Christopher Jonathan James Nolan is a British-American
film director, screenwriter, and producer.
He created several of the most successful
films of the early 21st century, and his eight
films have grossed over $3.5 billion worldwide.
Having made his directorial debut with Following,
he gained considerable attention for his second
feature, Memento. The acclaim of these independent
films afforded Nolan the opportunity to make
the big-budget thriller Insomnia, and the
more offbeat production The Prestige; both
were well-received critically and commercially.
He found further popular and critical success
with The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception.
He is currently working on the science-fiction
film Interstellar. He runs the London-based
production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife
Emma Thomas.
Nolan's films are rooted in philosophical
and sociological concepts and ideas, exploring
human morality, the construction of time,
and the malleable nature of memory and personal
identity. Experimentation with metafictive
elements, temporal shifts, solipsistic perspectives,
nonlinear storytelling and the analogous relationship
between the visual language and narrative
elements, permeate his entire body of work.
Described as "one of the most innovative storytellers
and image makers at work in movies today",
Nolan is an Honorary Fellow of University
College London, a three-time Academy Award
nominee, and a recipient of numerous career
achievement awards, including the BAFTA Britannia
Award for Artistic Excellence in Directing.
Early life
Nolan was born in London. His British father,
Brendan Nolan, was an advertising copywriter,
and his American mother, Christina, worked
as a flight attendant. His childhood was split
between London and Chicago, and he has both
British and American citizenship. He has an
older brother, Matthew, and a younger brother,
Jonathan. Nolan began making films at age
seven, borrowing his father's Super 8 camera
and shooting short films with his action figures.
From the age of 11, he aspired to be a professional
filmmaker.
Nolan was educated at Haileybury and Imperial
Service College, an independent school in
Hertford Heath, Hertfordshire, and later read
English literature at University College London.
He chose UCL specifically for its filmmaking
facilities, which comprised a Steenbeck editing
suite and 16 mm film cameras. Nolan was president
of the Union's Film Society, and with Emma
Thomas he screened 35 mm feature films during
the school year and used the money earned
to produce 16 mm films over the summers.
During his college years, Nolan made two short
films. The first was the surreal 8 mm Tarantella,
which was shown on Image Union. The second
was Larceny, filmed over a weekend in black
and white with a limited cast, crew, and equipment.
Funded by Nolan and shot with the society's
equipment, it appeared at the Cambridge Film
Festival in 1996 and is considered one of
UCL's best shorts.
Career
1990s
Early work and Following
After graduation, Nolan directed corporate
videos and industrial films. He also made
a third short, Doodlebug, about a man chasing
an insect around a flat with a shoe, only
to discover when killing it that it is a miniature
of himself. During this period of his career,
Nolan had little or no success getting his
projects off the ground; he later recalled
the "stack of rejection letters" that greeted
his early forays into making films, adding
"there's a very limited pool of finance in
the UK. To be honest, it's a very clubby kind
of place ... Never had any support whatsoever
from the British film industry."
In 1998 Nolan directed his first feature,
which he personally funded and filmed with
friends. Following depicts an unemployed young
writer who trails strangers through London,
hoping they will provide material for his
first novel, but is drawn into a criminal
underworld when he fails to keep his distance.
The film was inspired by Nolan's experience
of living in London and having his flat burgled:
"There is an interesting connection between
a stranger going through your possessions
and the concept of following people at random
through a crowd – both take you beyond the
boundaries of ordinary social relations".
Following was made on a modest budget of £3,000,
and was shot on weekends over the course of
a year. To conserve film stock, each scene
in the film was rehearsed extensively to ensure
that the first or second take could be used
in the final edit. Co-produced with Emma Thomas
and Jeremy Theobald, Nolan wrote, photographed
and edited the film himself. Following won
several awards during its festival run and
was well received by critics; The New Yorker
wrote that it "echoed Hitchcock classics",
but was "leaner and meaner". On 11 December
2012, it was released on DVD and Blu-ray as
part of the Criterion Collection.
