Few filmmakers can boast of being living legends.
Authors whose upcoming films are accompanied by agonizing anticipation, hype (to use Generation Z slang) that oozes from every preview image, every ad, every teaser or trailer posted online.
Christopher Nolan only fifty-two – one of them is indeed (along with Quentin Tarantino) the most obvious example. Quite regularly, after a certain number of years, Christopher Nolan descends from the director’s Olympus to offer us, “mortal viewers”, another film that is mandatory for viewing. His constancy is nothing to envy to any living or legendary director.
As a screenwriter, director and producer, he is one of the most successful filmmakers and makes blockbusters worthy of a Spielberg or Kubrick classic. The Dark Knight Trilogy, Origin, I remember: his work is a chessboard of originality and magnificenceTo.
He is generally recognized as a film genius thanks to his way of storytelling always incredibly ambitious and elusive in any categorization. Tight plots based on extreme but credible scientific theories. The interweaving of characters and situations dangerously plays with the thread of time. New displays of spaces that will revolutionize our vision. Watching a Nolan movie is like embarking on a journey of uncertain outcome, with an always unpredictable destination, but guaranteed fun.
NEW, BRAND NEW FILM
Nolan’s new movie Oppenheimer, released on July 21 in America, grossed $80.5 million on its opening weekend in the US in three days and $174.2 million worldwide in five days, the director’s best original film debut. It will be released in Italy on August 23 and will be another chapter in this legacy. It tells about the creation of the atomic bomb and the participation J. Robert Oppenheimer in the Manhattan Project during World War II.
With a cast led by Cillian Murphy And Emily Blunt, Oppenheimer it’s a story that allows Nolan to explore themes and cinematic techniques already familiar to him. While this project evokes a sense of confidence, the upcoming film also challenges Nolan’s cinematic universe. There are at least two reasons that make Nolan’s twelfth cinematic work even more anticipated than others and different from his previous productions: first, it’s his first biopic. While the British-American director has delved into the story with 2017’s Dunkirk, he has yet to explore the biography. Much of his filmography focuses on original works such as Origin (2010) and Interstellar (2014), as well as Nolan adaptations such as The Dark Knight (2008) and Prestige (2006). If there’s a real story that Nolan deserves coverage, Oppenheimer this is exactly correct.
Another element of the break with the past is the presence of explicit sex scenes and extended nudity featuring Cillian Murphy and Florence Pugh: ingredients that have so far not been tried in Christopher Nolan’s food movies.
THE MODERNITY OF THE ANALOGUE VIEW
If Nolan is an absolute revolutionary when it comes to his film stories, then the way he works can be described as “classic”: avoids monitors during filming, preferring to be in line of sight with the actors, seeing what the camera sees. He likes to watch dailies with cast and crew the old fashioned way. He refuses to use the second block, preferring to shoot each frame on his own.
Nolan is known to his film crews for tight shots that start at 7:00 AM and end at 7:00 AM with the only break for lunch. He loves to ride IMAX extensiona granular format originally used for space documentaries that fills the viewer’s field of view and avoids computer-generated imagery as much as possible, preferring in-camera effects – using models, bricks, physical sets, projections – over those added in post-production using a computer.
Yet, ironically, this devotion to the analog power of cinematic illusion fueled a generation that grew up with immersive digital images, attracting a passionate following who are associated with the cult director rather than the blockbuster creator.
As The New Tork Times wrote in 2014: “Online, the debate about his work is approaching the density of a black hole with intersecting tunnels dug by warring factions in favor of Nolan … Watch his films two or three times while falling asleep. – big-eyed and quivering in their twilight light, following the ever more complex and indecipherable turns of the story, stopping only to write the most subtle moments on the blog.
“White van The free fall from the bridge in the first dream means that the hotel is weightless in the second dream, so why is gravity still normal in the alpine fortress from the third dream?” is one of the questions that baffles his most fanatical followers.
