Christopher Nolan Tribute (Santa Barbara International Film Festival Master Award, 2011)

Reviewed by Sanni Frostenson at Santa Barbara 2011.

I went to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Master’s Awards, and found that the well known Film Critic, Peter Hammond did an excellent job in interviewing Christopher Nolan. It was entertaining—more so than other tributes I have seen, and Hammond’s laughter gives life to the interview when it’s going slow. Making the audience laugh at himself, purposely or not, helps a lot.

Honestly, before I went to The Arlington Theater to watch this tribute  I didn’t know that Nolan was the writer and/or producer to many of the movies I really like. I definitely became more impressed by this British born, all-around intellectual, man than I had expected.  My impression of him is that he is a calm person who’s not too happy about being in the limelight so much as when he is situated behind the camera.

In fact he has only made seven features in eleven years, which apparently is quite few, in comparison with many other filmmakers.  The features are: Following (in black and white), Memento, Insomnia, The two most recent Batman films (Batman Begins and The Dark Knight), as well as The Prestige, and the highly celebrated Inception (starring Leonardo DiCaprio), which is the movie he was at SBIFF to receive an award for.

The second movie of the above list, Memento, follows (in reverse) a guy who loses his short term memory. It is one of my favorite movies, in great part due to the incredibly detailed and thought-through plot. It takes a genius to make such a story, and in his own sense, perhaps Nolan should be seen more as a excellent writer than an excellent producer. He told us in the audience about how he read his brothers short story during a road trip and saw its potentials. It’s what he later developed into Memento—which they had a hard time promoting at first. That period was, according to Nolan himself, probably more nerve-racking for the sponsors. But he was nevertheless very happy when the crowd loved it during the Cannes Film Festival.

An interesting thing about Christopher Nolan is that he started to do films starring his Lego figures when he was only seven years of age, with his Super 8mm camera. It really proves that a path into the film industry can start out very basically, out of almost nothing. He and his brother used to make  these films all the time, and already then he put a lot of effort into the film making process. Inception for example, took Nolan seven to nine years to develop.

These days he still likes to have his family members working on his projects, and he frequently co-operates with his wife Emma (Thomas) Nolan on movies, who also is a producer.

During the tribute he and Hammond talked a little bit about the feeling of working with different actors like Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Guy Pearce, the amazing deceased Heath Ledger, and Leonardo DiCaprio among others. The first two often star in Nolan’s films, and  DiCaprio was a special guest on the the tribute. I was not very impressed over the actor’s speech though, read directly from a note; rather a little disappointed. I simply would have expected more from such a talented actor.

Christopher Nolan is a man whose work should be highly appreciated, and deserves all the respect it already gets.  Typical for his films are fast cuts, and that they usually starts showing parts of the end. Some look at his films as confusing and lacking emotions, but I consider most of them excellent intellectual pieces of artwork. If you haven’t seen some of these films you should give it a try.