2000s
Memento, Insomnia and Batman Begins
As a result of Following's success, Nolan
was afforded the opportunity to make his breakthrough
hit Memento, which he had been planning since
1997. During a road trip from Chicago to Los
Angeles, his brother Jonathan pitched the
idea for "Memento Mori", about a man with
anterograde amnesia who uses notes and tattoos
to hunt for his wife's murderer. Nolan developed
a screenplay that told the story in reverse;
Aaron Ryder, an executive for Newmarket Films,
said it was "perhaps the most innovative script
I had ever seen". The film was optioned and
given a budget of $4.5 million. Memento, starring
Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss, premiered
in September 2000 at the Venice International
Film Festival to critical acclaim. Joe Morgenstern
of The Wall Street Journal wrote in his review,
"I can't remember when a movie has seemed
so clever, strangely affecting and slyly funny
at the very same time." Basil Smith, in the
book The Philosophy of Neo-Noir, draws a comparison
with John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding which argues that conscious
memories constitute our identities, a theme
which Nolan explores in the film. The film
was a box-office success and received a number
of accolades, including Academy Award and
Golden Globe Award nominations for its screenplay,
Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director
and Best Screenplay, and a Directors Guild
of America Award nomination. Memento was considered
by numerous critics to be one of the best
films of the 2000s.
Impressed by his work on Memento, Steven Soderbergh
recruited Nolan to direct the psychological
thriller Insomnia, starring Academy Award
winners Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary
Swank. Warner Bros. initially wanted a more
seasoned director, but Soderbergh and his
Section Eight Productions fought for Nolan,
as well as his choice of cinematographer and
editor. With a $50 million budget, it was
described as "a much more conventional Hollywood
film than anything the director has done before".
A remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the
same name, Insomnia is about two Los Angeles
detectives sent to a northern Alaskan town
to investigate the methodical murder of a
local teenager. It was well received by critics
and performed well at the box office, earning
$113 million worldwide. Film critic Roger
Ebert praised the character-driven film for
introducing new perspectives and ideas on
the issues of morality and guilt, rather than
being overly reliant on the original film.
"Unlike most remakes, the Nolan Insomnia is
not a pale retread, but a re-examination of
the material, like a new production of a good
play." Dave Montalbano stated that in Insomnia,
Nolan "concocts his own recipe for film noir
and creates his own cinema art form."
After Insomnia, Nolan planned a Howard Hughes
biographical film starring Jim Carrey. He
had written a screenplay, but when he learned
that Martin Scorsese was making a Hughes biopic
he reluctantly tabled his script and moved
on to other projects. In early 2003, Nolan
approached Warner Bros. with the idea to make
a new Batman film. Fascinated by the character
and story, he wanted to make a film grounded
in a "relatable" world more reminiscent of
a classical drama than a comic-book fantasy.
Batman Begins, the biggest project Nolan had
undertaken to that point, premiered in June
2005 to both critical acclaim and commercial
success. Starring Christian Bale in the title
role, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman,
and Morgan Freeman, the film revived the franchise,
heralding a trend towards darker films which
rebooted backstories. It tells the origin
story of the character from Bruce Wayne's
initial fear of bats, the death of his parents,
his journey to become Batman, and his fight
against Ra's al Ghul's plot to destroy Gotham
City. Praised for its psychological depth
and contemporary relevance, Kyle Smith of
The New York Post called it "a wake-up call
to the people who keep giving us cute capers
about men in tights. It wipes the smirk off
the face of the superhero movie." Batman Begins
was the eighth-highest-grossing film of 2005
in the United States and the year's ninth-highest-grossing
film worldwide. It was nominated for the Academy
Award for Best Cinematography and three BAFTA
awards.
The Prestige and The Dark Knight
Before returning to the Batman franchise,
Nolan directed, co-wrote and produced The
Prestige, an adaptation of the Christopher
Priest novel about two rival 19th-century
magicians. In 2001, when Nolan was in post-production
for Insomnia, he asked his brother Jonathan
to help write the script for the film. The
screenplay was an intermittent, five-year
collaboration between the brothers. Nolan
initially intended to make the film as early
as 2003, postponing the project after agreeing
to make Batman Begins. Starring Christian
Bale and Hugh Jackman in the lead roles, The
Prestige received critical acclaim, and earned
over $109 million worldwide. With a dark
and twisting tale, Roger Ebert described it
as "quite a movie — atmospheric, obsessive,
almost satanic."
In July 2006 Nolan announced that the follow-up
to Batman Begins would be called The Dark
Knight. Approaching the sequel, Nolan wanted
to expand on the noirish quality of the first
film by broadening the canvas and taking on
"the dynamic of a story of the city, a large
crime story ... where you're looking at the
police, the justice system, the vigilante,
the poor people, the rich people, the criminals."
