Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Christopher Nolan has directed ten films starting with 1998’s The Following and his first major film, 2000’s Memento. We consider his work up to the present through Insomnia (the only one of these he didn’t write), The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, Tenet, and Dunkirk (and yes, the Batman films, but we’ve already talked about Batman).
We talk about his typical heroes, his apparent love of noir, and his attempts at philosophy. Does he have a “woman problem”? Do his sci-fi plots actually make sense? Do they bear repeated viewings, or are they too dependent on some kind of plot twist gimmick? Oppenheimer may finally have overcome many of the issues we have with his previous work.
Sponsor: Get 60% off (and free shipping) on America’s #1 Meal Kit for Eating Well at GreenChef.com/60pmp (code 60pmp).
A few articles we used to prepare include:
- “All 12 Christopher Nolan Movies, Ranked” by Bilge Ebiri
- “The Exacting, Expansive Mind of Christopher Nolan” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus
- “The Excellence of Christopher Nolan: The Cinematic Master of Attention to Detail” by Leah Donato
- “Christopher Nolan and the Contradictions of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Dennis Overbye
- “‘Oppenheimer’ Is Ultimately a History Channel Movie with Fancy Editing” by Richard Brody
- “Hear Me Out: Christopher Nolan is a bizarrely overrated filmmaker” by Calum Russell
- “Why Christopher Nolan Is One of the Best Working Directors Today” by John Odette
We’re recording video for these now:
Follow us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @ixisnox, @MarkLinsenmayer.
Get bonus talking for this and nearly every episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop, or you can sign up directly via Apple Podcasts for a subscription for ad-free and bonus material for three of Mark’s podcasts together on the Mark Lintertainment Podcasts Channel.
Audio editing by Tyler Hislop of Pixel Box Media.
I am middle-aged myself, but I constantly catch other middle-aged people making the error your cohost did on this episode. She protested that “People have had 20 years to watch the movie”, as an argument for why you don’t have to worry about spoiling “Memento”. This ignores the existence of people like my budding cinephile son. He is in college and tries to catch up on stuff, but can’t possibly be expected to have watched everything in the past couple years that he wouldn’t have been allowed to watch when it came out (if he was even alive, which he wasn’t when “Memento” was released), along with keeping up on schoolwork and having a social life, not to mention watching the hot new movies and shows that come out all the time.
However, I also didn’t agree with the other panelist cutting you off from expressing your point, which I was interested in. I wish he had just let you give us a spoiler warning and continue, because I wanted to hear more about your objection. I love that movie and it made perfect sense to me as to why the main character would do what he did at the end of the movie–which chronologically was the beginning, setting everything in motion. Spoiler warning obviously for anyone reading this.
Leonard is super pissed off at Teddy, for using him as a kind of assassin, but maybe more than anything for making him face the fact that Leonard himself may be responsible for his wife’s death. Leonard knows in that moment that Teddy is not the one who killed his wife, but killing Teddy gets him revenge, prevents Teddy from continuing to manipulate him, and also stops Teddy from ever again confronting Leonard with difficult facts he doesn’t want to hear. Three very strong motivations to do what he did.