Christopher Nolan's complicated stories are worth the effort when they make a character's confusion frightening. We rate him highly, but supporting characters deserve more of the attention he gives his troubled heroes.
Fi1m perspective
A man needs Polaroids and tattoos because he cannot retain new memories. In Memento (2000), Guy Pearce's Leonard is pursuing his wife's killer, while Christopher Nolan makes us follow the story backwards. We have to judge people before we know enough about them. The cleverness works because a mistaken judgement might put Leonard in danger. This is the Nolan we value most: a director whose complicated plotting gives us a specific reason to be afraid.
He began with Following (1998), then broke through with Memento. Insomnia (2002) took him into studio work, followed by Batman Begins (2005) and the rest of the Dark Knight trilogy. Original high-concept films, including Inception (2010) and Interstellar (2014), gave his interest in time larger settings. Dunkirk (2017) brought those experiments into a war film, using interwoven timelines to sustain the tension.
Oppenheimer (2023), shot by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, is his most disciplined film, despite an overlong final hour. Cillian Murphy's quiet performance gives Nolan something worth watching without another explanation. His fixed stare suggests thought more persuasively than the accompanying sparks and ripples. But Florence Pugh's Jean Tatlock gets too few scenes for us to understand her, and the sound swallows too many lines. The later hearings also grip less firmly than the scenes in the desert.
In The Odyssey (2026), editor Jennifer Lame holds the shots in the Cyclops's cave long enough to make waiting feel dangerous. We were frightened by the breathing in that dark cave, because Nolan lets us hear the creature without giving us a clear look at it. That patience suits a story about a soldier struggling to get home after war. But the succession of islands makes the middle drag. His largely remorseful Odysseus has lost the poem's boastfulness and deceit.
The supporting parts need more care, too. In Memento, Natalie and Teddy sometimes seem to exist chiefly to regulate what we know. We would welcome a shorter film that gave those people more time. Start with Memento, where sharing Leonard's uncertainty makes the demands on our attention worthwhile.
Biography
Christopher Nolan is a British-American film director, screenwriter and producer. He was born on 30 July 1970 in Westminster, London.
Nolan studied English literature at University College London. His feature debut was Following (1998). He gained recognition with Memento (2000) and later directed the Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014) and Dunkirk (2017). He wrote, directed and produced Tenet (2020), Oppenheimer (2023) and The Odyssey (2026). Oppenheimer won him Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture. He was knighted in 2024.