Released in 2008, to great critical acclaim,
The Dark Knight has been cited as one of the
best films of the 2000s and one of the best
superhero films ever made. Manohla Dargis
of The New York Times found the film to be
of higher artistic merit than most Hollywood
blockbusters: "Pitched at the divide between
art and industry, poetry and entertainment,
it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood
movie of its comic-book kind." Ebert expressed
a similar point of view, describing it as
a "haunted film that leaps beyond its origins
and becomes an engrossing tragedy." The film
set a number of box-office records during
its theatrical run, earning $534,858,444 in
North America and $469,700,000 abroad, for
a worldwide total of $1,004,558,444. The Dark
Knight is the first feature film shot partially
in the 15/70 mm IMAX format. At the 81st
Academy Awards the film was nominated for
eight Oscars, winning two: the Academy Award
for Best Sound Editing and a posthumous Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor for Heath
Ledger. Nolan was recognised by his peers
with nominations from the DGA, Writers Guild
of America, and Producers Guild of America.
2010s
Inception and The Dark Knight Rises
After The Dark Knight's success, Warner Bros.
signed Nolan to direct Inception. Nolan also
wrote and co-produced the film, described
as "a contemporary sci-fi actioner set within
the architecture of the mind". Before being
released in theaters, critics like Peter Travers
and Lou Lumenick wondered if Nolan's faith
in moviegoers intelligence would cost him
at the box office. Starring a large ensemble
cast led by Leonardo DiCaprio, the film was
released on 16 July 2010, and was a critical
and commercial success. Richard Roeper of
the Chicago Sun-Times, awarded the film a
perfect score of "A+" and called it "one of
the best movies of the [21st] century." Mark
Kermode named it the best film of 2010, stating
"Inception is proof that people are not stupid,
that cinema is not trash, and that it is possible
for blockbusters and art to be the same thing."
Veteran producer John Davis speculated that
its success could inspire studios to make
more original content; "I can promise you
that heads of studios are already going into
production meetings saying we need fresh ideas
for summer movies, we want original concepts
like Inception that are big and bold enough
to carry themselves". The film ended up grossing
over $820 million worldwide and was nominated
for eight Oscars, including Best Picture;
it won Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing,
Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects.
Nolan also received BAFTA, Golden Globe, DGA
and PGA Award nominations, as well as a WGA
Award for his work on the film. While in post-production
on Inception, Nolan gave an interview for
These Amazing Shadows, a documentary spotlighting
film appreciation and preservation by the
National Film Registry. He also appeared in
Side by Side, a documentary about the history,
process and workflow of both digital and photochemical
film creation.
In 2012, Nolan directed his third and final
Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. Although
he was initially hesitant about returning
to the series, he agreed to come back after
developing a story with his brother and David
S. Goyer which he felt would end the series
on a high note. The Dark Knight Rises was
released on 20 July 2012 to critical acclaim;
Andrew O'Hehir of Salon called it "arguably
the biggest, darkest, most thrilling and disturbing
and utterly balls-out spectacle ever created
for the screen.", further describing the work
as "auteurist spectacle on a scale never before
possible and never before attempted". Christy
Lemire of The Associated Press wrote in her
review that Nolan concluded his trilogy in
a "typically spectacular, ambitious fashion",
but disliked the "overloaded" story and excessive
grimness; "This is the problem when you're
an exceptional, visionary filmmaker. When
you give people something extraordinary, they
expect it every time. Anything short of that
feels like a letdown." Like its predecessor
it performed well at the box office, becoming
the thirteenth film to cross the $1-billion
mark. During a midnight showing of the film
at the Century 16 cinema in Aurora, Colorado,
a gunman opened fire inside the theater, killing
12 people and injuring 58 others. Nolan released
a statement to the press expressing his condolences
for the victims of what he described as a
senseless tragedy.
During story discussions for The Dark Knight
Rises in 2010, Goyer told Nolan of his idea
to present Superman in a modern context. Impressed
with Goyer's concept, Nolan pitched the idea
for Man of Steel to Warner Bros, who hired
Nolan to produce and Goyer to write. Nolan
offered Zack Snyder the director's chair,
based on his stylized adaptations of 300 and
Watchmen and his "innate aptitude for dealing
with superheroes as real characters". Starring
Henry Cavill, Amy Adams and Michael Shannon,
Man of Steel grossed more than $660 million
at the worldwide box office, but garnered
a divisive critical reaction. Nolan and Thomas
also served as executive producers on Transcendence,
the directorial debut of Nolan's long-time
cinematographer Wally Pfister. Based on a
script by Jack Paglen, the film revolves around
two scientists who work toward creating a
machine that possesses sentience and collective
intelligence. Starring Johnny Depp, Rebecca
Hall and Paul Bettany, Transcendence was released
in theaters on 18 April 2014 to mostly unfavorable
reviews. A. A. Dowd of The A.V. Club gave
the film a C- rating, pointing out that "[Pfister]
lacks Nolan's talent for weaving grand pop
spectacle out of cultural anxieties."
