Page 177 - Cascade I SHPS School Magazine 2024

2020 saw Nolan’s complex, time twisting
narrative in Tenet, starring John Davis
Washington. This highly discussed film explores
time inversion, entropy and the consequences
of tampering with the natural order and flow of
events. It has a non-linear narrative that requires
the audience to slowly piece together the puzzle as
the plot unfolds in both forward and backward
THROUGH SPACE, chronological order. This has to do with the setting

of the story, where technology makes time travel

TIME AND a common reality. Removing the layers of
timelines, the core plot explains how a skilled
operative tries to prevent the alteration of history
THE HUMAN MIND: as we know it. Nolan’s masterful plotting and
stunning visual sets makes this one a film that
has the audiences re-watching it multiple times
to comprehend the thematic complexity that is
the core of Tenet.
During World War 2, Operation Dynamo
or the Dunkirk evacuation saw the evacuation
of more than 3,38,000 Allied soldiers from
Dunkirk, Northern France. Christopher Nolan’s
epic, Dunkirk centres around this miraculous
wartime operation. Released in 2017, this Time dilation is an important observation
gripping war drama won numerous accolades in many experiments and has been taken from
including two Oscars. In Dunkirk too, we can Einstein’s theory of relativity. According to the
see the adroit employment of interwoven time- special theory of relativity, time dilation is seen
frames and perspectives, each showing different when one object travels relatively faster than
phases of the operation. The storylines switch another object at a significant speed. Time moves
between evacuation of the Allied soldiers from slower for the moving object and this effect
Dunkirk, the heroic civilian efforts to rescue becomes more noticeable when the object
them and the battles fought by the Royal approaches speed of light.
Air Force to safeguard the evacuation. The con- In the general theory of relativity, time
vergence of these storylines immerses us in the dilation occurs in gravitational fields. According
chaos and tension of war. Nolan combines ideas to this, an object with considerable mass and
of survival, courage, resilience, sacrifice, heroism powerful gravitational field can curve space-
and the mental toll war has on people. It also time, making time go slower. This effect can
portrays the camaraderie among soldiers during be seen near overwhelmingly large black holes.
the harrowing operation. In fact, this is one of the main characteristic
As we go into the 2010s, we get to see Nolan’s features of Interstellar. The film is set in a
most popular movies such as Inception and dystopian earth, where humans set out beyond
Interstellar. It was for these two masterpieces the solar system through a wormhole (a tunnel
that Nolan won the majority of his Academy in space-time caused due to the curvature of
nominations. the same) to find a new home. Like his other

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