I am a fan of Christopher Nolan. I have enjoyed pretty much all of his movies and I expect a certain amount of quality and care if he's involved with a picture. However, I'm not going to say everything he does is gold; I have reasons for my opinions and I'm willing to back them up. What I respect most about Nolan's film-making are his choices as a director.
A director can make or break a script with poor decisions on actors, mood, music, and editing; a movie with the advice he gives his actors; and a film with his oversight of the editing process or with his choices for cinematography. So far, in every film he's made, Nolan's choices always seem like the right ones.
When he wanted to reboot and restart the Batman franchise, he went out of his way to tell studio bosses that he was going to use CGI effects as minimally as possible. He wanted to use predominantly all real effects with real stunt men. He felt that doing so would ground the character in the world and make the actions seem that much more real to the audiences. Studio bosses hemmed and hawed for a while, and then said okay. The results are Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both critically lauded and audience approved.
In Insomnia, Nolan worked with some heavy-weight hitters for the first time in Pacino, Williams, and Swank. He dialed down Pacino's and Williams' usually over-the-top performances to something subtle. He used color to and photography to help the picture form the surreal world of Pacino's cop's dream-like world view due to his lack of sleep.
Memento has become a classic film noir-esque movie with audiences over the years. Nolan aided the audience to understand the mentally challenged lead's circumstance by using the "gimmick" of telling the story out of order (almost in reverse). From many other directors, this gimmick would feel cheesy. Yet Nolan manages to keep the choice fresh from beginning to end with his editing of where the story breaks and rewinds, how much he reveals about each character during each scene, and the small bits of humor and drama that are in each beat of the film.
In The Prestige, Nolan makes what is likely his most "standard" directorial choices. Yet, that choice in itself has surprising results, as the story being told is one of the meanest, nastiest on screen feuds between characters you've ever witnessed. By dialing down the gimmicks and the other choices he could have made to a more standard approach, he allows the acting of Jackman and Bale to expand and the story of their bitter rivalry to breath. Even with the lush pallet, sweeping camera shots and intimate close-ups, the audience becomes mesmerized by the two leads' slow decent into hatred and revenge, and, likely, wind up hating both by the film's final twist and turn.
With a film like Inception, most directors would have been hot to use 3D technology (or post production) to make the world pop. They would have filled the frame with more and more effects as the world of the dreams grew more complex. Again, Nolan makes the spot-on choice not to use 3D, leaving room for the story and the characters to be the main focus. There is a lot going on in this world, so you need time to pick it up, learn it, and then be amazed by it and the characters who inhabit this world. 3D would just slow that process down and get in the way of the story-telling. However, for this film, Nolan did extensively use CGI effects. Unlike most films with CGI, however, Inception doesn't beat you over the head with it. Time and care was taken to make every effect fit into the world and seem like a part of it.
In the final battle in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King I was very much aware that most of the creatures, people, and scenery on the screen were CGI. In Inception I wasn't taken out of the moment by this. For the most part, only the scenes around the actors were CGI, and time and care were taken to get the lighting and textures correct to fool the audiences' eye into believing what the actors are in and doing. Many of these scenes are enhanced by real-world effects to help "sell" the CGI as much as possible. For example, when Paris folds up on itself, you have real actors standing on real streets of Paris, with shots of other real streets of Paris. Only the "edges" of the shots, where the folding occurs, is an actually CGI effect; the rest is all real-world effect and shots. Once again, Nolan makes the right choices, even if they are not the easy choices, to sell the effects, sell the story, and sell the movie to the audience.
Nolan is now working on the story and pre-production for the next (and possibly final) Batman film in his stewardship. He is also working on the next Superman movie as an advisor and executive producer. My belief is that, yet again, Nolan will make the right choices to bring the one down-and-dirty, street-level character and the God among men, messianic, other-worldly alien to the screen for audiences. I imagine the next Batman will continue using predominantly real-world effects and a strong cast to push the idea of vigilante as hero. I am willing to bet that Superman will have a lot of CGI effects to back-up the unimaginable power that character has; but with Nolan overseeing things, I have a feeling they will blend well and won't feel forced or like CGI for CGI's sake (like, say, in the three Star Wars prequels).
I look forward to following this director's career in whatever direction he goes.
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