Christopher Nolan

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DarkImbecile
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Christopher Nolan

#1 Post by DarkImbecile » Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:02 am

Christopher Nolan (1970 - )

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"One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself."

Filmography

Features
Following (1998)
Memento (2000)
Insomnia (2002)
Batman Begins (2005)
The Prestige (2006)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Inception (2010)
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Interstellar (2014)
Dunkirk (2017)

Shorts
"Tarantella" [unreleased] (1989)
"Larceny" [unreleased] (1995)
"Doodlebug" (1997)
"Quay" [documentary] (2015)

Books
The Fictional Christopher Nolan by Todd McGowan (2013)
Christopher Nolan: A Labyrinth of Linkages by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2013)
The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne [foreword by Christopher Nolan] (2014)
Imagining the Impossible: The Cinema of Christopher Nolan edited by Jacqueline Furby and Stuart Joy (2015)
The Philosophy of Christopher Nolan edited by Jason T. Eberl and George A. Dunn (2017)

Web Resources
"Inception; or, Dream a Little Dream Within a Dream With Me" by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2010)
"Revisiting Inception" by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson (2010)
2012 interview with Jeffrey Ressner, DGA Quarterly
"Nolan vs. Nolan" by David Bordwell (2012)
2014 profile by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, New York Times Magazine
2017 interview with Stephen Rebello, Playboy
2018 interview with Eric Hynes, Film Comment [on "unrestored" release of 2001: A Space Odyssey]

Forum Discussion
638 Following
The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)
The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006)
Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)
Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, 2014)
Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#2 Post by Flike » Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:33 am

Tribe wrote:
Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:02 am
colinr0380 wrote:Nice to hear that Following will get more attention by the Criterion label...
Absolutely! Following, along with Memento, are Nolan's finest moments as a film maker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects. I found the plot line in Following to be compelling a neo-noir story even aside from the conceit of displaying the story "out of order." Great movie.
Svevan wrote:Like Jeff, I'm unsure what Criterion could possibly add to the current edition of Following, but unlike Jeff, I don't consider Christopher Nolan a "great director." His early stuff is a tad better than what he does now, but whatever. It's not worth a discussion, and I look forward to re-examining the flick with Criterion sups, whatever they are.
Coming full circle, Nolan is one of the directors that guided me towards the Criterion Collection while in high school. Insomnia spurred me to track down... Insomnia, and while his work hasn't aged with me, I'm very interested in Following, which I haven't seen.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#3 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:12 am

Following and Memento are my favourites of the films by Nolan that I've seen, with the Insomnia remake comfortably the least (though The Prestige is still trapped in my kevyip). Following is particularly interesting for ideas later developed in Memento, a far more complex jumbling of chronology (strange how it settled down over the first three films until getting to Insomnia where the only jumbling occured with the slightly interesting but narratively pointless option on the DVD to play scenes from the film in the order that they were shot in), and a nice neo-noir plot full of double crossings, a femme fatale and botched crimes.

Following also seemed a particularly impressive achievement for being filmed (according to the extras on the first DVD) over weekends while everyone was working full time at other jobs. For those limitations, the film never really looks as amateurish as it could have turned out.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu Mar 04, 2010 2:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#4 Post by swo17 » Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:52 am

Tribe wrote:Following, along with Memento, are Nolan's finest moments as a film maker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects.
I like the films fine, but aren't they Nolan's only moments as a filmmaker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects?

