Christopher Nolan is a cinematic auteur, a director, a writer, and a producer. He is not, however, a philosopher in the technical sense of the term that denotes professionals working in the academic discipline. Nevertheless, a volume entitled The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan is perfectly appropriate as his films—spanning nearly twenty years from Doodlebug (1997) through Interstellar (2014) and beyond—have provoked philosophical reflection among viewers who’ve found his films, to quote comedian John Oliver, more than “a little vague.”
In this respect, Nolan is not all that different from the father of Western philosophy, Socrates (d. 399 BCE), who styled himself a sort of “gadfly” whose function was to sting his fellow Athenians out of their intellectual complacency to ponder moral and other philosophical questions about which they’ve often taken for granted simple, patent conclusions. There are no simple solutions for complex problems.
Let’s consider Nolan’s oeuvre chronologically. First, in Doodlebug, he challenges a hallmark of Western philosophy from Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century through Immanuel Kant in the eighteenth century that self-destruction is a fundamentally irrational desire. Although the protagonist in Doodlebug may indeed be irrational for wanting to squash himself, it’s not altogether clear that he might not have some reason for doing so; or, at the very least, his perhaps irrational action might bespeak a fundamental flaw of the human condition insofar as many of us willingly engage in potentially self-destructive behaviors.
Doodlebug, for better or worse, maybe the most Freudian of Nolan’s films as subconscious motivations lead one to self-destructive behavior; but the larger existential question of whether we have such motivations, and whether the behavior they induce may be rational at times, unavoidably challenges viewers’ presumptions through Nolan’s provocative imagery.
Following (1998) is Nolan’s first feature-length film and extends the thesis of Doodlebug to the level of a man who unwittingly participates in his own downfall. The narrative has expanded, however, to show the audience a bit more of what motivates the pre-fallen protagonist. Primarily, what’s at issue is a need to belong, to be involved in others’ lives as a way of affirming the validity of one’s own existence.
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Whether Nolan had ever read Martin Buber (1878–1965) or not, it’s clear that he shares Buber’s fundamental thesis that I exist fully only with respect to a Thou who acknowledges my existence as such and vice versa. There’s an inherent danger in such co-dependency as it may devolve into a perverse master/ slave dialectic; although, even in such a relationship, according to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), the master is just as dependent on
the slave as the reverse.
In the case of Cobb and The Young Man, however, the former functions as a master manipulator who doesn’t have any need for the latter and can easily disappear into the crowd as if he never existed. All of this raises the question of whether Cobb ever really existed; perhaps The Young Man is truly an extension of the self-destructive protagonist in Doodlebug.
Self-identity persists as a central organizing theme in Nolan’s next and more widely-distributed film, Memento (2000). Here, Nolan completely disrupts the protagonist Leonard Shelby’s sense of identity and creates a situation in which he must create meaning for his existence— otherwise, why not squash himself as in Doodlebug? Leonard’s need to
affirm his self-identity, though, comes at the cost of sacrificing others’ identity—particularly that of Teddy or any other putative “John G.” who happens to cross his path.
Ironically, though, by eliminating Teddy, Leonard has inadvertently created the conditions of his own existential demise, since the narrative Teddy had helped Leonard construct is what gave meaning to his existence. Without the telos—using the classical Greek term—of finding and killing John G., there’s no further purpose to Leonard’s existence to guide his moral choices. By killing the only John G. to whom the “facts” he’s tattooed on his body have led him, Leonard has only succeeded in squashing his own identity and sense of purpose.