Christopher Nolan’s Immersion of the Audience

How does Christopher Nolan’s usage of abstract story concepts and narrative encourage audience immersion within his films?
Extended essay subject: Film
Word Count: 3982

Introduction:
Since the mid-1990s, Hollywood cinema has embraced more experimental trends in its classical narrative rules and has inspired various creative approaches to modern storytelling (Kiss). Appealing to an audience is significant for film directors to produce captivating motion pictures (Film Director Responsibilities) and Christopher Nolan is a director who uniquely evokes audience immersion (Jimenez) through innovative techniques that cognitively challenge the viewer (Legacy of Nolan). Nolan’s films have been described as puzzles given to you with the pieces scrambled around for you to put in the right order to see a full picture (Ode to Nolan). It is typical for Nolan’s works to demonstrate complexity and depth that require mental investment as part of the viewer experience. Professor of Film Studies Thomas J Anderson writes, he is not afraid to take on some incredibly complicated subjects… Is he offering us some unique insights into the nature of existence?
Nolan claims we are imprisoned in our own views (Hellerman) which is why his films are complex puzzles. Puzzle films experiment with storytelling through fragmented segments and chronologies that require extra concentration from viewers to use their working memory and mental efforts to piece a narrative together (Gray), which also enriches the emotional and aesthetic impacts of the viewing experience (Kiss). They have specific structures and alternate paradoxes that offer a unique viewing experience with logical yet surreal themes that must be unravelled by the audience (Pu). From Inception’s (2010) notion of subconscious dream layering, Tenet’s (2020) time-inversion, and Interstellar’s (2014) general relativity theory (Nugent), he weaves these scientific stimuli into complex narratives to construct his cinematic puzzles. It may be argued that to improve cognitive understanding of his movies, one must rewatch them (Lyon).
Nolan’s immersive elements are supported by Freud’s Cognitive Psychoanalytic Theory, which seeks to appeal to human thoughts, emotions, and actions through a film’s mental process (Stam 236). Film theorist David Bordwell uses contingent universals to explain how directors create a more realistic and relatable film experience for their audience. Contingent universals are preconceptions that originate from cognitive schemas, frameworks of the existing world established by past experiences. Directors rely on the psychology behind contingent universals because they make assumptions about how humans perceive and understand the world, such as expecting natural light to fall from above, to create an immersive three-dimensional environment (Stam 236). Nolan utilises this mental process to create his cognitive puzzles by delivering clues during his narration that the audience interprets based on their schemas (Kravanja), encouraging them to actively adjust ideas about the story as it unfolds and use them to construct intelligible stories. I want the audience to feel my movies, (Interview, 2017)

Rationale
A study of Nolan’s work provides the opportunity to understand how his complex philosophical themes and narrative puzzles serve to secure the audience’s attention. Film students not only find interest in delving into the thought process behind a successful director but also benefit from implementing the link between Nolan’s techniques and the human cognition of an audience when creating their films. It is also significant for film audiences to understand themselves by acquiring deeper reasoning behind the mental process during their experience of watching an immersive movie and therefore recognise why the director’s choice has effectively worked on them.

Approach
The research question of this essay is: How does Christopher Nolan’s usage of abstract story concepts and narrative encourage audience immersion within his films? It investigates how he inspires audience engagement by obligating viewers to logically connect pieces of a puzzle to understand a film and experience an emotional response. Specifically, the essay looks at Nolan’s use of scientific concepts including relativity, time, and space, and his treatment of philosophical concepts including perception, reality, and identity. It also looks at non-traditional narrative structures, including segmentation of the telling, disruption of story logic, and manipulation of character points of view.
The analysis is split into two sections for exploring Nolan’s use of abstract concepts and his use of unique narrative structures, with concrete examples from his movies alongside a breakdown analysis of how his directorial choices create audience immersion. Despite Nolan’s large filmography, the analysis focuses on the movies; Inception, Interstellar, Tenet, The Prestige, Memento, and Oppenheimer. This choice of movies was made because they are either conceptually rich or provide unique narratives, immersive effects, and support the Cognitive Psychoanalytic Theory. A mixture of books, articles, interviews, audience reviews, film critics, blogs, and commentaries support the research to provide insight from audiences, filmmakers and film experts.