Interstellar
In January 2013 it was announced that Nolan
would direct, write and produce his next project:
a science-fiction film entitled Interstellar.
The first drafts of the script were written
by Jonathan Nolan, and it was originally to
be directed by Steven Spielberg. Based on
the scientific theories of renowned theoretical
physicist Kip Thorne, the film will depict
"a heroic interstellar voyage to the farthest
borders of our scientific understanding".
Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne
Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, and
Ellen Burstyn, and is notably Nolan's first
collaboration with cinematographer Hoyte van
Hoytema. According to composer Hans Zimmer,
they also wanted to move in a new direction
with the score: "We had this sort of conversation
about — you know nine years we spent in
our Batman world. The textures, the music,
and the sounds, and the thing we sort of created
has sort of seeped into other people's movies
a bit, so it's time to reinvent." Paramount
Pictures and Warner Bros. are co-financing
and co-distributing the project, scheduled
for release on 7 November 2014.
Filmmaking
Style
Regarded as an auteur and postmodern filmmaker,
Nolan's visual style emphasises urban settings,
men in suits, muted colors, dialogue scenes
framed in wide close-up with a shallow depth
of field and modern locations and architecture.
He has noted that all of his films are heavily
influenced by film noir.
Nolan has continuously experimented with metafictive
elements, temporal shifts, solipsistic perspectives,
nonlinear storytelling and the merging of
style and form. Discussing The Tree of Life,
Nolan spoke of Terrence Malick's work and
how it has influenced his own approach to
style, "When you think of a visual style,
when you think of the visual language of a
film, there tends to be a natural separation
of the visual style and the narrative elements.
But with the greats, whether it's Stanley
Kubrick or Terrence Malick or Hitchcock, what
you're seeing is an inseparable, a vital relationship
between the image and the story it's telling".
Drawing attention to the intrinsically manipulative
nature of the medium, Nolan uses narrative
and stylistic techniques to stimulate the
viewer to ask themselves why his films are
put together in such ways and why the films
provoke particular responses. He often uses
editing as a way to represent the characters'
psychological states, merging their subjectivity
with that of the audience. For example, in
Memento the fragmented sequential order of
scenes is to put the audience into a similar
experience of Leonard's defective ability
to create new long-term memories. In The Prestige,
the series of magic tricks and themes of duality
and deception mirror the structural narrative
of the film.
The protagonists of Nolan's films are usually
psychologically damaged, obsessively seeking
vengeance for the death of a loved one. They
are often driven by philosophical beliefs,
and their fate is ambiguous. In many of his
films the protagonist and antagonist are mirror
images of each other, a point which is made
to the protagonist by the antagonist. Through
these clashing of ideologies, Nolan highlights
the ambivalent nature of truth. His writing
style incorporate a number of storytelling
techniques such as flashbacks, shifting points
of view and unreliable narrators. Scenes are
often interrupted by the unconventional editing
style of cutting away quickly from the money
shot and crosscutting several scenes of parallel
action to build to a climax. Nolan has also
stressed the importance of establishing a
clear point of view in his films, and makes
frequent use of "the shot that walks into
a room behind a character, because ... that
takes [the viewer] inside the way that the
character enters."
Nolan uses cinéma-vérité techniques to
convey realism. In an interview at the Film
Society of Lincoln Center, Nolan explained
his emphasis on realism in The Dark Knight
trilogy: "You try and get the audience to
invest in cinematic reality. When I talk about
reality in these films, it's often misconstrued
as a direct reality, but it's really about
a cinematic reality."
Method
Nolan prefers shooting on film to digital
video, and opposes the use of digital intermediates
and digital cinematography, which he feels
are less reliable and offer inferior image
quality to film. In particular, the director
advocates for the use of higher-quality, larger-format
film stock such as anamorphic 35 mm, VistaVision,
65 mm and IMAX. Nolan uses multi-camera for
stunts and single-camera for all the dramatic
action, from which he will then watch dailies
every night; "Shooting single-camera means
I've already seen every frame as it's gone
through the gate because my attention isn't
divided to multi-cameras."
