My A to Z inspiration: C - Christopher Nolan, The Perfectionist

Christopher Nolan

I've watched his movies five, or six times, bleary-eyed and shivering under the dusky light, hallucinating wheels within wheels and each time learning something new or wondering how I missed something so extravagant. Nolan's films may not be for everyone, but he's certainly the rare extraordinarily talented director who tackles original themes, concepts, stories, and characters within the studio system that is saturated with franchises, remakes, etc. His movies deal with very human emotions, very real characters, and themes that everyone can identify with. And what I love the most about his films are the ways in which he pays an immense amount of attention to detail, which a mind can only subconsciously register.

He is an inspiration to the audience, the critics and the fellow directors in that his films cover a wide range of subject matter and style, from superhero movies, to sci-fi, to period historical films, to action - all of them innovative in there own way while containing depth. It's amazing that one person can be so versatile and deliver masterpieces.

"Nolan’s movies provide a thick quotient of reality to support his looping plots which accelerate in shifting time signatures, consume themselves in recursive intrigue and advance formidable as well as enchanting problems of interpretation.", states an article on New York post about him. "He is known for making movies that hold themselves open to various interpretations, but it’s an effect that can be created only when the director knows, in his or her own mind, exactly how he or she sees it."

For Nolan, everything — the acting, the plot, the effects, the film technology, the sound — has to contribute to the weft of a film’s internal logic. “I have a faith,” he says, “that any audience can tell the difference between something that’s consistent to rules versus something that’s totally made up and anarchic.” Thus the more reality he can bring in to uncover his unreality, the audience can connect with his films at a deeper level.

He prefers to work on location rather than on set. He says he is inspired by “the claustrophobia, the restrictions involved in trying to make your story work in a real location, versus the anything-goes mentality on sets. He trusted the audience to be smart and he gave us a superhero and a villain that showed our two sides in The Dark Knight. He has made us experience emotions and beliefs from love to revenge, from desperation to humanity and he has made us step into the shoes of the character through Following, Insomnia, Memento, The Dark Knight Trilogy, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk.

A relatively young director who has re-defined the art of film-making and I shall keep waiting to watch his movies again and again along with the mind-bending music of Hans Zimmer.