Why Christopher Nolan is The Best Director

Hi guys it's Debbie and today I would like to speak about a topic which has a special place in my heart: the work of director Christopher Nolan. Anybody that knows me is aware of how I have always loved all of Christopher Nolan's art and today I would like to try and convey some of my thoughts upon why his work means so much to me. First of all in my opinion Christopher Nolan's films represent the true meaning of cinema. A film can be viewed in many different ways and in recent years cinema has spiralled into a pure money machine: there has been a spike in the number of films that have been produced, while the individual quality has deteriorated. We have lost the concept of a film as a work of art. I'm not saying that everything out there is terrible and that Nolan is the one and only true saviour, but his works are put out as a project of years and years (sometimes even over a decade) of intense study on the subject, a meticulous attention to each and every component of the final project. All of his works represent an intense and nearly perfectly executed array of details (which I'll speak more about later) and which endure over the course of time. A Nolan film is not just a Friday night ticket with a combo large popcorn deal. It's a 360-degree experience which will leave you fulfilled, but at the same time empty and craving for more. A Nolan film can keep you awake at night looking up at the sky and pondering about our microscopic position in time and space. It can have you crying your eyes out about the importance of love, it will spark debates upon a society, upon criminality, about mental sanity, about chaos and the darkest tunnels of our minds. It will make us bow down to our humble spots as minuscule grains of dust in an infinite universe. So Nolan's films bring back hope to cinema, they bring back the sincerest love for film, they regenerate the elegance of film as a form of art. Of course Nolan and his team have a career and just like any other director, just like any other profession they will want to profit from their work. But that never passes on to the audience, we never suffer from that constant reminder of the money machine profiting from our viewing, from the blatant product placement, the big names of the big stars, the bright but empty plot. Pick any big recent blockbuster: "Suicide Squad", "IT", "Justice League"... even "La La Land", with these films we do not lose ourselves in the story, within the film itself, we are customers paying to buy an item, we are experiencing a product just as outside viewers. With certain other directors and other films like Nolan's instead, I feel that something is playing so deep within our hearts that we cannot just view them as an external paying spectator at a circus of actors with fat pay checks in their pockets, there is something that will never leave us, even over the course of time. You will never picture the concept of space, time, love in the same way after watching "Interstellar". You may not agree with it, you may not even like the film but from that point on something has stuck with you. And once Nolan has made a film on a topic, he makes it very hard for anybody to outdo that same concept. And this is due to the meticulous care for details and the intense research which goes into a Nolan branded film, regardless of the genre. For example Nolan has often invested in the use of practical effects, rather than use of CGI in order to convey a realistic experience for the viewers. The creation of "Dunkirk" took so long even for just "simple" things as such as finding ships that would perfectly fit the description required for the plot. The CGI was limited inside the spaceships in "Interstellar" in order for the actors to deliver a natural performance, as if they were really inside a spacecraft. And for example the noise of the sand blowing on the cars during the sandstorm was really sand being blown onto cars. The creators of the film actually built a space station in Iceland and they had to dig it out every day because of the ice and snow that covered it on a daily basis. The huge truck flipping over in "The Dark Knight" was a real effect and it had to be carefully prepared because it could only be done once. The absence of gravity in "Inception" was brought to life by creating a huge physical rotating set. And when CGI is implemented it's used in a very sophisticated and precise manner. For example with "Interstellar" although the general audience would have never questioned the correct depiction of a wormhole or a black hole, the film portrays them in a totally accurate scientific manner. And the computer-generated images of the lights warped in space were calculated one by one in order to give them the right angle of deflection. A movie like "Inception" is based on a concept which took over a decade to be fully formed in Nolan's mind, and he did not quickly paste together his notes and throw out a cool concept knowing that at worst it would have been a good film. He waited and created a world which was beyond detailed, he brought to life a whole new idea, a mind blowing maze, the word "inception" has become part of our common language and now can anybody else recreate this? No. "Memento" changed the way of viewing films because of its innovative structure. And what about the "Dark Knight" trilogy? This portrayal of Batman's world is so unique, so exhaustive, so elegantly put together that it can never be replicated. There will be other films on the same material, but never delivered even in a similar manner. When you watched "Justice League", "Suicide Squad", "Batman v Superman" did your legs tremble? Did you fear the enemy on the screen? Did you shudder while the Joker wrecked havoc? No. You might have loved it but all the way through you knew it was a surreal story, you were sitting in a theatre in a real world, with your popcorn watching images being projected on a screen. Instead "The Dark Knight" hijacks our minds which are living in a current world of chaos and terror. We are products of fear, we have no clue what society even means, we don't know where we should put our faith. And here comes the Joker: living, walking, breathing chaos. He does not have cool weapons, he is pure insanity. And he walks on stage as a real man, against a real Batman. We forget that Gotham doesn't exist and that Harvey Dent is just a name on a script. The Joker is everything we fear on a daily basis, when we feel that there's just chaos in the world. Now try and replicate that. Nolan describes this as a "cinematic reality": a