When working with actors, Nolan prefers giving
them the time to perform as many takes of
a given scene as they want. "I've come to
realize that the lighting and camera setups,
the technical things, take all the time, but
running another take generally only adds a
couple of minutes. ... If an actor tells
me they can do something more with a scene,
I give them the chance, because it's not going
to cost that much time. It can't all be about
the technical issues." Gary Oldman praised
the director for having a calm and relaxed
atmosphere on set, adding "I've never seen
him raise his voice to anyone". He also explained
that Nolan does not give direction for direction's
sake, rather "He lets you have the space to
find things in the scene, and if he needs
to tweak something he will simply step in
and give you a note."
Nolan chooses to minimize the amount of computer-generated
imagery for special effects in his films,
preferring to use practical effects whenever
possible, only using CGI to enhance elements
which he has photographed in camera. For instance
his films Batman Begins and Inception featured
620 and 500 visual-effects shots, respectively,
which is considered minor when compared with
contemporary visual-effects epics which may
have upwards of 1,500 to 2,000 VFX shots:
"I believe in an absolute difference between
animation and photography. However sophisticated
your computer-generated imagery is, if it's
been created from no physical elements and
you haven't shot anything, it's going to feel
like animation. There are usually two different
goals in a visual effects movie. One is to
fool the audience into seeing something seamless,
and that's how I try to use it. The other
is to impress the audience with the amount
of money spent on the spectacle of the visual
effect, and that, I have no interest in".
Nolan shoots the entirety of his films with
one unit, rather than using a second unit
for action sequences. In that way Nolan keeps
his personality and point of view in every
aspect of the film. "If I don't need to be
directing the shots that go in the movie,
why do I need to be there at all? The screen
is the same size for every shot ... Many
action films embrace a second unit taking
on all of the action. For me, that's odd because
then why did you want to do an action film?"
A famously secretive filmmaker, Nolan is also
known for his tight security on scripts, even
going as far as telling the actors of The
Dark Knight Rises the ending of the film verbally
to avoid any leaks and also keeping the Interstellar
plot secret from his composer Hans Zimmer.
Themes
Nolan's work explores existential, ethical
and epistemological themes such as subjective
experience, distortion of memory, human morality,
the nature of time, and construction of personal
identity. "I'm fascinated by our subjective
perception of reality, that we are all stuck
in a very singular point of view, a singular
perspective on what we all agree to be an
objective reality, and movies are one of the
ways in which we try to see things from the
same point of view".
His characters are often emotionally disturbed
and morally ambiguous, facing the fears and
anxieties of loneliness, guilt, jealousy,
and greed; in addition to the larger themes
of corruption and conspiracy. By grounding
"everyday neurosis – our everyday sort of
fears and hopes for ourselves" in a heightened
reality, Nolan makes them more accessible
to a universal audience. Another signature
theme is characters refusing the passing of
time and letting go of the past. Writing for
Film Philosophy, Emma Bell points out that
the characters in Inception do not literally
time-travel, "rather they escape time by being
stricken in it – building the delusion that
time has not passed, and is not passing now.
They feel time grievously: willingly and knowingly
destroying their experience by creating multiple
simultaneous existences." Jason Ney of Film
Noir Foundation insists that Nolan's later
films seem more hopeful and open in regards
to the possibility that the characters can
escape and overcome these fears.
In Nolan's films reality is often an abstract
and fragile concept. Alec Price and M. Dawson
of Left Field Cinema, noted that the existential
crises of conflicted male figures "struggling
with the slippery nature of identity" is a
prevalent theme in Nolan's work. The actual
world is of less importance than the way in
which we absorb and remember, and it is this
created reality that truly matters. "It is
solely in the mind and the heart where any
sense of permanency or equilibrium can ever
be found." According to film theorist Todd
McGowan, these "created realities" also reveal
the ethical and political importance of creating
fictions and falsehoods. Nolan's films typically
deceive spectators about the events that occur
and the motivations of the characters, but
they do not abandon the idea of truth altogether.
Instead, "They show us how truth must emerge
out of the lie if it is not to lead us entirely
astray." McGowan further argues that Nolan
is the first filmmaker to devote himself entirely
to the illusion of the medium, calling him
a Hegelian filmmaker.
The Dark Knight trilogy explored themes of
chaos, terrorism, escalation of violence,
financial manipulation, utilitarianism, mass
surveillance, and class conflicts. Batman's
arc of rising from a man to "more than just
a man", is similar to the Nietzschian Übermensch.
