Tag Archives: Christopher Nolan

Movies

Now this is truly strange… Christopher Nolan and the “unrestored” 2001: A Space Odyssey

I think its fair to say director Christopher Nolan is up there in the very high echelon of “great current directors.”

His first full film, Following, presented a story which was told in reverse order, something he would subsequently use for his breakthrough follow up, Memento.

Mr. Nolan would release several incredibly well reviewed films, including his Batman trilogy (though, to be fair, the final movie in the trilogy did have its detractors), The Prestige, and Inception.

I’ve read interviews with Mr. Nolan and clearly he’s a BIG movie lover.  He loves celluloid and, interestingly, seems to have similar tastes to mine with regard to films he admires.

One of them is Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which happens to be one of my top three all time great films (for the record, my other two all time favorites are Metropolis and Orpheus, though there are many, many films that fall just outside this category… and in time may supplant a film or two there!).

Anyway, Mr. Nolan, while in Cannes, showed a unrestored (yes, you read that right) copy of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and… I’m left scratching my head.  So too was Stephen Garrett over at Slate.com, who wrote about it here:

Does Christopher Nolan’s “Unrestored” 2001 do right by Kubrick?

Understand: As a film lover, I very much want to see films look as good as they can.  I know that film stock can degrade over time, some dangerously so.  Colors tend to fade and this is why restorations, IMHO, are vitally important.

Yes, restorations of films often involves turning them from film stock into digital media and I understand that, as mentioned in the article, digital media wasn’t always the greatest way to show all the sparkling colors film stock manages.

But…

Digital technology is always improving and, as the author of the article mentions, what digital media produced 20 or even 10 years ago is at a lower level than what can be produced today.  I suspect it won’t be long before digital images will capture anything/everything film stock can.

However, here’s the thing: UNrestored print?!?

Again and according to the article, the image was generally good but the author noted scratches in the print, wobbling sound here and there, and the cigarette burn looking edges of the print which, in the old days, indicated a reel change.

Look, I’m all in favor of seeing things as they were, but given the film’s age, the “unrestored” copy that Mr. Nolan is showing has to display such age related wear and tear.  And seeing these little glitches… does it really enhance one’s appreciation for the film?

I would think not.

But that’s just my opinion.  Who know, maybe there is something to replicating the original theater experience, warts and all.

Movies

Dunkirk is being released today…

…so how about taking a look at, and ranking, all 10 of director Christopher Nolan’s films?

This list, presented on Slate.com and written by Bilge Ebiri, offers a look at all his films, including Dunkirk, and ranks them:

All 10 Christopher Nolan Films, Ranked

In case you’re curious (and, what the hell, even if you’re not), I’d probably still put Memento as Christopher Nolan’s best film.  Though low budget, it was an absolutely incredible bit of daring film making, giving us a story presented in chunks and going backwards in time.

Incredibly, there is a big payoff at the very end and, even more incredibly, if you have the DVD and/or BluRay that allows you to play the film in “normal” time, it works just as well!

As for most disappointing Christopher Nolan film… that would have to be Insomnia, which Mr. Ebiri also ranks rather low, giving it the #9 slot (I would put it at #10, frankly).

Here’s the thing about Insomnia: Mr. Nolan’s 2002 film was a remake of a 1997 Norwegian film featuring the same title which, IMHO, was so much better.

The plot of Insomnia is that a somewhat corrupt cop accidentally -or could it have been on purpose?- shoots and kills his partner while chasing a killer in the fog.  We learn that our corrupt cop is about to have a hearing before the board and that his partner, the man he killed, may well have been about to testify against him.

The case they are involved in lies in a distant city in the Arctic and there, daytime light lasts for weeks.  Our “hero”, whom audiences can’t quite know if he’s actually good or not, is affected by the constant light and can’t sleep all while trying to solve the vicious crime and keep an eye out on his superiors… who may be about to drop the hammer on him.

The original film, which featured an unknown cast (though lead actor Stellan Skarsgård has since become a better known fixture in American films), worked because of that fact.  We were never sure of just how “good” or “bad” our protagonist was.

In the Christopher Nolan remake, the lead character is played by Al Pacino and, unfortunately, right away we know he’s a somewhat bad man who is trying to redeem himself from the grime of his life.

With the bigger names in the roles, we unfortunately know too much about the characters and their motivations and, therefore, already have an idea of where things are going, which we didn’t in the original film.

Yes, the remake had a big, powerhouse cast.  But this may well have been a case where having bigger names meant we knew the film wouldn’t take too many chances and, indeed, it did not.

Christopher Nolan’s Insomnia isn’t a “terrible” film, by the way.  I don’t think any of Mr. Nolan’s films are mediocre, much less “bad”.  But when compared to some of his other works, it simply doesn’t measure up to them.

All in my humble opinion, of course!