Complex narrativity in the cinema of Christopher Nolan: A view from the perspective of Seymour Chatman

In this study, the concept of "complex narrative" introduced by theorists in the late 1980s will be examined in depth, taking into account the analysis of "classical narrative". The study aims to investigate how Christopher Nolan's films have opened the doors to a new, modern concept of "complex narrative" and how this new narrative form has been identified as "reformist narrative". The goal of the study is to identify the developments in contemporary cinema and to explore the possibility of a new narrative language emerging through the analysis of Christopher Nolan's films, who is considered one of the "innovative" directors of our time. During the examination, research was conducted on Aristotle's Poetics within the context of classical narrative, as well as the works of theorists such as Thomas Elsaesser, Seymour Chatman, Jason Mittell, Warren Buckland, and Joseph Campbell, who's works about complex narrative shining light in our way up until the present day. These studies were used as a basis for establishing the foundation of the new narrative language. The films analyzed in this study include Christopher Nolan's feature films from his second film to the present day, with the exception of the The Dark Knight trilogy which is excluded because it is an adaptation of the comic book character 'Batman'. The films analyzed are Dunkirk, The Prestige, Memento, Tenet, Inception, and Interstellar. The primary concept used in the analysis is Chatman's structural analysis, which was used as a starting point for developing new concepts and establishing an analysis format for the study. The concepts used in the study include cause and effect, plot, time and space, characters, facts, entities and space, narrator-audience, and visual conditioning. As a result of the study, it is believed that Christopher Nolan's narratives will play an important role in the new world of cinema through the concept of "reformist narrative," and areas that need to be further examined and clarified regarding this narrative form have been identified in detail. Keywords: Complex narrativity, Classic narrative, Narration, Mind, Time, Space, Cause and effect, Semiotics, Narratology, Christopher Nolan