Ranking Christopher Nolan

How do you rank the works of Christopher Nolan?

Here's what my list looks like:

1. MEMENTO
2. FOLLOWING
3. THE DARK KNIGHT
4. INCEPTION
5. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
6. INSOMNIA
7.THE PRESTIGE
8. BATMAN BEGINS

1. Batman Begins
2. Memento
3. The Dark Knight
4. The Dark Knight Rises
5. Inception
6. Following

Haven't seen the rest.

1. Memento
2. Inception
3. Insomnia
4. The Dark Knight
5. Batman Begins
6. Following
7. The Dark Knight Rises
8. The Prestige

MEMENTO is easily his best, followed closely by INCEPTION. After that, INSOMNIA, TDK, BB, and FOLLOWING are pretty much interchangeable for me, with TDKR being one step below that group. THE PRESTIGE is his worst. It's been ages since I've seen it, but I can't imagine it holding up very well upon multiple viewings.

1. INSOMNIA

That's the only I can stand, thanks for Pacino, Williams, Pfister's cinematography, some unusually interesting direction from Nolan, Dody Dorns' editing, and David Julyan's haunting score.

1. MEMENTO
2. INSOMNIA
3. THE PRESTIGE

4. BATMAN BEGINS
5. INCEPTION
6. THE DARK KNIGHT


Was a bit hard to rank the first and the last two. Big gap between 3 and 4.

From what I've seen:

Inception
The Prestige
The Dark Knight.

Not sure how to rank them, I'll go by the gut.

MEMENTO
INCEPTION
THE DARK KNIGHT
THE PRESTIGE
BATMAN BEGINS


Need to figure out where TDKR fits in. Haven't seen FOLLOWING and INSOMIA. Hadn't seen THE PRESTIGE in years.

TDK
TDKR
Inception
Batman Begins
Memento
Following
The Prestige
Insomnia

I dig the big, brassy shit, and admire the other stuff.

For better or worse, THE PRESTIGE is the film that most captures Nolan's interests and approach as a filmmaker.

Yeah, one of the most autistic films I've ever seen.

Voted Insomnia for, among others, the reasons Lord Shark stated. I like the vulnerable struggle of Pacino in this film as well. Actually, Insomnia comes first by quite some distance when I think about it. Maybe because it's origins lay somewhere other than NolanLand.

Begins, as the rest are crap, and even the novelization of Begins was better.

David Bordwell takes on Christopher Nolan:

Quote :

Trying to specify Nolan’s innovations, I’m aware that one response might be this: Those innovations are too cautious. He not only motivates his formal experiments, he over-motivates them. Poor Leonard, telling everyone he meets about his memory deficit, is also telling us again and again, while the continuous exposition of Inception would seem to apologize too much. Films like Resnais’ La Guerre est finie and Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon play with subjectivity, crosscutting, and embedded stories, but they don’t need to spell out and keep providing alibis for their formal strategies. In these films, it takes a while for us to figure out the shape of the game we’re playing.

We seem to be on that ground identified by Dwight Macdonald long ago as Midcult: that form of vulgarized modernism that makes formal experiment too easy for the audience. One of Macdonald’s examples is Our Town, a folksy, ingratiating dilution of Asian and Brechtian dramaturgy. Nolan’s narrative tricks, some might say, take only one step beyond what is normal in commercial cinema. They make things a little more difficult, but you can quickly get comfortable with them. To put it unkindly, we might say it’s storytelling for Humanities majors.

Much as I respect Macdonald, I think that not all artistic experiments need to be difficult. There’s “light modernism” too: Satie and Prokofiev as well as Schoenberg, Marianne Moore as well as T. S. Eliot, Borges as well as Joyce. Approached from the Masscult side, comic strips have given us Krazy Kat and Polly and Her Pals and, more recently, Chris Ware. Nolan’s work isn’t perfect, but it joins a tradition, not finished yet, of showing that the bounds of popular art are remarkably flexible, and imaginative creators can find new ways to stretch them.

I resent Nolan being placed alongside Satie and Prokofiev as a "light modernist." A callous term thrown around with Bordwell's typical glibness.

Quote :

Nolan’s work isn’t perfect, but it joins a tradition, not finished yet, of showing that the bounds of popular art are remarkably flexible, and imaginative creators can find new ways to stretch them.

Or Christopher Nolan being as an "imaginative creator." His films are utterly predictable, and avant-garde in only the most superficial sense.

"You're being glib, David."

Largo's Shark wrote:

His films are utterly predictable, and avant-garde in only the most superficial sense.

Does anybody else find it hilarious that we can say exactly the same things about Sharky's posts on the subject of Nolan's films?

I've liked all of his movies, really liked most, and am often surprised at the level of vigor in attacks upon them. Is it mainly plothole stuff or credibility issues that undermine it all for you guys? (not an attack - genuinely interested ... remember, I'm the one who can't understand ANY of the love for Campbell's CR, so I'm definitely with a minority viewpoint on that one.)