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#5 Post by Tribe » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:13 am

swo17 wrote:
Tribe wrote:Following, along with Memento, are Nolan's finest moments as a film maker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects.
I like the films fine, but aren't they Nolan's only moments as a filmmaker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects?
I was being discreet and polite...but now that the cat's out of the bag, I agree whole heartedly. I thought that on the strength of Following and Memento that an exciting career would've been in the works. But, Insomnia came out starring Liza Minnelli....and things have been downhill ever since.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#6 Post by knives » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:31 am

Tribe wrote:
swo17 wrote:
Tribe wrote:Following, along with Memento, are Nolan's finest moments as a film maker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects.
I like the films fine, but aren't they Nolan's only moments as a filmmaker before he turned to big budget Hollywood projects?
I was being discreet and polite...but now that the cat's out of the bag, I agree whole heartedly. I thought that on the strength of Following and Memento that an exciting career would've been in the works. But, Insomnia came out starring Liza Minnelli....and things have been downhill ever since.
What's with all the indirect hate to The Prestige? Insomnia is terrible, and while I love the bat flicks I understand a dislike, but The Prestige is truly a work of art and a real perfection on those ideas, methods, and thoughts from his first two films in a new story.
Also it has Bowie as Tesla. :D

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#7 Post by Tribe » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:37 am

knives wrote: What's with all the indirect hate to The Prestige? Insomnia is terrible, and while I love the bat flicks I understand a dislike, but The Prestige is truly a work of art and a real perfection on those ideas, methods, and thoughts from his first two films in a new story.
Also it has Bowie as Tesla. :D
I had forgotten all about that one, Knives. But it entirely escaped my radar, so I never saw it...I'll check it out. If it has anything of the brilliance of the Nolan's first tewo movies, I'm willing to give it a shot. Thanks for pointing it out.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#8 Post by cdnchris » Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:54 am

I agree on the love for The Prestige. I've watched it numerous times and still think it's one of the best films to come out of Hollywood in the last few years.

I noticed in the blu-ray.com article that it says their "genre" films will be released by MPI in basic editions but IFC can still licence the same film to Criterion if they want. So even if MPI gets Antichrist I guess there's still a good chance of a Criterion edition, especially since it sounds like all MPI titles will be feature-free. I'd also put money down that they'll release a DVD/Blu-ray for In the Loop.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#9 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:29 pm

knives wrote:What's with all the indirect hate to The Prestige?
I'm open to it being great but Insomnia cooled me to rushing to watch his latest films for a while. Similar to the way that the awful Mission To Mars made me avoid De Palma's Femme Fatale for a long time (another film that I've finally just picked up to see sometime soon, or more likely when it surfaces in my 'to watch' pile and catches my eye).

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#10 Post by Svevan » Wed Sep 02, 2009 1:00 pm

Re: The Prestige, I can't stand Nolan's chippy-chopper editing, his hand-held camerawork, or his deliberately told out of order narrative structure; the film reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan's worst indulgences in The Village, where the only reason there's a mystery at all is because the editing leaves out the pertinent plot details until the end, at which point the film must retread over old scenes only this time including "what we missed," (that is, what the director chose not to show us the first time around). It all feels cheap, even if there are some interesting moments and themes.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#11 Post by knives » Wed Sep 02, 2009 1:05 pm

Isn't that, twists at end, true of Momento and Following also? Memento is especially bad at this, worse then The Prestige, were everything about John G and the protagonist's past is summed up in the last scene. Also if nonlinear story telling isn't your thing then Nolan isn't your thing. He seems to only be particularly good work non-linearly.

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Re: Criterion/IFC

#12 Post by Tribe » Wed Sep 02, 2009 1:09 pm

knives wrote:Isn't that, twists at end, true of Momento and Following also? Memento is especially bad at this, worse then The Prestige, were everything about John G and the protagonist's past is summed up in the last scene. Also if nonlinear story telling isn't your thing then Nolan isn't your thing. He seems to only be particularly good work non-linearly.
It's not just the non-linear story telling...I don't recall anything being wrapped up in Memento. It's far from clear whether its watched as originally intended, or watched in the alternate chronological cut, who John G was, and, more important, whether or not John G was the culprit.

At least that's how I remember it.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#13 Post by Sloper » Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:00 pm

Why do people think Insomnia is so terrible? I think it's his best film so far (though I haven't seen Following or The Dark Knight, which I guess is a big qualifier on that statement). The original is good too, but although I'm very fond of dour films where people scowl a lot and don't say much, that one seemed kind of empty to me - I have only seen it twice, and need to give it another spin one of these days.