reality within a constructed world. We relate to these themes in "The Dark Knight" and to many other characters in other Nolan films because they are human and we are accepting the reality of the film we're stepping into. We burst into tears witnessing the hardships of the relationship between Matthew McConaughey's character and his daughter in "Interstellar", regardless of the fact that he is on a (for now unrealistic) epic space journey through a wormhole, because we are within the cinematic experience. We try to make our own choice while we're on the ships in "The Dark Knight", we try to question Borden's debatable life choices in "The Prestige" (which by the way is set in the 19th century but which feels just as modern as today). We enjoyed "Dunkirk" and understood the events within the film without even having any previous knowledge about the subject before watching the film and with hardly any dialogues explaining the situation. For two hours we forgot our reality and we stepped into the film, into its reality. And it will always be a subjective experience, both of the characters in the film and for the audience. We are subjected to existential dilemmas, torn apart personalities, hope, moral judgement, regardless of the genre or the topic. This travels straight to our own personal experiences. And another way by which Christopher Nolan lets the viewing experience be as personal as possible is by avoiding to put too much of himself out there. In better words he puts his films before himself. I like to call this idea "The Tarantino Effect": we don't watch "Pulp Fiction", we are in first place watching a Tarantino film. It's not "Kill Bill", it's Tarantino's "Kill Bill". We watch these films while constantly thinking about the director, about his style. When "The Hateful Eight" came out everything was worded out as "Tarantino's new film". While for example when speaking of one of my favourite directors, David Fincher, we appreciate his vast portfolio which includes (but is not limited to) "Fight Club", "Se7en", "The Game", "Gone Girl", "Zodiac", but most of us would not even recognide David Fincher if he was standing next to us. We can certainly recognise Nolan's trademark features in his films and we must appreciate him in first person as an artist, but his works will always be introduced as "Dunkirk" - a film by Christopher Nolan. And this feature helps the audience to abandon themselves completely to the cinematic experience, appreciating the cinematic realism of the reality and the characters they're about to encounter. Obviously Nolan is not alone on his journey, his success is due to a comprehensive work as a team. there would be no Joker without Heath Ledger. So in general his films earn their love even because of a carefully hand-picked team of collaborators. In interviews Nolan has always stated that he will always want to be the eye overlooking everything, that he will not employ second-unit directors but at the same time he's always overseeing a team of people he can trust and collaborate with. Let's say he's like an orchestra conductor. If you notice there quite a few recurring names in his casts: Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Christian Bale, cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, Anne Hathaway. He knows exactly what these individuals are best at conveying and works together with them, not over them, to help them express their abilities. His brother Jonathan Nolan (which by the way created "Westworld") is often the hand behind the scripts. And even when he is not relying on his recurrent collaborators, Nolan carefully picks even the most unlikely individuals but which will be perfect in the designated role, with the exact necessary features, the exact spirit. Take a look at Heath Ledger as the Joker, Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman in "The Prestige", Harry Styles in "Dunkirk", Robin Williams and Hilary Swank in "Insomnia". Who would have ever placed a bet on that? But once we watched it, we can't see it otherwise. Speaking of long-term co-workers, I would like to take some time to speak about composer Hans Zimmer, one of Nolan's greatest work partners and an element I believe has been vital in the success of Chris's film. Zimmer has a work background of over 150 film scores and has composed many for Nolan's: the "Dark Knight" trilogy, "Inception", "Interstellar", "Dunkirk" and it's his music which helps us, as I was mentioning before, to move beyond the simple acknowledgment of a project as paying customers and to fully enjoy the complete cinematic experience. Zimmer soundtracks have nuances which are very hard to describe, they touch something deep inside our hearts and minds and they appear to thoroughly illustrate what the characters are experiencing, what the plot is portraying. Take for example "Dunkirk" which describes the war from an anonymous point of view the point of view, of soldiers which mean nothing in the great scheme of things, they're just pawns in a nightmarish reality which has no time or interest in their personal story or in their survival. So it's a story of struggle and heroism. And Hans Zimmer brings in a nerve-wracking soundtrack which conveys the feeling of doom, of the enemy just behind the corner, of nerves being pulled to the limit. "Interstellar"! It would not have been the same if it hadn't been matched with Hans Zimmer's notes which expressed the idea of an epic journey, an epic moment in the history of mankind. A d what about the rusty, grungy, chaotic notes following the Joker's steps. There is so much more I would like to express about the topic and I will speak about Nolan again, but before reaching a conclusion to be correct I would like to question my own judgment and see if there are any features in Nolan's films with which I would not agree. I've thought about this for a very long time and there's not a specific feature which I don't like in Nolan's films but for example when "Dunkirk" was released I tried to watch the film without considering too much my previous knowledge about his work. When we love an artist we tend to assume that anything they will ever create will be perfect and I know that even in the worst disastrous scenario possible a Nolan film will be a good film but I always try to view his new works without previous judgment, and turns out I always loved them anyway. Let me know about your thoughts on Christopher Nolan with a comment here below, I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did make sure to subscribe for more movie-related content and I'll see you soon, bye!