If you had asked me a year ago to name my five favorite directors, Christopher Nolan's name would have shown up early on. However, after analyzing each film he has directed, I now find it doubtful he would even break the top ten. It's not that I lack confidence in his skill exactly- no person who made Memento could ever be called a bad director, I just find that the closer you look at his films, the more he seems like an overrated director for the modern cinema.
Let's start with the Batman trilogy. I'd make the argument that Batman Begins is the best Batman film of the three, The Dark Knight is simply the best film, and The Dark Knight Rises was a disappointment, but not a total failure as some diehard fanboys make it out to be. All three are good movies, but they aren't great movies from a director's standpoint. What really holds them back is the way he chooses to handle action sequences. One of the most obvious and commonly noted examples is the chase scene from The Dark Knight. If you're not distracted by the expert use of Hans Zimmer's score or Heath Ledger's performance, you'll notice that the shots are disjointed and make no logical sense. How did the Joker know where the chase would end? He knew he would be detained, but how did he know where? An explosion means an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card? It seems small, but upon each watching it becomes more prevalent and gnawing.
It seems disingenuous to say that the trilogy succeeded for a reason other than their merit, but that aside: these are some of the only action movies of the time that didn't deliberately insult the intelligence of the audience. They weren't made for a target market of prepubescent boys, and they had realistic, seemingly deep plots. Audience members walked out of the theater satisfied. But that's exactly where the problems begin. Once you've seen a Nolan movie (with rare exceptions), it has already lost half of its appeal. His films desperately lack "rewatchability" because, at their core, they are emotionally hollow.
Let's start with the Batman trilogy. I'd make the argument that Batman Begins is the best Batman film of the three, The Dark Knight is simply the best film, and The Dark Knight Rises was a disappointment, but not a total failure as some diehard fanboys make it out to be. All three are good movies, but they aren't great movies from a director's standpoint. What really holds them back is the way he chooses to handle action sequences. One of the most obvious and commonly noted examples is the chase scene from The Dark Knight. If you're not distracted by the expert use of Hans Zimmer's score or Heath Ledger's performance, you'll notice that the shots are disjointed and make no logical sense. How did the Joker know where the chase would end? He knew he would be detained, but how did he know where? An explosion means an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card? It seems small, but upon each watching it becomes more prevalent and gnawing.
It seems disingenuous to say that the trilogy succeeded for a reason other than their merit, but that aside: these are some of the only action movies of the time that didn't deliberately insult the intelligence of the audience. They weren't made for a target market of prepubescent boys, and they had realistic, seemingly deep plots. Audience members walked out of the theater satisfied. But that's exactly where the problems begin. Once you've seen a Nolan movie (with rare exceptions), it has already lost half of its appeal. His films desperately lack "rewatchability" because, at their core, they are emotionally hollow.
It's that problem that plagues Inception. Although this is personally my favorite Nolan movie, I love it more for the concept than anything else, and from an objective standpoint it has a lot of flaws. Halfway through the movie, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) opens up about his late wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) in a moment of staged poignance. She appears sporadically throughout the film, complicating things and supposedly adding emotion to Cobb's story arc, but on repeat viewings it becomes more and more clear how expendable Mal's character is. You could remove her completely and still have a semi-decent action movie. She is only there for the illusion of pathos. Unfortunately, this is not a limited problem. Nolan has a habit of introducing characters designed to elicit an emotional response from the audience, then leaving their subplots unresolved and calling it mystery. This may be more of a failing on his part as a writer than a director, so we'll move on to something far less ambiguous.
While I understand that a movie that has not been dumbed down at all will never make it to a mainstream audience (Pi and Primer for example), there is no other director who so deliberately breaks the simple rule of "show, don't tell". It's lazy filmmaking and in the case of Inception, leaves room for incongruities. Yusuf (Dileep Rao) joins Cobb's team as a chemist, someone who makes compounds that will sedate the sleepers. He goes into a great deal of detail explaining the science of sleeping and how the sedation works, and instead of adding structure to the plot, this only makes it harder for the audience to suspend disbelief. By deliberately being vague in this area, narrative integrity could have been saved and the film would be more open to interpretation. Nolan is a precise, technical director, and while this works to his advantage nine times out of ten, he could have used restraint here.
What makes Christopher Nolan a good director is his eye for a shot. In nearly all of his films each frame seems like it was specially curated as a piece of art. He's known for getting incredible performances out of his actors, and some of the concepts that he and his brother come up with show incredible imagination and ingenuity. However, I don't think he should be hailed as the second coming. Perhaps with time he will refine his craft and use his lack of pathos to become an analytical director looking into the human condition akin to Kubrick, but for now I feel that his films lack the depth required to merit multiple viewings.
While I understand that a movie that has not been dumbed down at all will never make it to a mainstream audience (Pi and Primer for example), there is no other director who so deliberately breaks the simple rule of "show, don't tell". It's lazy filmmaking and in the case of Inception, leaves room for incongruities. Yusuf (Dileep Rao) joins Cobb's team as a chemist, someone who makes compounds that will sedate the sleepers. He goes into a great deal of detail explaining the science of sleeping and how the sedation works, and instead of adding structure to the plot, this only makes it harder for the audience to suspend disbelief. By deliberately being vague in this area, narrative integrity could have been saved and the film would be more open to interpretation. Nolan is a precise, technical director, and while this works to his advantage nine times out of ten, he could have used restraint here.
What makes Christopher Nolan a good director is his eye for a shot. In nearly all of his films each frame seems like it was specially curated as a piece of art. He's known for getting incredible performances out of his actors, and some of the concepts that he and his brother come up with show incredible imagination and ingenuity. However, I don't think he should be hailed as the second coming. Perhaps with time he will refine his craft and use his lack of pathos to become an analytical director looking into the human condition akin to Kubrick, but for now I feel that his films lack the depth required to merit multiple viewings.