Analysis
Philosophical & Abstract Concepts as a Mechanism for Audience Immersion
Inception
One aspect contributing to Nolan’s audience immersion is his usage of philosophy and abstract concepts. Through his unique approach to incorporating complexity in stories, he makes them impossible to discuss and explain to someone who hasn’t seen the movie (Asi). In Inception, he creates a world in which dream layers build upon each other. Philosophy Professor Haven Edward writes, We can get lost in the science (or lack thereof) of dream machines, the groundbreaking effects, or the story of time eloquently woven together by the director. This is what draws the audience and holds our attention for over 3 hours. It is a complex film that requires multiple watchings to fully grasp, with a philosophy of towering ideas that the audience continually recognises and mentally organises. (V, Renée).
For example, the folding city scene (Figure 1), where the protagonist realises that he and his companions are in a dream realm, is the first significant moment for the audience to recognise a barrier between dream and reality. In this moment, Nolan immerses his audience by placing them in a state of confusion and uncertainty because their city schemas break, situating them in the unsettling dream atmosphere that the characters experience (Isaacs). This scene introduces entering the subconscious and initiates their mental immersion to analyse these unnatural habitats that contradict the audience’s contingent universals of the world (Rahardjo). From an audience perspective, Inception is a multi-layered philosophical experience that draws deep into the story narrative, while creating uneasiness as they reflect upon their sense of reality (Rose). Nolan manages to not only immerse the audience in the atmosphere of the film’s world but also ensures they closely analyse details as the dream layers deepen, which will help them work out the puzzle. Cognitive Psychoanalytical Theory explains when Nolan’s audience is philosoph Westbrook, philosophically stimulated to collect puzzle pieces and come to terms with depictions of reality that are illogical and beyond their own experience of reality (Rupkatha Journal).
In the rotating corridor scene (Figure 2) the deuteragonist, Arthur, faces one of the projections. This rotation isn’t just a stylistic directorial choice but also a plot-driven one to elevate tension (Heckmann) by bizarrely breaking audience expectations. The unorthodox camera work and rotating composition captivate the audience, blurring the boundary between reality and dream (Halve). Nolan immerses his audience into the film’s philosophy, creating a first-person experience similar to that of the characters. By challenging the viewer’s conventional schema of how time and space work (Brislin) and combining it with the unorthodox camera work, Nolan mentally engages his audience to reflect upon the contrast between dream and reality by making them challenge their contingent universals of realistic environments.
In addition to the unorthodox rotating camera blurring the lines between dream and reality, Nolan uses the spinning top prop as an important visual cue to guide the viewer through questioning reality (Reck). Cobb disorientates his sense of time and self-awareness when he enters the Limbo (Carter et al.) and his totem, the spinning top (Figure 3), which is meant to help him fool Cobb and the audience through a final open-ended uncertainty. The Cognitive Psychoanalytical Theory explains how the audience must make cognitive choices based on the puzzle pieces they observe to subjectively speculate the alternate outcome of an ambiguous ending (Plessis), encouraging a rewatch (Burnett). By contradicting the schemas and forcing them to engage in an alternate reality, Nolan limits the audience from making assumptions and predictions about the film because they are physiologically immersed in analysing what they are given. Nolan stimulates real-life human dreams for the audience’s viewing experiences (Gregory) because watching a movie acts upon the same parts of the brain, as dreaming. Inception reflects Freudian’s theory, that cinema is like dreaming. Nolan stimulates this by using cinematic techniques such as cuts to creative narrative ellipses, instant character/location changes, time distortion, and non-radical concepts (Mooney). Therefore, audience members project themselves in these films, enabling a connection through pathos that Nolan confirms when stating; Inception is the furthest I’ve pushed that relationship with the audience. Inception surrounds Cobb’s nostalgic subconsciousness, haunted by a past of which he cannot let go, reflecting society’s longing for the past. Nolan’s nostalgic reference provides his audience with familiar imagery and ideas, offering comfort and security (Mooney). Cobb confronts Ariadne, the supporting character that guides Cobb’s team through her architectural knowledge, that once she wakes up from a dream, she will feel nothing but strangeness. This foreshadows the totem’s ambiguity of the final scene, where the feeling of emptiness is transferred to the audience before the screen cuts to black. (Rahardjo). Nolan takes advantage of the contingent universal of the common human experiences to feel strange after waking up from a dream and therefore are left even more empty. This directorial choice leaves the audience mentally immersed even after the film’s ending because they are left curiously thinking about an alternate ending making the dream state sustain until the last moment through the strange feeling of nothingness (Rahardjo)

