As is the case with many celebrated creatives, Christopher Nolan had dreamt of being a filmmaker since he was a child. Now one of the most revered directors not only in modern film, but in all of film history, his work behind the camera is unparalleled and unprecedented. A perfect example of Gardner's "the relationship between the child and the adult creative", Christopher Nolan is fulfilling a fantasy of a life of filmmaking he's had since he was creating Star Wars remakes with his father's Super 8 camera. I also find it interesting that Nolan's interests regarding themes has changed relatively little not only since the beginning of his filmmaking career, but since he was a child. Always interested in space travel, warping time, and exploring ethics and philosophies among unique and individual characters, Nolan has gifted us with films such as Memento, Interstellar, and his latest work, Dunkirk.
Like any truly great director, his unique talents as a screenwriter and storyteller have separated him from other filmmakers, creating a sort of science-meets-ethics brand for himself. What separates him most from other storytellers, however, is the multitude of ways in which is plays with time. Few people have such a intricate understanding of time and the ways in which it can be bent, reversed, and shaped. Even fewer have the creative insights to be able to turn these ideas surrounding time into complex and distinctive feature-length screenplays that are digestible enough for the layman to stumble out of a theatre with an earth-shatteringly clear understanding of what he's just witnessed. For this reason, I find Christopher Nolan to be a perfect example of the originality and newness that is required in order for something to be truly creative.
Unlike many of his peers in the big-budget film industry, Nolan prefers to be right up in the action rather than shouting directions from a tent three miles away from the set. A variety of actors he's worked with often publicly commend this quality, and many believe this plays a tremendous part in how he is able to create films so seemingly perfect in every aspect from acting to set and costume design to sound. Truly imaginative and unlike any other before him, Christopher Nolan is one of the most creative filmmaking visionaries of our time.
Christopher Nolan is one of the most visionary directors in the field today, he has a transformative effect on the genre's he tackles. For example, super hero movies were campy action movies which tended toward comedy until the release of The Dark Knight trilogy. Without the groundbreaking work of Nolan, movies like Logan could have never existed. Besides themes, Nolan's technical revolution of film making has changed the look of cinema since his adoption of the IMAX camera to film his movies. In terms of influences, it is remarkable that Christopher's brother, Johnathan Nolan, is also extremely talented, having released the creative, cinematic masterpiece Westworld on HBO last year.
ReplyDeleteThe masterful grasp that Christopher Nolan has on such theoretical scientific phenomena as space and time has allowed him to create some of the most mentally challenging and beautifully imaginative dreamscapes on film. However, his childhood passion for telling stories always shines through as the root of his work. This multiplicity of interests that Christopher Nolan possesses reminds me of our reading on divergent thinking. I wonder if his work would be nearly as revolutionary in its field if he held slightly different, seemingly arbitrary interests.
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