming critical software, like Drivers,bootloaders,etc.

In Mememto, an incident is shown. Then the story is reversed in time to show the events that actually triggered the incident. This goes on and on until the root event - the event that directly(or indirecty caused all the events). The lead in the movie Leonard shoots a cunning looking guy at a isolated place. Then its shown how did he reach there. Eventually, the story reaches full circle,and makes sense there only when the audience takes all the small parts and analyses them as a single unit. This is similar to the concept of circular Linked Lists in data structures, or Spiral model of Software Development Life Cycle in Software Engineering.

I'm not trying to prove any point. I'm saying is that its quite interesting to see an Engineer change the way movies are made. Memento and Inception are brilliant movies, one of their kind. Movies like 'The Prestige' and 'The Dark Knight' were also brilliant, but they weren't as impacting to human brain as Memento or Inception. Although, i must admit that Inception was a highly tiring movie, it took me a few cups of coffee to relax the grey cells, that were overburdened links pieces. Though, i still admit that Inception is one of the best movies i've ever seen, and one om my favourites. That's a different thing that only those people with extremely high IQ's were able to completely understand the complex logics that formed the backbone of the story.

So the next time you go to Christopher Nolan movie(which most probably might be the highly awaited 'The Dark Knight Rises'), do think of that movie as an 'engineered' movie.