Interstellar
The application of complex themes is also effectively executed in Nolan’s science fiction drama Interstellar. Similar to Inception, Interstellar philosophically engages and immerses the audience by creating a sense of lost time (M, Rohan, Bhargavi) and distorted reality alongside the protagonist, Cooper, as they delve into solving the puzzle. Through Morse code, Cooper sends his daughter Murphey a message within the 4-dimensional library space (Figure 4) which is a key scene in the movie’s unfolding mystery behind the secret messages that were foreshadowed before Cooper dived into space, marking a beginning and terminal line of the audience losing their sense of time once they enter the cognitive puzzle. National Library of Medicine states: When an audience becomes immersed, their attention shifts towards the media and story… they allocate cognitive resources to represent events and characters (Hammond). Throughout the movie, Nolan uses the ticking clock sound effect, representing one Earth day, as an auditory cue for the audience to connect back to reality. By utilising the contingent universals of a stereotypical ticking time passage associated sound (Jones), Nolan applies the cognitive Psychoanalytical Theory to help the audience navigate the complex concepts presented in the film by both immersing them yet applying the psychological stress of needing to rush analysing Interstellar’s puzzle. When these ticks get increasingly louder during intense moments such as the tidal water planet scene, the tension built through that increases and philosophically immerses the audience as they know these moments are significant to pay attention to and to understand any puzzle pieces given throughout the story. Nolan recognises that to immerse his audience in the unnatural cosmic philosophy of Interstellar (Lewis), he must make the world more believable for them (Egan). He engrosses them through sound, visuals, and story to mentally transport them and share their first-hand experience with the characters. By doing so, he manages to alter the schema of an audience based on their contingent universal of the natural world to understand a space beyond what most have seen. To make this space more believable for the audience, he also recognises the importance of psychologically engrossing them beyond philosophical analysis through an emotionally investing father-daughter story (Egan) which maintains the audience’s attention not just from an analytical perspective but also from a psychologically emotional one.
 

Tenet
In addition to dreams, space, and time, the intellectual puzzle of Tenet centres around the philosophical notion of fatalism, if an event is predestined to happen, it has to happen. Nolan aims to make this film challenge conventional cinematic norms by pushing the audience out of their perceptions and immersing them in a visual spectacle and intellectual puzzle (Shelke). First introduced by the inverted bullet scene where the continent universal that time is linear is broken, the audience is demanded to pay attention to understand the film’s philosophy (Shelke). His directorial usage of the blue and red colours differentiating simultaneous past and present (Figure 5) allows the audience to cognitively engage with the film by choosing which time they want to be in. This can be seen both in the final climax seen during Niel’s and the protagonist’s final mission to go back in time and reverse the murder of Kat and see the bullet in its past and present. The complicated philosophy of fatalism encourages audience immersion as it forces intellectual engagement (Iyer) to analyse the concepts that may be challenging to initially understand, encouraging exterior research. Cognitive engagement is required when the schema that the audience has of time and its contingent universal that times run forward is challenged. Nolan forces his viewers to understand the unusual philosophy that differs from their pre-conventional notion of time. Eventually, with the progression of the story, the philosophical complexity of grasping that both the future selves of the protagonist and Niel have met their past selves becomes cognitive challenges that overstimulate the audience (Kiss). Nolan also often puts his audience in the same subjective mental state as the protagonist of the film by challenging the thought process of his audience in the same way as that of the protagonist who comes to terms with complex ideas that are slowly revealed as the story progresses. He follows a pattern within his films where he first immerses them in the storyline and leaves them in a philosophically analytical state even after the film finishes. This is what brings his audience to watch the film several times and cognitively engage with it, perhaps even further during the second analysis as the first most likely focused on understanding the story’s emotional puzzle.
 

