Christopher Nolan Continues to Break Barriers in His Latest Project

Lauren Brose

A “blockbuster” and a “classic” are inherently different when it comes to films. A “blockbuster” is highly-budgeted, involves frequent use of special effects and is heavily marketed. Commercial success is always expected even if the quality of the movie as a whole is wavering. A “classic” film is narrowly focused on all aspects of quality. Cinematography, writing and acting take the highest priority as opposed to explosions or machine gun battles. Films of quality are often overlooked by the mass movie-goer audience but will receive praise from critics and award shows. Rarely will one find a director who is able to produce a film that encompasses both attributes seamlessly and even if it was accomplished, it may take a director a good part of their career. Then, there’s Christopher Nolan.

I have come to the conclusion that Christopher Nolan is some sort of gift sent from the film gods. Evidently from this year’s Oscar awards, three of the five nominated actors for best picture— Leonardo DiCaprio, Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey— all played leading roles in at least one of Nolan’s films. Slowly rising to fame in 2000 with his cerebral thriller Memento, Nolan quickly established a unique non-linear technique of telling an outstanding story. Shortly after the film’s release, Nolan began to work on a tentative screenplay that would someday evolve into his most complex and successfully executed film to date. Nolan first pitched the idea of Inception nearly a decade before its release and in 2010, Inception became tangible. Having been released after The Dark Knight and before The Dark Knight Rises, Inception was a film unprecedented by any of Nolan’s earlier works. The strongest component of the film was the plot’s stability. As opposed to the inevitable collapse of dreams on screen, Inception never shed a moment of inconsistency that lead the storyline to crumble before your eyes.

Inception was received with a widespread of positive reviews from critics and fans alike. The late Roger Ebert gave the film a perfect score proclaiming that he accomplished something that far transcends the success he received through reinventing the batman series. Inception earned $826 million at the worldwide box office and stayed at the number one spot for three consecutive weeks. Inception is not the only Christopher Nolan film to have earned massive critical and box-office success. The Dark Knight franchise earned a combined total of $2.5 billion in the worldwide box office and superior reviews that sparked a cult following of Nolan’s work.

By now, fans have realized that there are several things to expect out of Christopher Nolan films:

• A fully stacked cast consisting of top-billed actors and actresses

• An epic score by Hans Zimmer

• Groundbreaking special effects

• Intentional vagueness and ambiguity leading up to release

It is rumored that Nolan requires his talent to read their scripts inside the studio— never allowing the screenplay to leave the property— to ensure that information about the film does not leak. During interviews, Nolan remains tight-lipped about the intimate details of his upcoming projects, sometimes only revealing the names of a small handful of committed leading actors. A skillful perfectionist, Nolan doesn’t want to reveal any aspects of his project until it is completely finished. He would rather audiences know too little about the film than reveal too much too soon. When watching teaser trailers for the majority of his films, you will find that they too contain a significant amount of ambiguity that intrigues audiences and pulls them into the story— but also doesn’t give away too much.

As of current, Nolan has just finished up filming his latest film Interstellar. It is being produced by Legendary Pictures, the same production company that released The Dark Knight Trilogy and “Inception.” The protagonist of the film is Matthew McConaughey, this year’s Oscar winner for best actor in the film Dallas Buyers Club. Amongst the entire cast of accomplished actors include Casey Affleck, Wes Bentley, Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon. In addition, Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine, veterans to Nolan’s films, resurface in this science-fiction film. As far as the trailer reveals, it is intimated that time travel is possible via wormholes. McConaughey voices over the entire trailer and opens with “we’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible.” The aesthetics is a vast green field of crops, historical clips of the earliest space exploration and McConaughey driving an old pickup truck. He continues to mention that we used to “break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements—but we’ve lost all that. Or perhaps we’ve just forgotten that we are still pioneers, that we’ve barely begun, and that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, that our destiny lies above us.”

What McConaughey’s character suggests in the trailer falls nothing short of the truth. What’s suggested is the notion that Earth may not be the end-all for humanity. Why have we lived on Earth for so long when it’s evident that there’s more out there? Considering that executive producer Kip Throne is a world renowned scientist, Interstellar will most likely touch on issues of time and space among many other topics. Exactly who Matthew McConaughey’s character is or what the film is about in terms of time traveling we will not know until it’s release date in November, 2014. For now, we can leave it to Christopher Nolan to continue to blow audiences’ minds with his precision and attention to detail.

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