Sure, Nolan's remake is 'just a thriller', but it's everything a good thriller should be, and like his other films I find it genuinely chilling and thought-provoking. The scene where Pacino is trapped under the logs is one of the most brilliant suspense sequences I've ever seen. Maybe it's just my lifelong aquaphobia talking, but those few seconds have me squirming in my chair every time. It's also symbolic in a way that some probably find too obvious, but because it's so effective on an emotional level I don't find the metaphor obtrusive; in fact, throughout, the film is like a textbook on how to put the audience inside a character's head. I particularly like that shot of the office fan where the focus suddenly shifts - they used some fancy device or other to do this, but I can't remember the name.

When I saw Insomnia in the cinema (the day after Donnie Darko, which perhaps contributed to my positive reaction) I felt so happy that Pacino was finally doing something worthy of his talent, something where he didn't shout all the time but really acted. He's so perfectly chosen for the role (as was Skarsgaard, of course), his worn reptilian features and cheese-gratered voice effortlessly conveying the character's fatigue and despair. The rest of the cast is perfect too. Williams was a stroke of genius; his icky, moist-eyed sentimentality is used to breathtaking effect here, making his character both creepy and sympathetic in a way I find hard to pin down. And I take it no one has issues with David Julyan's score? It's a shame that he obviously wasn't a big enough name to do the Batman films, I remember thinking Begins might have been lent a little much-needed depth if Julyan had scored it.

Everything that felt underdeveloped in the original was enriched and nuanced here: impenetrable characters are fine, but the protagonist of the original film just seemed arbitrarily unsympathetic, and the scene where he tries to seduce the receptionist (may have the details wrong here), though brilliantly played, felt thrown in to make the film that little bit 'edgier'. I presume some people object to the character being made more 'sympathetic', but actually Dormer is just more human - and it's quite rare for a so-called 'big budget Hollywood movie' to give us someone this corrupt to root for for almost the whole length of the film. Swank's character is not only a moral anchor, but also a device to create suspense: like Dormer, we both want her to find out the truth, and at the same time hope that she won't.

And as for the ending... At first I disliked it quite a lot, but the more I watch the film (and I've seen it a good six or seven times) the more comfortable I am with it. It's not a cop out - it makes perfect sense, and provides a logical conclusion to the narrative in a way that no other ending would have. And once you get over the Hollywood-ness of it, it's actually quite restrained. The glowing eyes thing at the end of the original, however, is just plain silly. I've read a few ideas on this board as to what it means, but it's basically a naff effect, and really spoils what is otherwise a very good ending. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts.

And I agree that the ending of Memento is ambiguous. That's the point. As Teddy says, Leonard can never trust anyone's account of what's really happened. Yes, it crams a lot of information into one scene, but that's necessitated by the film's central conceit, and if it's a bit confusing (it certainly was to me when I first saw it) that's also part of the point. Such a brilliant film - I always think you know a film has really done its job when, for a few minutes after you leave the cinema, you're still in the same mindset the film put you in. After Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I always walk around giving everyone funny looks; Inland Empire made me think I was having a nightmare; Paris Nous Appartient left me thinking that everything sort of might be a conspiracy but then again maybe not; I still can't remember anything about Random Harvest; and Memento had me looking for tatoos on my thigh to remind me who I was. (As long as I never watch Repulsion on my own, I'll be fine.)

The Prestige, I think, is a brilliant but flawed film - I'm so glad Nolan has the balls to do stuff like this in between the blockbusters, a genuine high-concept movie that's also really compelling, and guaranteed not to be most people's cup of tea. I too had problems with the ending, but then it is a magic trick, and it's always disappointing when you hear how they did it.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#14 Post by cdnchris » Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:05 pm

