It was a Christopher Nolan type of a day
“It was me Murph, I was your ghost”.
“It was me Murph, I was your ghost”.
Entering the car and turning the ignition, it wasn’t a huge surprise to me that the radio instantly played “Time To Say Goodbye” by Andrea Bocelli. It was roughly this time yesterday that I’d turned the same ignition on the same car to be greeted by the same song, a favourite of my dear old Mum’s and one which ensured she shone like the sun whenever she listened to it. Maybe that’s the reason for this strange twist of real life or maybe just maybe, this was the final proof that I’m living in a Christopher Nolan movie, and I’m having another Christopher Nolan type of a day.
The astute amongst you will point to my continual assertion that we all live in a Coen Brothers movie, diving headlong from one pratfall, a suspicious murder or a suitcase full of money, to another, and you’d be right. We do. But a “Christopher Nolan type of a day”? Only for the bravest amongst us I’m afraid. You need an enigma you can’t solve and a riddle your life could really do without. You have a Joker and a Scarecrow, insomnia and interstellar travel, dreams within dreams within time slippages and wormholes, becoming death, destroyer of worlds.
Just be careful what you wish for.
Before long you’ll be tattooing clues to a murder you can’t solve and remembering to forget. These Christopher Nolan type of days can be a heavy crown to wear.
So if today and yesterday, or was it yesterday and the day before? Will it in fact be tomorrow and the day after that in a story and riddle I’m writing ahead of time, in real time, for a day that’s already happened and what happens if that song plays, again? Will you freak out? Or will you question whether or not it’s the first time this song has played and you are in fact in the “today” of the timeline? Will you look forward to the tomorrow of the riddle and the playing of the song again, or will you be driving to the nearest tattoo parlour to have “Never Answer The Phone” inscribed on your thigh in thick black ink?
Ring! Ring!
Saturday was very definitely, and without a shadow of a doubt, a Christopher Nolan type of a day. First viewing of Oppenheimer at the cinema and a page full of notes I’ve yet to transcribe into any kind of meaningful review for a film that is just majestic and shot in only 59 days according to Mr Oppenheimer himself, Cillian Murphy. My scribbled notes show “time changes”, “black and white reversed”, “Incredible sound design again”, “Cillian Murphy’s EYES” and “McCarthyism” amongst a plethora of other useless words and phrases that will continue to make no sense to me whatsoever when I do finally pen some words of appreciation for yet another Nolan masterpiece for the ages that will only bloom with further re-watches akin to his 2006 masterpiece The Prestige. But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.
We have many more Christopher Nolan type days laid out before us, but are you watching closely?
It might have been Thursday or it may have been the day before the day before, but in preparation for Oppenheimer I decided to re-visit his entire back catalogue, and a film career I’ve heaped praise upon glorious time twisting praise in the article I’ve shamelessly linked at the bottom of this paragraph. As you would expect I dispensed with a linear timeline as well as re-visiting my least favourites first starting with 2020’s Tenet before Insomnia led me back to his debut film Following in 1998. Tenet frustrates me as I simply don’t understand it and, whisper it, the film bores me. Insomnia is dreadful despite Al Pacino, Hillary Swank and Robin Williams trying gainfully to save it and Following is still a gem of a forerunner to Memento, which I re-watched in a double-bill with Dunkirk and only after spending a beautiful afternoon with my son and the Dark Knight of Gotham City before a triple bill to end them all: Inception followed by Interstellar and ending with his masterpiece for the ages, The Prestige.
As you can see, I’ve been having quite a lot of Christopher Nolan type days recently.
Christopher Nolan and his entire cinematic catalogue.
Following, Memento, Insomnia, The Dark Knight Batman trilogy, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenetmedium.com
Before Andrea Bocelli makes us all cry again, kicking us all out of our deep sleep state and we have to say goodbye once again, I now cry even earlier during Interstellar, I still don’t care what’s happening or who’s sub conscious we’re in during Inception, I had the greatest of salted popcorn fun with my son and the “Caped Crusader”, and The Prestige should be hung like a precious artwork in the Tate Gallery.
My son has yet to remember to forget Memento, watch worlds being built inside someone else’s mind in Inception, seeing me weep like a teenage girl at the beginning to Nolan’s Kubrickian travel into space or the three card trick he pulls on everyone in The Prestige. He’s also listening to “Time To Say Goodbye” after he heard me listening to it. Or did he hear this song somewhere else?
I have more riddles to solve and enigmas to create. It’s a perk of the job when you have a Christopher Nolan type of day as regularly as I do.
And it seems there are many more in the offing in the coming future past.
Thanks for reading. If you can stand any more of this gibberish and tomfoolery, here’s some more plucked and feathered, ready for your consumption and delight:
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