The films also explore ideas akin to Jean-Jacques
Rousseau's philosophical glorification of
a simpler, more-primitive way of life and
the concept of general will. In Inception,
Nolan was inspired by lucid dreaming and dream
incubation. The film's characters try to embed
an idea in a person's mind without their knowledge,
similar to Freud's theories that the unconscious
influences one's behavior without their knowledge.
Most of the film takes place in interconnected
dream worlds; this creates a framework where
actions in the real worlds ripple across others.
The dream is always in a state of emergence,
shifting across levels as the characters navigate
it. Inception, like Memento and The Prestige,
uses metaleptic storytelling devices and follows
Nolan's "auteur affinity of converting, moreover,
converging narrative and cognitive values
into and within a fictional story."
Influences
Nolan has cited Stanley Kubrick, Terrence
Malick, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, Nicolas
Roeg, Sidney Lumet, David Lean, Ridley Scott,
Terry Gilliam, and John Frankenheimer as influences.
Nolan's personal favorite films include Blade
Runner, Star Wars, The Man Who Would Be King,
Lawrence of Arabia, Chinatown, and 2001: A
Space Odyssey. In 2013, Criterion Collection
released a list of Nolan's ten favorite films
from its catalog, which included The Hit,
12 Angry Men, The Thin Red Line, The Testament
of Dr. Mabuse, Bad Timing, Merry Christmas
Mr. Lawrence, For All Mankind, Koyaanisqatsi,
Mr. Arkadin, and Erich von Stroheim's Greed.
Nolan's habit for employing non-linear storylines
was particularly influenced by the Graham
Swift novel Waterland, which he felt "did
incredible things with parallel timelines,
and told a story in different dimensions that
was extremely coherent". He was also influenced
by the visual language of the film Pink Floyd
– The Wall and the structure of Pulp Fiction,
stating that he was "fascinated with what
Tarantino had done". Other influences Nolan
has cited include figurative painter Francis
Bacon, graphic artist M. C. Escher and authors
Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, Jim Thompson,
Jorge Luis Borges, and Charles Dickens.
Views on the film industry
Christopher Nolan is a vocal proponent for
the continued use of film stock over digital
recording and projection formats, summing
up his beliefs as, “I am not committed to
film out of nostalgia. I am in favor of any
kind of technical innovation but it needs
to exceed what has gone before and so far
nothing has exceeded anything that’s come
before”.
Shortly before Christmas of 2011, Nolan invited
several prominent directors, including Edgar
Wright, Michael Bay, Bryan Singer, Jon Favreau,
Eli Roth, Duncan Jones and Stephen Daldry,
to Universal CityWalk's IMAX theatre for a
private screening of the first six minutes
of The Dark Knight Rises, which had been shot
on IMAX film and edited from the original
camera negative. Nolan used this screening
in an attempt to showcase the superiority
of the IMAX format over digital, and warn
the filmmakers that unless they continued
to assert their choice to use film in their
productions, Hollywood movie studios would
begin phase out the use of film in favor of
digital. Nolan explained; "I wanted to give
them a chance to see the potential, because
I think IMAX is the best film format that
was ever invented. It's the gold standard
and what any other technology has to match
up to, but none have, in my opinion. The message
I wanted to put out there was that no one
is taking anyone's digital cameras away. But
if we want film to continue as an option,
and someone is working on a big studio movie
with the resources and the power to insist
[on] film, they should say so. I felt as if
I didn't say anything, and then we started
to lose that option, it would be a shame.
When I look at a digitally acquired and projected
image, it looks inferior against an original
negative anamorphic print or an IMAX one."
Nolan is also an advocate for the importance
of films being shown in large screened cinema
theaters as opposed to home video formats,
as he believes that, “The theatrical window
is to the movie business what live concerts
are to the music business—and no one goes
to a concert to be played an MP3 on a bare
stage.”
In 2014, Christopher Nolan wrote an article
for The Wall Street Journal where he expressed
concern that as the film industry transitions
away from photochemical film towards digital
formats, the difference between seeing films
in theaters versus on other formats will become
trivialized, leaving audiences no incentive
to seek out a theatrical experience. Nolan
further expressed concern that with content
digitized, theaters of the future will be
able to track best-selling films and adjust
their programing accordingly; a process that
favors large heavily marketed studio films,
but will marginalize smaller innovative and
unconventional pictures. In order to combat
this, Nolan believes the industry needs to
focus on improving the theatrical experience
with bigger and more beautiful presentation
formats that cannot be accessed or reproduced
in the home, as well as embracing the new
generation of aspiring young innovative filmmakers.
