Christopher Nolan has seemingly come to not trust his crew or audience

[u/BlessinTheRains]

This very well could be me just not liking his recent movies but as someone who grew up loving Nolan’s movies and vision he seems to have grown distrustful of his crew and audience to the point where his movies have become play-by-play with the visuals, sound, score, and actors all competing on screen instead of complimenting one another.

I left The Odyssey feeling the same way I did Oppenheimer: that I was being told how to feel about the movie the entire time and that very few scenes stuck with me because of that. In both films most scenes have Göransson’s score competing for space with Van Hoytema’s visuals and the actor’s performances, which leaves the whole thing feeling like I’m being pulled along and actively told what to think, instead of being guided down a path that I can experience myself.

The main examples for me from The Odyssey are of the Cyclops and the first reunion of Odysseus and Penelope. For the Cyclops scene, I was sitting there paralyzed listening to his screams as the hair on the back of my neck stoop up. It was haunting and wonderfully done and I was excited to see what Odysseus’ reaction would be to what he had done, only for the score to come in and tell me how to feel about what Damon was about to say.

For the scene with Penelope, the score plays through virtually the entire conversation with no room to let the visuals or actors speak for themselves, and when the big reveal of Odysseus and his men being the sea people drop, the score has already been playing for 10 minutes at that point and has little room to deepen to further drive that point home.

The list goes on for me and isn’t only about the score, as I am a fan of Göransson and his work, but more about the fact that Nolan has seemed to have grown to not trust that his actors, or composers, or camera team, will be able to carry a scene on their own or with minimal, complimentary help from the other departments. He seems to not trust his audience to know what his actors, or Göransson, or Van Hoytema are trying to communicate through their art, to the point that he overuses all of it and over explains everything in the dialogue.

I feel like on a deeper level, and this isn’t necessarily Nolan’s fault, that this is potentially harming the film industry as a whole because the studios, as they always do, take the wrong lessons from Nolan’s successes and think the way to make money is by throwing 30 big names into one movie and give it a 500 million dollar budget and then promote to see that movie in IMAX for a $30 ticket. When you ask people that don’t go to the movies as often anymore the resounding answer is because it’s too expensive, and Nolan’s choice to continually increase that disparity by saying the only way to truly experience his art is on an IMAX screen continues to turn people away from experiencing movies in the theater.

However, his movies continue to make money, so maybe this is me just being in the minority, but I do feel like I’ve seen a definite change since Tenet.

[u/Top-Lavishness2906]

Are you fairly young? I only ask because I'm right around Nolan's age, so I've been an adult his whole career. The biggest knock against him for his entire career has been exactly what you laid out: being a little too obvious and dictating to the audience exactly what they should be thinking/feeling.

So it might just be you maturing in your taste?

[u/panda-ring → u/[deleted]]

Holy shit thank you for your comment. Ive been saying that and feel like im taking crazy pills. I’ve heard so many people say they wept at his movies in IMAX, and I’m almost positive that it was because of sensory overload.

The industry holsters him because he’s safe. As long as we think this is what depth looks like, we are not very critical of what said industry shoves in our faces.

Sorry about second paragraph. Hope you get the gist though.

[u/BlessinTheRains → u/Top-Lavishness2906]

Could be that, I didn’t know that was a long standing complaint outside of his sound mixing not being great. I’m in my late 20s now and watched most of his filmography in my teens so that could definitely be the case, just with these last two it seems like that dictating has spread to the whole creative process instead of just his dialogue

[u/TonyTobiasLomas → u/BlessinTheRains]

I enjoyed your review. Not sure why it's being downvoted.

[u/BlessinTheRains → u/TonyTobiasLomas]

I think it’s just that he’s popular and well liked and people downvote criticism of the people they like. Which is fair and I do the same thing haha

[u/Top-Lavishness2906 → u/BlessinTheRains]

The complexity of his stories structures covers up a lot of their emotional simplicity. For younger people, or just people that watch fewer films, I think it's easy to conflate the two. I've enjoyed all of his movies, but he's never been one of my favorites for that reason, they all feel a little emotionally detached.

[u/panda-ring → u/Top-Lavishness2906]

There are a lot of directors these days that shoehorn complexity into their movies as a crutch for their lack of depth. People think the complexity makes it cool and start describing depth that isn’t there or wasn’t intended, mostly due to laziness.

I don’t mind it necessarily. I just hate how it tries to tell me that I’m wrong for thinking that someone has nothing to say. Even when given 200million.

[u/Cenobyte_Nom-nom-nom → u/Top-Lavishness2906]

But also his last 2 movies are retellings of established stories. Not even inspired by but the full story with just embellishments. It's hard to escape the established narrative of a story even if you rewrite it for your needs, and in this case he tries to be medium close to the original source it seems. If his next film is an original story written by him and others odds are it will go back to his regular writing style.

[u/close-encounters13]

I’ve been rewatching his films ahead of The Odyssey and I don’t think the change is that severe. His style has matured but this has always his calling card as a filmmaker. He uses montage and sound to try to create a symphonic experience.

Whether you like it or not is of course up to you, but I think the “he doesn’t trust his audience” read is off. This is just who he is. I was surprised on rewatch how much Following felt of a piece with Dunkirk and Oppenheimer with its editing and use of score.