Unique Narrative Structure as Mechanism for Audience Immersion
The Prestige
In addition to complex scientific and philosophical concepts, Nolan utilises unusual narrative structures to draw his audience. The Prestige is a notable example of Nolan’s unique narrative structure creating cognitive challenges for his audience. Nolan tells the story of the two competitive protagonists, Angier and Alfred, by making the audience experience the film’s epistolary narration in the form of a double-focalised structure (Kiss). His directorial choice to depict both characters’ perspectives and their attempts to trick one another also mentally tricks the audience through their untrustworthy narrative technique (Kiss). The audience therefore cannot rely on the two protagonists’ storytelling because they know both are deceiving and are therefore immersed by cognitively challenging them to individually figure out the puzzle of Alfred’s grand magic trick (Figure 6). This is also supported as the audience uses their contingent universals of the stereotypical trickery of magicians to infer that Nolan is fooling them with the epistolary narration. The story is two threads woven through Angier’s reading Alfred’s journal and Alfred reading Angier’s diary. Nolan only reveals to the audience what Angier was meant to know, which is a directorial choice of narrative that leaves the audience surprised state, similar to magicians leaving their audiences after a trick (Kelly). With constant changes of narrative between present and the past, Nolan leaves the audience to decide where on the timeline they want to be (Kelly) which can be interpreted as a decision where the audience must cognitively engage by deciding which time will help them solve the film’s puzzle. Some audience members try outsmarting the filmmaker but are tricked by Nolan into following the Cognitive Psychoanalytic Theory and solving the puzzle (Brutlag). On the other hand, others choose Angier’s blind path and watch the film on a surface level without looking deeper because they want to be fooled (Conlin). Alfred’s teleportation trick is the main puzzle that the audience tries to figure out, and can be interpreted as a metaphor for the film’s narrative of cutting through space and time (Kelly) that requires the audience to teleport through the right portals in time and discover the puzzle. When Alfred reveals his grand trick, Nolan concludes the cognitive decision-making by ending the narrative journey of his audience just like any magic trick. Nolan goes back and forth with the perspectives when narrating the story alongside his iconic style of dropping hints to mentally interpret and form logical conclusions. As magicians do, Nolan’s puzzles invite his audience to become part of the show, immersing them to dive deeper into the discussion of the film (Mariani). He recognises that the audience requires a grand act, as Prestige, to maintain the audience’s interest, he must extend the schemata of magic tricks to surprise them (Joy). He does this by building tension throughout the narrative and cognitively engaging them in the puzzle to figure the secret out until they become obsessed with the truth, as Angier does until it doesn’t matter how grand the trick is anymore by the end as long as they figure it out. A further hint Nolan reveals to his audience is through Cutter’s character who quotes Angier; you’re looking for the secret but you won’t really find it because you’re not really looking (The Prestige, 2006) which informs the audience that they are not watching the film properly without cognitively engaging in solving the puzzle, so they must first break this cognitive barrier (Joy). The audience doesn’t know the magic trick’s secret either until the end which draws them into the movie’s plot as they are placed into the perspective of Angier. By aligning the audience’s knowledge to that of the protagonist, Nolan creates a deeply immersive experience (Hestand).
 

