I’m jealous. I have to wait till December!
I started to read this. I do have my problems with Nolan, yet I enjoy reading this mix of biography, interpretation, interview and personal musings.
I’m finding I’m having to read it in short bursts as while the insights are fascinating, the concept of becoming trapped in a cage that used to be a helpful frame stemming from Nolan going to boarding school for example, but Shone’s leaning on hyperbole is a bit grating. It’s like he has got in the habit of writing blurbs for his reviews and can’t stop.
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After abandoning and hating it when it was released, I now find myself returning to the score again and again, loving it! What’s going on with me?
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Diagnosis: a mild case of QRTD–Quarantine-Related Tenet Disorder.
Remedy: Watch two Akira Kurosawa 'Scope films, drink plenty of fluids, and bedrest.
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The other option is that it’s…y’know…good!
Ludwig Göransson is gaining a rep as both a composer and producer for a reason.
His main danger going forward is having done both a Nolan film and an MCU movie; A perfect combo to unleash The Extractor Fan
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I’ve actually been a fan of the music since day 1. Was excited when they recently released the two additional tracks. Now, that said, not sure I’d like this style for a Bond film.
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It also might depend on me being… um… from time to time… judgmental. And because I apparently could not separate my frustration by the whole “only in theatres”-spiel which surrounded TENET.
Hey, I still might dislike the film. But if I love it, I will eat my hat (again).
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Since here in Germany TENET will become available only from December 17th onwards I haven’t been able to eat my hat about that one.
But I am definitely doing a backwards flip on Christopher Nolan, after starting to read Tom Shone´s very interesting discussion/biography/essay-book “The Nolan Variations” and to re-watch the previous Nolan films.
I have begun with a second viewing of “DUNKIRK”. The first time I was lukewarm about it at best. Why? I don’t have a clue, to be honest. My second viewing really made me appreciate this film perfectly. I consider it a masterpiece and one of the best war films ever made since it really shows us the terrible unpredictability of violence and its effects on those who have to fight it, from the frontlines to the people at home having to confront the war anyway. No sentimentality at all, no jingoism, just plain brutal honesty - and still the film is able to give some uplift, proving that humanity, while perfectly capable to be its worst, can also rise up and show their best.
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Join us…
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INCEPTION.
First time I saw it in the cinema I was entertained but not thrilled. Why not? I apparently thought: hey, dreams cannot be entered, it´s all ludicrous, really.
Second time I saw it on blu ray I liked it but was not eager to see it again. Why not? I strangely thought: it´s such a downer, really, a tragic love story which I hoped to have a happier ending. Yes, everything is done very well. But the film is more to be admired than to be enjoyed.
Now, having seen it for the third time, I really, really love it. Why? Was it that for the first time my mind was not distracted by the very fast moving bombardment of action, so that I could concentrate on the information in the dialogue? Was it because I really wanted to like it this time, thereby changing my own perception to be won over much easier? Did I plant the idea of Nolan being totally underestimated by myself in my mind?
One thing´s for sure (or is it?): Nolan does deliver important information in quickly delivered dialogue while also offering breathtaking visuals. Sometimes it seemed to me that those visuals had overpowered me, exposing a weakness in my perception of the spoken words. Or is the concept of entering a mind via inducing sleep and synchronizing one dream with other people´s dreams just too unrealistic to really have me make the leap of accepting it?
Often, die-hard fans of Nolan say: you have to watch it again to really appreciate it. But as Simon Mayo once raised the question with Mark Kermode: is it a failure of a director if he cannot communicate his intentions so that audiences can understand everything on the first viewing?
I would go further: is it the director´s fault or the audiences´ shortcoming, caused by decades of movies designed so simplistically that it became perfectly okay or even intended to not pay attention to every line of dialogue or any visual piece of information? Have we been primed to only accept narratives which spell out everything again and again so that one can tune out at any time and still understand what’s going on?
From personal experience: many producers and executives often ask me to state ideas again and again, always “in the interest of clarity”, so that “audiences will absolutely get it”. Which is horrible storytelling, really, but something that has been going on for much too long.
Watching “Inception” again I questioned my own way of paying attention, especially now in the comfort of my home, with the chance to pause the film and get up to answer a phone etc.
I also questioned why my rating of this film changed so drastically. In any event, it is a sign of its quality. And really, I look forward to seeing it again.