Recurring collaborators
Emma Thomas has co-produced all of his films.
He regularly works with his brother, screenwriter
and producer Jonathan Nolan, who describes
their working relationship in the production
notes for The Prestige: "I've always suspected
that it has something to do with the fact
that he's left-handed and I'm right-handed,
because he's somehow able to look at my ideas
and flip them around in a way that's just
a little bit more twisted and interesting.
It's great to be able to work with him like
that".
The director has worked with screenwriter
David S. Goyer on all his comic-book adaptations.
Nolan's former assistant and frequent collaborator,
Jordan Goldberg, has produced every Nolan-directed
film since The Prestige, and helped rework
Wally Pfister's directorial debut, Transcendence.
Pfister was the cinematographer for all of
Nolan's films from Memento to The Dark Knight
Rises. He spoke of his relationship with the
director: "Mine and Chris' working relationship
is defined, quite simply, by the great respect
we have for each other. I've learned so much
from him in terms of him pushing me to find
beauty in a simpler method of photography.
We're also very like-minded, we share a sense
of humor, and from the beginning I trust his
judgement."
Lee Smith has been Nolan's editor since Batman
Begins, with Dody Dorn editing Memento and
Insomnia. David Julyan composed the music
for Nolan's early work, while Hans Zimmer
and James Newton Howard provided the music
for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Zimmer
scored The Dark Knight Rises, and worked with
Nolan on Inception and the upcoming Interstellar.
The director has worked with sound designer
Richard King and sound mixer Ed Novick since
The Prestige. Nolan has frequently collaborated
with special-effects supervisor Chris Corbould,
stunt coordinator Tom Struthers and visual
effects supervisor Paul Franklin. Production
designer Nathan Crowley has worked with him
since Insomnia. Casting director John Papsidera
has worked on all of Nolan's films, except
Following and Insomnia.
Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Cillian
Murphy have been frequent collaborators since
Batman Begins. Caine is Nolan's most prolific
collaborator, having appeared in six of his
films, and is regarded by Nolan to be his
"good luck charm". In return, Caine has described
Nolan as "one of cinema's greatest directors",
comparing him favorably with the likes of
David Lean, John Huston and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
Nolan is also known for casting stars from
the 1980s in his films, i.e. Rutger Hauer,
Eric Roberts, Tom Berenger, and Matthew Modine.
Modine said of working with Nolan: "There
are no chairs on a Nolan set, he gets out
of his car and goes to the set. And he stands
up until lunchtime. And then he stands up
until they say 'Wrap'. He's fully engaged
– in every aspect of the film."
Personal life
Nolan is married to Emma Thomas, whom he met
at University College London when he was 19.
She has worked as a producer on all of his
films, and together they founded the production
company Syncopy Inc. The couple have four
children and reside in Los Angeles, California.
Nolan does not have a cell phone or an email
account; when Warner Bros. assigned him an
office email account, he was unaware until
some time later. "There were thousands of
e-mails in this account – some from quite
important people, actually... I had them take
it down, so people didn't think they were
getting in touch with me." On the topic of
cell phones, he said: "It's not that I'm a
luddite and don't like technology; I've just
never been interested. When I moved to Los
Angeles in 1997, nobody really had cell phones,
and I just never went down that path."
Recognition
Having made some of the most influential and
popular films of his time, Nolan's work has
been as "intensely embraced, analyzed and
debated by ordinary film fans as by critics
and film academics". Geoff Andrew of the British
Film Institute and regular contributor to
the Sight & Sound magazine, called Nolan "a
persuasively inventive storyteller", singling
him out as one of few contemporary filmmakers
producing highly personal films within the
Hollywood mainstream. He also pointed out
that Nolan's film are as notable for their
"considerable technical virtuosity and visual
flair" as for their "brilliant narrative ingenuity
and their unusually adult interest in complex
philosophical questions."
The filmmaker has been praised by many of
his contemporaries, and some have cited his
work as influencing their own. Rupert Wyatt,
director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes,
said in an interview that he thinks of Nolan
as a "trailblazer ... he is to be hugely
admired as a master filmmaker, but also someone
who has given others behind him a stick to
beat back the naysayers who never thought
a modern mass audience would be willing to
embrace story and character as much as spectacle".
