Criticising Chris

I love Christopher Nolan movies and think he is a good film director. I feel like that isn’t too controversial a statement to make. Judging by the billions his movies make at the box office it would seem a lot of people agree with me. His impact on the industry has been huge too. His method of taking arthouse cinema sensibilities and applying their method to the modern blockbuster has proved revolutionary and has influenced multiple big budget franchises like James Bond, Mission Impossible, Marvel and so on. It’s an incredible achievement and even more so that his only film I don’t like is Insomnia. In general though, Nolan makes movies I love. I really don’t like HIM though…

This sentiment was brought to boil recently when it emerged in an interview with Anne Hathaway that Nolan doesn’t allow chairs on set because he believes if people are sitting they aren’t working. Ignoring the ableist undercurrent of this, the ‘hard work’ rhetoric that underlies that facile practice is reprehensible to my mind. I, like a lot of others, had our suspicions confirmed that he was of a conservative mindset by this and it brought into question my liking of his films. The trouble is he has never particularly endeared himself to me in interviews so I don’t really know what I expected.

Nolan has always been a literal conservationist. He is a fierce advocate for film and the theatrical cinema experience…