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It depends on what they are trying to communicate. If Mayo is speaking of narrative intentions, I have not found Nolan’s movies difficult to follow. Intricate yes; difficult no. Repeat viewings reveal the level of intricacy and nuance. It is much the same as reading an Agatha Christie or Ellery Queen mystery: upon a second reading, a reader sees the clues and red herrings that she missed the first time around.
If the intentions referred to are other than narrative, however, it may take several viewings for all meanings to emerge. For example, I watched RAN by Kurosawa this weekend. I first saw it 35 years ago at the New York Film Festival. Plotwise it is the same movie I remember, but subsequent viewings have revealed the cultural/social/anthropological commentary which Kurosawa embedded in the film. Were these elements there in 1985? Yes. But only through repeat viewings was I able to see beyond plot/narrative to the deeper resonances of the work. Being able to take the plot for granted through the mechanism of familiarity allows for this richer engagement.
I often have a similar experience with theater: my best friend and I have seen “Long Day’s Journey into Night” several times. During the most recent production with Jeremy Irons, we both heard lines we were familiar with in new ways, and it was our familiarity with the text that allowed us to apprehend these new resonances.
I would say that it is more an instance that narratives have been rendered culturally/anthropologically neutral/neutered in order to reach as vast an audience as possible. A consequence of this particular reduction is a compensatory increase in narrative complexity to maintain a sense of depth. This new narrative complexity sometimes rises to a level where repeat viewings are necessary.
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INTERSTELLAR
I´m a sucker for science fiction films. So this one in the Nolan oeuvre was always the one I immediately enjoyed - although the finale/ending still baffles me every time I watch it.
The first time the books are moved so Cooper can get the coordinates of the Nasa base and Murphy transcribes “Stay” - that cannot be done by Cooper in the tesseract since at that point he hasn’t traveled there. Cooper does say that the tesseract was built by an extraterrestrial intelligence opting to save mankind - but later on he says that it was humanity in the future. But how can humanity exist in the future when it is going to die due to the circumstances on earth Cooper has to save it from?
Did I miss something? @Orion?
It’s a bootstrap paradox and pre-determination (appropriately, you’ll come back to this with Nolan and Thorne). The events of the film happened because Cooper tried to prevent them from happening.
From The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne (whose brain child the film is)
Recall that the tesseract is an object whose faces have three space dimensions and interior has four. The interior is part of the bulk. Everything we see in the movie’s tesseract scenes lies in the faces: Cooper, Murph, Murph’s bedroom, the bedroom’s extrusions, the world tubes of the book and watch—all lie in tesseract faces. We never see the tesseract’s bulk interior. We can’t see it, since light can’t travel through four space dimensions, only three. However, gravity can do so. In my interpretation, when Cooper sees a book in Murph’s bedroom, he does so via a light ray that travels in faces of the tesseract And when he pushes on a book’s world tube, or on the world tube of the watch’s second hand, he generates a gravitational signal (a gravitational wave in the bulk) that spirals into and through the tesseract’s bulk interior, The signal travels forward in local, bulk time, but backward in bedroom time, arriving before it started out.It is this gravitational signal that pushes the book out of the bookcase and twitches the watch’s second hand.
This is rather like one of my favorite Escher drawings, Waterfall (Below). Downward in the drawing is analogous to the forward flow of bedroom time, and the flowing water is analogous to the forward flow of local time. A leaf on the water is carried forward with the water just like signals in the bulk are carried forward in local time.
The book goes into extreme detail about everything you see in the film and is very good read whilst watching.
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Thank you, and also thanks for the video link.
That it remains a paradox even Neil deGrasse Tyson cannot explain is on the one hand disappointing, on the other hand interesting. For my taste, Nolan should have made the point Tyson makes a little bit clearer.
Nevertheless, it is a fascinating conclusion and not a plot hole as so many were quick to cry out.
There’s a better one somewhere of De Grasse Tyson talking about the predetermined nature of it but I cant find it, so thought I’d just post an extract from Thornes book, given theres an entire chapter dedicated to discussion of it.
This is a good one, as Thorne in his book uses that exact diagram DeGrasse Tyson uses to explain it here;
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And I am a sucker for time travel films and television episodes. INTERSTELLAR was the first Nolan film I unreservedly enjoyed (DUNKIRK was the second). He achieved a new level in this film for me.
I am curious if he maintains it with TENET.
It can also be understood as a variation on the venerable “Appointment in Samarra” parable.
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Exactly! Oedipus and Macbeth would be other examples.
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33 minutes in - having once been employed to be the only staff member available in a tiny hotel during the night, I’m getting horrible flashbacks as the one who had to clean that kitchen if something unexpected happened…
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