Discussing the difference between art films
and big-studio films, Steven Spielberg referred
to Nolan's Dark Knight series as an example
of both; he has described Memento and Inception
as "masterworks". Nolan has also been commended
by James Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, Danny
Boyle, Wong Kar-Wai, Steven Soderbergh, Sam
Mendes, Werner Herzog, Matthew Vaughn, Paul
Thomas Anderson, Paul Greengrass, Rian Johnson,
and others. Noted film critic Mark Kermode
complimented the director for bringing "the
discipline and ethics of art-house independent
moviemaking" to Hollywood blockbusters, calling
him "[The] living proof that you don't have
to appeal to the lowest common denominator
to be profitable".
In 2007, Total Film named Nolan the 32nd greatest
director of all time, and in 2012, The Guardian
ranked him # 14 on their list of "The 23 Best
Film Directors in the World" The following
year, Entertainment Weekly named him the 12th
greatest working director, writing that "Nolan
is the rare director determined to make you,
the moviegoer, walk out of the theater after
his film and gasp, 'I've never seen anything
like that before.' His movies are full of
twists and riddles, and even his popcorn fare
is stuffed with enough brain candy to fill
up a graduate school syllabus." He was ranked
No. 2 on the same list in 2011. A survey of
17 academics held in 2013, regarding which
filmmakers had been referenced the most in
essays and dissertations marked over the last
five years, showed that Nolan was the second-most
studied director in the UK after Quentin Tarantino
and ahead of Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese
and Steven Spielberg.
Nolan's work has also been recognised as an
influence on videogames. In 2013, the official
Xbox magazine named Nolan among the 100 most
important people in games, writing that "videogames
have started to look a bit like his films:
gritty and complex".
Awards and honors
As a writer and director of a number of science
fiction and action films, Nolan has been honored
with awards and nominations from the World
Science Fiction Society, the Science Fiction
and Fantasy Writers of America, and the Academy
of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films.
Nolan screened Following at the 1999 Slamdance
Film Festival, and won the Black & White Award.
In 2014, he received the first-ever Founder's
Award from the Festival. "Throughout his incredible
successes, Christopher Nolan has stood firmly
behind the Slamdance filmmaking community.
We are honored to present him with Slamdance's
inaugural Founder's Award," said Slamdance
president and co-founder Peter Baxter. At
the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, Nolan and
his brother Jonathan won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting
Award for Memento, and in 2003, Nolan received
the Sonny Bono Visionary Award from the Palm
Springs International Film Festival. Festival
executive director Mitch Levine said, "Nolan
had in his brief time as a feature film director,
redefined and advanced the very language of
cinema". He was named an Honorary Fellow of
UCL in 2006; a title given out to individuals
"who have attained distinction in the arts,
literature, science, business or public life".
In 2009, the director received the Board of
the Governors Award from the American Society
of Cinematographers. ASC president Daryn Okada
said, "Chris Nolan is infused with talent
with which he masterfully uses to collaboratively
create memorable motion pictures ... his
quest for superlative images to tell stories
has earned the admiration of our members".
In 2011, Nolan received the Britannia Award
for Artistic Excellence in Directing from
the British Academy of Film and Television
Arts and the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of
the Year Award from American Cinema Editors.
That year he also received the Modern Master
Award, the highest honor presented by the
Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
The executive director of the festival Roger
Durling stated: "Every one of Nolan's films
has set a new standard for the film community,
with Inception being the latest example".
In addition, Nolan was the recipient of the
inaugural VES Visionary Award from the Visual
Effects Society. In July 2012 he became the
youngest director to be honored with a hand-and-footprint
ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los
Angeles.
Filmography
Feature films
Short films
References
Bibliography
Further reading
Nolan, Christopher "Charisma as Natural as
Gravity". Christopher Nolan. Newsweek. 2008-01-26.
A memoir of Heath Ledger.
Nolan, C.; Nolan, Jonah, Inception: The Shooting
Script, Insight Editions, ISBN 1-60887-015-4 
Nolan, C., Memento & Following, Faber and
Faber, ISBN 0-571-22994-8 
Nolan, C.; Goyer, David, S., Batman Begins:
The Screenplay, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21047-3 
External links
Christopher Nolan at the Internet Movie Database
Christopher Nolan at Rotten Tomatoes
Christopher Nolan at AllMovie
Christopher Nolan Biography at Tribute.ca
NolanFans.com Fansite and community for Christopher
Nolan.