I think Memento cleared it up all pretty well at the end. I haven't seen the film in a long while but (SPOILER FOR MEMENTO FOLLOWS)
SpoilerShow
my understanding is that someone did rob his place and possibly raped hiw wife but he got away, leaving his wife alive. It was Lenny who actually killed his wife by giving her an overdose of insulin (she was testing whether his memory problem was real or imagined.) Through repetition he was able to convince himself that the man who broke in to his house was the one that killed his wife. The cop (can't remember the charcters name) then helped him out but then started to use him for his own means (taking out drug dealers and so on) since he could never (or didn't want to) remember killing the guy. When his friend revealed this to him Lenny of course didn't want to hear this and felt he needed to keep living his lie so he set himself up to kill his the cop.
The twist in Memento wasn't just a simple twist for twist's sake, but it added so many more layers to the main character and made the film infinitely more interesting to me. It's actualy one of those films that really benefits from repeat viewings because you pick up a lot more, specifically in what appear to be little throw-away lines.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#15 Post by swo17 » Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:10 pm

Insomnia was one of my more memorable theater-going experiences, as I went to see it with a girl who, no joke, fell asleep and started snoring about half an hour into it.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#16 Post by domino harvey » Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:53 pm

Barmy just emailed me off the board and asked if you could forward her digits

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#17 Post by Sloper » Wed Sep 02, 2009 5:58 pm

swo17 wrote:Insomnia was one of my more memorable theater-going experiences, as I went to see it with a girl who, no joke, fell asleep and started snoring about half an hour into it.
No manners, but what a critic.

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#18 Post by Matt » Wed Sep 02, 2009 6:13 pm

Svevan wrote:Re: The Prestige...the film reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan's worst indulgences in The Village, where the only reason there's a mystery at all is because the editing leaves out the pertinent plot details until the end, at which point the film must retread over old scenes only this time including "what we missed," (that is, what the director chose not to show us the first time around). It all feels cheap, even if there are some interesting moments and themes.
Well, that's kind of a joyless and superficial way to approach the film. The whole movie is constructed on the performance of a magic trick and about how much work goes into creating what appears to be, on the surface, very simple. So that's why the film reveals the secrets behind tricks from the simple (the vanishing birdcage) to the highly complex (Chung Ling Soo, the protagonists' ultimate tricks) and is structured along the very same performative rubric: the setup, the performance, the prestige, followed by the reveal.

The source novel is long and epistolary in structure, so if you have a problem with the film's non-linear narrative, you can't really blame Nolan (and his brother). If anything, you should thank them for condensing and streamlining the story so well. The proof of these sorts of movies that have a dramatic reveal at the end is if the movie is worth watching a second time. I've seen The Prestige 3 times and am looking forward to my next viewing.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#19 Post by Tribe » Wed Sep 02, 2009 6:34 pm

cdnchris wrote:I think Memento cleared it up all pretty well at the end.
Chris, even in the scenario you paint in the spoiler it's still not clear to me that
SpoilerShow
Joseph Pantoliano
was the guy who raped Lenny's wife. Your interpretation regarding the ancillar issues is right on...but who set off the chain of events starting from the attack on Lenny's wife is still up for grabs. There's certainly a very astrong implication that
SpoilerShow
Lenny
might have been the ultimate killer...but there's never enough info to fully settle that.

Fun, fun movie in this regard.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#20 Post by Tribe » Wed Sep 02, 2009 6:48 pm

Sloper wrote:Why do people think Insomnia is so terrible? I think it's his best film so far (though I haven't seen Following or The Dark Knight, which I guess is a big qualifier on that statement). The original is good too, but although I'm very fond of dour films where people scowl a lot and don't say much, that one seemed kind of empty to me - I have only seen it twice, and need to give it another spin one of these days.
I was very much looking forward to Nolan's take on Insomnia, since I really love the original Norwegian version and at the time I was taken by Nolan's mastery at "confusing" a story line in a unique and original way. But Nolan's Insomnia disappointed me both as a re-make of the original and as a seeming failure to twist the plot creatively (which I thought could have been done with the theme of constant daylight and lack of sleep as effective distorters of reality).

