As much as I want to like his films because he is an ambitious and intelligent filmmaker who gives good spectacle, I am resigned to the fact that Nolan makes really great films for dumb people.
Witness the end of The Dark Knight Rises: rather than cutting away on what would have been an ambiguous and bittersweet shot of Alfred looking into the distance at an off-screen person that may or may not be an alive Bruce Wayne (a la the spinning top that so gracefully closes Inception), we get a dumb couple of shots of a smiling Wayne enjoying a latte with Catwoman and basically waving his arms at Alfred who may as well be punching the air.
Witness Interstellar: having survived a black hole and self-destructing tesseract, Cooper leaves his dying daughter, who he has just been reunited with after decades apart, and jumps into a spacecraft to go planet-hopping and find Anne Hathaway.
Witness Tenet.
And witness Oppenheimer: that JFK reveal; that earth consumed in a CGI ball of fire at the end just in case you don't quite get what Oppie's on about. Do I not have any inference skills or imagination? I am Become Dumb.
"Gives good spectacle" is such an apt way of summing up what Nolan does. Without a doubt he's a technical master but his narrative instincts are frustrating and as you say, he doesn't trust the audience.
My other issue with his work is that he is very good at creating an illusion of depth (Inception is the perhaps the best example but it was there with The Prestige also) that makes you think of you go back to a particular film it will unlock more than the first viewing presents. But it's ultimately an illusion.
Tenet is the peak of this. It isn't a confusing film and everything is there the first time but it *seems* like it is confusing and so surely you have to watch it multiple times to grasp what is happening when actually it's just a dumpster fire.
As much as I want to like his films because he is an ambitious and intelligent filmmaker who gives good spectacle, I am resigned to the fact that Nolan makes really great films for dumb people.
Witness the end of The Dark Knight Rises: rather than cutting away on what would have been an ambiguous and bittersweet shot of Alfred looking into the distance at an off-screen person that may or may not be an alive Bruce Wayne (a la the spinning top that so gracefully closes Inception), we get a dumb couple of shots of a smiling Wayne enjoying a latte with Catwoman and basically waving his arms at Alfred who may as well be punching the air.
Witness Interstellar: having survived a black hole and self-destructing tesseract, Cooper leaves his dying daughter, who he has just been reunited with after decades apart, and jumps into a spacecraft to go planet-hopping and find Anne Hathaway.
Witness Tenet.
And witness Oppenheimer: that JFK reveal; that earth consumed in a CGI ball of fire at the end just in case you don't quite get what Oppie's on about. Do I not have any inference skills or imagination? I am Become Dumb.
"Gives good spectacle" is such an apt way of summing up what Nolan does. Without a doubt he's a technical master but his narrative instincts are frustrating and as you say, he doesn't trust the audience.
My other issue with his work is that he is very good at creating an illusion of depth (Inception is the perhaps the best example but it was there with The Prestige also) that makes you think of you go back to a particular film it will unlock more than the first viewing presents. But it's ultimately an illusion.
Tenet is the peak of this. It isn't a confusing film and everything is there the first time but it *seems* like it is confusing and so surely you have to watch it multiple times to grasp what is happening when actually it's just a dumpster fire.