Almost to the Finish

Hello everyone!  I’ve got two Christopher Nolan movies left to watch – Tenet and The Dark Knight Rises – but I’m not quite ready to write full movie reviews.  So . . . I decided I’d give a little update of how my Nolan-binge is going in place of a full review.

Long story short: I’m fascinated, forever intrigued, and incredibly impressed.

Christopher Nolan is an artistic crafter of stories.  The cinematography is impressive to say the least, but I’m also not an expert on those kinds of things.  The actors offer deft and commendable performances.  Put all these ingredients together and you get some of the most satisfyingly complex, mentally intriguing, and eye-popping(ly) impressive movies!

I’m in the middle of the Batman trilogy right now.  I thoroughly enjoyed Batman Begins due to the continued perfection of Nolan’s work, but the presence of Liam Neeson and Christian Bale also contributed to my love of the cast.  I will agree with what I’ve heard: the batman tales are dark and sometimes lean into psychologically thrilling themes.  But . . . Heath Ledger dear readers.  I have never seen such perfect acting.  The Dark Knight was one incredible ride.

I’m realizing that movie watching isn’t going to be the same for me anymore.  Sigh.  The amount of mental energy I have to use to keep up in a Nolan movie is invigorating.  I’m not exactly sure why, given the fact that often I watch a movie when I’m feeling incredibly lazy.  But that’s where the wonderful story-telling capabilities Nolan has come in.  Perhaps it is the fact that he leaves you wanting more that has given the sound of his name such a powerful ring in the movie industry.

Each time I finish a Nolan movie, my mind leaves one question on replay and it stumps me for days after the movie, “Is Christopher Nolan optimistic or pessimistic?”  For instance, when I watched Memento, I had difficulty understanding why he would end a movie (or start a movie – if you know you know) so cryptically pessimistic and so illogically eternal.  This is what I keep saying: the story telling is beyond comparison.  It forces you to think through what’s happening.  My conclusion after each movie is to decide whether Nolan was playing to an optimistic or a pessimistic ending.  With Memento, it is without a doubt a pessimistic ending with life-long possibilities for a continuation of the story.  In Inception the scales were even, it could have been either a sad or happy ending.  At the end of Interstellar, we are surely to take it as a positive completion of one story-line, and the beginning block of an optimistically new tale.

I could talk about these movies for hours.  But I don’t have that kind of time and neither do you, I am sure, dear reader. 🙂

Until I finish the last movies of Christopher Nolan, go read a book!