With the seeming praise for The Prestige that I've read here recently, it seems that Nolan, when he operates out of the constraints of a big-budget Hollywood movie, can still go back to the concerns that motivated him in Memento and Following.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#21 Post by cdnchris » Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:34 pm

Tribe wrote:everything he said above
More Memento spoilers:
SpoilerShow
I don't think I said Pantoliano was the one that raped his wife and I don't believe he is at all. Lenny killed him because Pantoliano, by telling him the truth, took away his reason for living. Pissed at what Pantoliano was telling him during the film's conclusion, Lenny set himself up to kill him so he could keep living his little lie. He knew all he had to do was just give himself some little notes (writing "don't believe his lies" or whatever on the picture of Pantoliano, and then getting a tattoo of Pantoliano's licence plate), he'd forget about it, and then he'd follow those clues to him so he could kill him with a clean conscience. I remember a line where Lenny says he feels as though he might be going after the wrong guy, that someone is setting him up, and of course it turns out to be himself. I don't think Lenny is a killer naturally and this is probably the only way he could do it. The movie works to convince you that Pantoliano was actually the killer/rapist but then reveals that in fact it wasn't him. Also while I guess you can take everything Pantoliano says at the end/beginning with a grain of salt (he's a crooked cop after all,) he did mention that they actually did catch the guy that raped his wife and that Lenny did kill him but Lenny then couldn't or didn't want to remember it. So Lenny kept wanting revenge and Pantoliano used it to his advantage by having him kill drug dealers.
And yes, check out The Prestige, it's very good. Like Matt says it's narrative is quite clever and plays like a magic trick itself.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#22 Post by kaujot » Wed Sep 02, 2009 7:51 pm

I find the movie far superior to the book, which, whilst fairly interesting and a good read, has some really long stretches where your eyes are in a perpetual state of rolling, due to either lame narrative conceit or corny writing. Nolan strips all that away, and I can only second the notion that if you haven't seen it, then do so as soon as possible.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#23 Post by Murdoch » Wed Sep 02, 2009 8:52 pm

Sloper wrote:(As long as I never watch Repulsion on my own, I'll be fine.)
I think I picked up biting my nails from watching that movie, among other things. :twisted:

Chris, I think your analysis of Memento is the best I've read, it's a film that definitely needs to be watched multiple times to be understood.

Something I never noticed before, but struck me the last time I watched the film, is how utterly depressing it is:
SpoilerShow
Lenny is constantly manipulated by Natalie and Teddy, Natalie even calling him a freak and insulting his wife, and yet there goes Lenny out to help her once again having forgotten everything. All of his actions are rendered completely meaningless in terms of his pursuit of the sought-after killer. Even Leonard ends up manipulating himself to murder and has no problem in lying to himself. Leonard, despite his relatively noble pursuit, is pathetic and merely a tool of others' (and his own) destructive inclinations.
It's a film that I have a hard time revisiting because of how ruthless it is to the main character, it's the Mouchette of this century, but even that Bresson film I find more comforting.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#24 Post by Tribe » Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:18 pm

Murdoch, is Lenny really all that noble? I think that Nolan drops enough clues to cast more than a shadow of doubt on Lenny's motivations...in true noir fashion.

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Re: Christopher Nolan

#25 Post by Murdoch » Wed Sep 02, 2009 9:31 pm

I think noble is the wrong word, better to categorize him as relatively honorable instead of relatively noble since, depending on how you see it, his pursuit to find and kill his wife's killer stems from his need to "right a wrong" as he sees it and to him he is engaging in an honorable pursuit.
SpoilerShow
Although if you subscribe to the interpretation that he killed his wife his actions are merely there to continue his delusions of acting "justly." And therefore the film becomes far more questioning of Leonard.

However, if you see Leonard as a person seeking revenge against a killer that is not himself then how he is manipulated is far more disturbing (for me at least).

The last time I watched it I agreed with the latter interpretation and therefore saw the film as a portrayal of a desperate man undone by both the superfluousness of his own task of trying to find a man he knows next to nothing about and the cruelty launched upon him by strangers pretending to be his friends.

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