NOLAN GOD ROAD
Even the path that took Christopher Nolan from the perfect outsider to the role of Hollywood’s new deity is mythological.
First, he makes his black and white debut for less than half a million dollars (next) in England.
Then he comes to America, edits an inventive and revolutionary independent film (I remember), which clears it in the system of large Studios for Insomniawhere two professionals moved like Robin Williams and Al Pacino. recognizing the great talent of the director, they agree to act in films.
Boom! Nolan is ready to cross the Gates of cinematic Olympus.
The next step is a startling step for the time: the resurrection of Bruce Wayne for Batman Beginswhose big-screen reputation was shattered by Batman & Robin.
WITH Prestigebegan to establish himself as a brand and icon whose films are characterized by impeccable style, a heavy dose of sci-fi, mind-blowing concepts and solutions, and a growing repertoire of actors capable of realizing his vision.
Origin AND Interstellar definitely fall into this category, while The Dark Knight 2008 revolutionized the film adaptation of comics and, consequently, all of modern pop culture.
And finally, do not forget your roots, Dunkirk: a worthy cinematic monument to the concept of history and, in particular, the history of your country.
GREAT SIX
What if we wanted to make a complicated ranking of his best films?
Here is what a list of the first six opinion views that can be found on the web might look like. You have a heavy offer to assign individual positions in the standings.
The Dark Knight (2008)
it’s one of the most influential films of our time – the entire DC superhero universe was largely built around its success. But none of his imitators come close to the scope and power of Nolan’s second Batman, which is actually a gangster epic disguised as a superhero movie.
Prestige (2006)
Nolan’s only literary adaptation, based on Christopher Priest’s 1995 novel, also features his most subtle and complex characters. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, two wizards fighting in London at the turn of the century, are charming and sinister in their mutual obsession. Maybe that’s why, unlike many other films that rely on a ‘puzzle’ like structure and big plot twists, Prestige continues to work so well even on repeat; anyway, the more you look at it, the better and deeper it gets. It’s also a dazzling trick with a convoluted plot that repeats itself over and over and scatters clues instead of giving us immediate answers.
Dunkirk (2017)
An amazing war film, perhaps the culmination of Nolan’s various experiments in editing and structure. Depicting the British evacuation from France in 1940 – the result of an early and disastrous defeat by the Nazis – the director alternates three storylines of varying length, leading to some unexpected twists in the story. It gets rid of many of the clichés of the military genre: no strategic meetings, no scenes where people explain what we are fighting for, etc. On the contrary, the film is dense, concise and taut from the first frame to the last.
Memories (2000)
An utterly brilliant thriller: a story told in reverse, about a man who seeks to avenge the death of his wife; but his mind can’t form memories and he forgets who, where and what he is within minutes, so he has to tattoo clues on his body to keep from forgetting them. It’s the perfect combination of structure and plot, as the nature of the narrative means that we, the audience, never know what happened in front of a given scene that mimics the protagonist’s existential fog.
Beginning (2010)
Nolan made a movie about high tech thieves who hack into people’s dreams and steal their hidden ideas, but this time they are asked to secretly plant an idea into a person’s head and then sneak into that person’s dream, but in order to hide their actions, they have to go down a few dreams below so they have to create a dream in the guy’s dream so they can move on to the next dream and then do it again…
Things that are already still our minds stalled. However, such a convoluted plot produced a huge box office success, grossing $825 million worldwide.
Interstellar (2014)
In one of the saddest and loneliest space epics ever created, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway travel by wormholes to another part of the universe in an attempt to find a new home for humanity. There are those who love it madly and those who hate it or don’t understand it (maybe the mixture of mind-blowing special effects, astounding scientific phenomena, environmental dystopia and runaway feeling was too strong for some).
After all, this is a story about parents and children, about the fear of letting go, about the need to align your dreams with the needs of your loved ones. At the same time, this is a film about survival, about how planetary survival, the survival of species and the survival of individuals often contradict each other.