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Image Credit: charlieanders2 on Flickr |
Bits and pieces of the thoughts below were put in written form starting from 2014 or so. I had shared my views in several conversations with fellow film enthusiasts over the years. With the release of each new film from Christopher Nolan, I found that I had something to say and loosely put down my thoughts in my notes. Until now, I have not felt the motivation to put together my (sometimes mental) jottings over the years in a coherent form. Now, I feel, is as good a time as any other to do so, not only because it timely – with Nolan almost certainly being awarded the highest laurel by his Hollywood colleagues later today, surely accompanied with salmon and potato salad – but also because it a good juncture in time to look at the quite remarkable – and also, in my view, quite unexpected – trajectory of his filmography in the last decade or so. Needless to say, this article is riddled with spoilers, so continue reading at your own risk.
(But how about Inception? Yes, I still stand by every word I had written in that review 13 years back, though I would certainly phrase some of my criticisms differently – I was just a schoolboy!)
Nolan started going in this new direction as early as The Dark Knight Rises, though it was not quite obvious to me upon the first watch. The film seemed strangely anomalous and haphazard, with some of its apparent deficiencies calling attention to themselves, which seemed to be quite inconsistent with my idea of Nolan as a filmmaker trying to show off his intellect to the audience with very precise – if convoluted – logical framework and clockwork precision of the narratives. Nearly all his previous films were emblematic of these tendencies, although the exquisitely built house-of-cards narrative often fell apart on closer inspection (take for instance, the contrivances in the Joker’s elaborately designed plan in The Dark Knight). In Rises, however, some of the plot holes were so prominently on exhibit that the film looked, uh, quite risible. It took me a while to appreciate that such glaring inconsistencies might have been left there somewhat “on purpose” because the maker’s attention was elsewhere. (I put the quotes in the previous sentence because I think it is often difficult to be certain about someone’s artistic intentions, even for the artist herself/himself).