Memento
Memento is the story of Leonard, a man suffering from amnesia who wrestles with the puzzle of his wife’s death. It alternates between two different major threads (Branigan) as Leonard is trapped living in a constant present that will be forgotten. Nolan uses non-linear narrative structures by reversing the story’s narrative (Mooney) to reflect Leonard’s confusion about events and time, which the audience experiences alongside (FilMagicians). Leonard’s subjectively narrated story is significant to highlight his fragmented identity and challenges the audience with the same cognitive puzzle that Leonard is struggling with (Like Stories, 2022). He wrote the script for Memento from an audience’s point of view and made a reversed story make chronological sense so the audience can backward progress events into the past. By the deliberate slow reveal of key plot elements, the cognitive challenges are supported where Nolan forces the audience to gradually develop knowledge at the same pace as Leonard. The whole dynamic of the script is aimed at taking a simple story and putting the audience through the perceptual distortion that Leonard suffers, (Mooney) thereby immersing them in the suffering of someone with conditioned amnesia. Disrupting chronological events immerses the audience into cognitively investing in the film because it psychologically stresses them the same way Leonard’s retrograde amnesia does as they do not remember what past events have led to the present (Kiss). Nolan aims to put the viewer in the same condition as the main character, sharing his anterograde amnesia (Kiss). Nolan captures the complexity of the human mind including emotions of stress and helplessness to immerse the audience in empathising with his helpless state (Beyl) which forces them to team up with Leonard to analyse the puzzle pieces together (Kiss). While Nolan is known for using the IMAX camera for 4K quality, he also incorporates insert shots such as the telephone focus (Figure 7). This adds totemic quality to the objects with which the characters interact and create the frameworks of the world in which they live, psychologically immersing the audience within the emotional environment in Leonard’s life (Mooney). The Cognitive Psychoanalytical Theory suggests that this would shift the audience’s framework of reality to being that of the film through the atmosphere created (Mooney). Even though Memento’s narrative arc follows a non-linear narrative pattern, Nolan makes sure that each segment of the film has something unique to offer that maintains the audience’s interest (Mooney). His directorial process includes splitting the movie into 5-minute blocks and ensuring that each one offers some significance to the cognitive puzzle. Film critic James Berardinelli quotes: By presenting events in Memento backward, Nolan allows us to get into the mindset of the main character. Like Leonard, we don’t have a clear indication of what happened before the current segment of time. Nolan calls this the food delivery scenario: if a movie is paused to open the door for a delivery, the viewer can return to the movie after missing 3 to 4 minutes of it and still understand. Memento follows function over form, originally designed specifically as a cinema experience where he purposely distorts Memento’s narrative flow to deny the audience the same information that was denied by the protagonist. By concealing sets of information between the movie’s segments, an immersive effect is achieved. Memento’s narratives are a complicated web for the audience to untangle thereby creating confusion with the linearity (Öksüzoglu). One viewing is right for this movie. Confusion is the state we are intended to be in. (Ebert). His directorial choice to leave gaps in Memento’s narrative which he has carefully woven together creates a puzzle that is without clear objective answers leaves space for the audience to eagerly fill with questions, theories, and speculations.
 

Oppenheimer
Nolan’s Oppenheimer documents the historical story behind the creation of the Atomic Bomb in WW2. It lasts almost 3 hours, yet manages to immerse the audience in the storyline by creating a sympathetic connection between them and the character through a singular subjective narrative to maintain their attention through psychological and cognitive decision-making. An interview with Nolan exhibits insight into his thought process and directorial input on the relationship between their relationship where he states; I wanted Oppenheimer’s story to be told subjectively, I wanted to bring the audience into his experience, and experience events as he did. (Sun Showbiz). While Nolan emphasises the complexities of time dimensions and reality, he also presents a complex mind for Oppenheimer, which makes the audience subjected to stress when the character internally copes with the situation (CinemaScopeCentral). Oppenheimer also brings the theme of ethical morality over which relates to the Cognitive Psychoanalytical Theory because the audience is forced to experience Oppenheimer’s psychological distress (G, Zeyneb) with his dilemma between serving his duty to the country by creating a murder weapon and the people whose deaths he was responsible for (Novak). In the near-ending scene after the bomb has been dropped (Figure 8) and Oppenheimer realises the damage he has caused and is isolated in thought, the audience sympathises with the protagonist’s guilt. The isolation of the character and the audience is created through Nolan’s directorial choice of volume-toned-down surroundings and zooming on Oppenheimer’s expression. The narrative following Oppenheimer throughout and his thought process and psychological state emotionally influence the audience because they are cognitively engaged in the long-term effects of deciding between morality and duty (Ganbaatar).
 

Conclusion
In conclusion, Nolan uses abstract philosophical concepts and innovative narrative structures to immerse the audience within his films. The variety of sources from the audience, filmmakers, and expert inputs supported this argument. Nolan deliberately challenges his audience with complex themes such as Inception’s visualisation of the subconscious, Tenet’s inverted narration, or Interstellar’s sophisticated scientific concept. Similarly, he challenges them to solve cognitive puzzles through narrative choices such as The Prestige’s double-focalised structure, Memento’s reverse narrative, and Oppenheimer’s subjective narrative to encourage moral analysis. Applying Freud’s Cognitive Film Theory to Nolan’s films gives insight into how his directorial choices impact the audience either through an emotional and psychological viewpoint or a cognitively analytical one. His application of supporting or twisting the schemas and contingent universals of today’s world immerses the audience in engaging with the film by collecting pieces to solve a puzzle throughout the story.
 

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