I mean, the guy didn't make stuff like AVATAR (the last 20 years of Cameron have just not had it for me - though to be fair, I've only seen a fraction of TITANIC, but since it wasn't a comedy, I'm sure my reaction was not what was intended), it sure ain't like Nolan works at the lowest common denominator. Paying off story issues from the first film in the second is actually pretty slick to me, and not in a I'm-so-cool way, but in a way that'll make you go back and watch the first one again to see if you're really right in seeing it this way.

I think that there is definitely a threshold in terms of how far you can go with mind-puzzle gamesmanship in film, and remember feeling this way about Fincher at the turn of the century, but admire the way Nolan plugs away at it. And even though I think you can see the seams in INCEPTION that show how he had an incomplete idea that was put aside and then returned to much later (sort of like how EXTREME PREJUDICE is the result of two separate screenplays being welded together -- the parts where they get joined together will show), I still think it was impressive that he pulled it off to the degree he did, and admire the tenacity to not give up on the almost-there idea, which is something that I've let happen a few times.

trevanian wrote:

I've liked all of his movies, really liked most, and am often surprised at the level of vigor in attacks upon them. Is it mainly plothole stuff or credibility issues that undermine it all for you guys?

Not at all. I find his direction overly fussy, deadening, insensitive, monotonous, inelegant, and workman-like (much like his spiritual brother, David Fincher), and his understanding of the human condition to be extremely autistic, with next to no sex or sensuality, and more of a focus on objects (i.e. gadgets, plot mechanics, effects, epic scale) than people.. He has no sense of humour (his attempts fall flat on their face), his scripts are leaden, blatant and portentous to the extreme. His films are torturous, not fun or enlightening.

In Alex North's acceptance speech for his honuorary Oscar in 86, he said this:

"I would like to make one humble plea to all of us involved in the movies, and that is to encourage and convey hope, humor, compassion, adventure, and love, as opposed to despair, synthetic theatrics, and blatant, bloody violence."

Aside from perhaps the blatant and bloody violence (Nolan hasn't got the balls or stomach for that), Alex practically prophesied the coming of Chris Nolan and the downfall of Hollywood.

aha, agreed there LS. I find Insomnia likeable thanks to Pacino/Williams.

The Dark Knight, good for two revisits, then I got bored.

Never even went to the theatre for Inception. Got me a DVD and was bored after ten minutes. Haven't continued since.

trevanian wrote:

I've liked all of his movies, really liked most, and am often surprised at the level of vigor in attacks upon them. Is it mainly plothole stuff or credibility issues that undermine it all for you guys? (not an attack - genuinely interested ... remember, I'm the one who can't understand ANY of the love for Campbell's CR, so I'm definitely with a minority viewpoint on that one.)

I mean, the guy didn't make stuff like AVATAR (the last 20 years of Cameron have just not had it for me - though to be fair, I've only seen a fraction of TITANIC, but since it wasn't a comedy, I'm sure my reaction was not what was intended), it sure ain't like Nolan works at the lowest common denominator. Paying off story issues from the first film in the second is actually pretty slick to me, and not in a I'm-so-cool way, but in a way that'll make you go back and watch the first one again to see if you're really right in seeing it this way.

I think that there is definitely a threshold in terms of how far you can go with mind-puzzle gamesmanship in film, and remember feeling this way about Fincher at the turn of the century, but admire the way Nolan plugs away at it. And even though I think you can see the seams in INCEPTION that show how he had an incomplete idea that was put aside and then returned to much later (sort of like how EXTREME PREJUDICE is the result of two separate screenplays being welded together -- the parts where they get joined together will show), I still think it was impressive that he pulled it off to the degree he did, and admire the tenacity to not give up on the almost-there idea, which is something that I've let happen a few times.

Agree on Nolan, Casino Royale, Titanic and Cameron here.

I think it is the very vocal minority of extreme Nolan fans, the one proclaiming him like the second coming, that are responsible for a backlash or at least an exaggeration of reaction for those in a less enamoured state, there are simply too many extremes of view being expressed for it to be a natural and honest expression imo. By all means dislike the guy's work, by all means love it...but too many folks go that bit further and then there is the inevitable attempt to justify an extreme position that simply propagates the distortion.

Now that I've seen them all (two more since my post in this thread):


INSOMNIA
FOLLOWING
MEMENTO
THE PRESTIGE


BATMAN BEGINS

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
INCEPTION
THE DARK KNIGHT




Could rank Inception last as well...

1. The Prestige
2. Inception
3. The Dark Knight Returns
4. Batman Begins
5. The Dark Knight
6. Insomnia
7. Memento

1) Heath Ledger in TDK

Everything else.


Not a fan of Nolan. I find his films soulless, half-baked, garbled and lacking in subtlety. Easily the most overrated filmmaker of the present generation.

Insomnia
Memento
The Dark Knight
Batman Begins
The Prestige
Inception
The Dark Knight Rises