Ramblings of a Geek

OK, here’s my retort!


YES

Christopher Nolan is a bit like Internet Explorer. It all started off well, continued strongly, but near the end it embarrassed itself. A favourite of film students across the land, Nolan can’t do any wrong it seems. Well, he can in my view. What an overrated, talent-less hack, who seems to have forgotten his “Indie” roots. Yes, his Indie roots -no, not Memento, but Following, one of his earlier efforts. Strangely for a Nolan film, it’s actually a satisfying piece of work – and I think I’ve pinpointed why. Without a huge budget, amazing special effects and high-calibre actors, Nolan actually had to spend time working on the story and developing characters, rather than mask it with music and cinematography. I see that as one of Nolan’s biggest problems – he uses his brother, Jonathan or “Jonah” to write the screenplays. While they might pass for the story of a Michael Bay movie, I expect better from a favourite of critics – perhaps a woman with something to do other than run around and be a damsel in distress. Since Jonah started writing his films, they seem to have gone down in quality with a tendency to under-use characters, especially Inception, and I won’t even get onto the problems within The Dark Knight. Perhaps if Chris gets rid of Jonah, we might see a good film from him again – I certainly hope so.

I don’t hate Chris Nolan; far from it. I just hope he gets off his pretentious high horse to make a good film. (The Dark Knight Rises? Nice title…)

Ok, so me and my friend Gus constantly argue over this. We decided to write a 200-word argument about Nolan. Gus says No, I say yes.

NO

I believe Christopher Nolan is one of the greatest directors of our generation, better even than Steven Spielberg, and this is why. After a good start to his career with Following, he went beyond what any other director would attempt for their second film with Memento. I do admit it took me a good 2-3 viewings to figure it out as the film is backwards but it is a truly great achievement. His other films including, Insomnia, The prestige, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Inception are all very cinematic and all have solid stories, which some films lack. And no matter how long the film, it never gets boring because it has such a good story and good actors to carry it along. He is very skilled at cinematography and co-writes his films with brother Jonathan Nolan and together they write massive films. He doesn’t like to use CGI, which he purposely avoided when making Batman Begins and did most of it practical; the CGI that he does use though is fantastic, unlike films such as Mega Piranha. He has collaborated with composer Hanz Zimmer for his last three films, which makes the film 10 times better already in my opinion.  And I think that the score to all of his films help describe the mood of the films, especially in Inception. A great skill that Nolan has is the use of non-linear timelines, for example, Memento and The Prestige, where the films aren’t necessarily in the right order, but because of Nolan’s talent, you don’t get confused at what’s going on. He sometimes uses hard cuts when transitioning to the next scene which you can see in both Batman films and Inception. I truly hope Christopher and Jonathan Nolan continue to write amazing films and although he is not directing, I am looking forward the new Superman film which the Nolan brothers are writing. And while the new Batman film may not have the most imaginative name (The Dark Knight Rises), I still cannot wait to see it!