Nolan, swollen

I got round to seeing The Odyssey. I won't go into great detail, as I don't like falling into the trap of my opinion on a film being influenced by prior knowledge of the source material, and there's been plenty of that already - but I will say I didn't loooove it.

More than in any previous case, I felt, while watching, that it was a bit overly Nolany in a way that was too distracting to ignore. I would say, in its favour, that I preferred the pacing in this film to some of his previous films, in that the third third was the most enjoyable and gripping.

Ultimately, it's still three hours of good, enjoyable, impressive cinema, so I won't gripe too much about outis and nausicaa and all that jazz, that would just be a lack of euDamonia ...

Nolan is a true phenomenon - the Radiohead of filmmaking, if Radiohead were still out there turning out increasingly ambitious, successful albums. There is no one else now who combines such critical acclaim with such commercial success, whose films are such an event. He is now the third highest grossing film maker of all time (unadjusted for inflation, of course) behind only Spielberg and Cameron.

I have seen most of his films - not Following, the debut, and not Insomnia, and, most to my chagrin, not The Prestige, which I think I would like a lot and I have often had lined up to watch, but just not got round to. Everything else, I've seen.

My favourite is still Memento. Even after all the murdering that go on. That was (at the cinema, i think) a film that made me go wow. Wow, this director has made a film under two hours! In the future, presumably, he will be incapable of doing that! I watched it two or three times and though, presumably, it doesn't make sense when you think about it, it did the job for me. I wonder why Guy Pearce never got the call again (presumably because he's not a film star, but still. Aah, here it is https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/dec/16/guy-pearce-says-he-was-blocked-from-working-with-christopher-nolan-by-warner-bros). One can imagine Guy Pearce doing a great job as lead, or main support, in most Nolan films.

Of his imperial phase, I'd say my favourite is Dunkirk (interestingly the most "British" of his films) where the time conceit is simple and effective, the performances are affecting, the unsettling soundtrack really works (please use a different composer next film, though ...). Perhaps it's his least Nolany film. I watched it at the cinema, I think it may have been the first big film I saw at the big screen after Rosa was born, and I was very moved by it. and I've seen it since on the TV, and still liked it.

Everything else, all these smart blockbusters, I have enjoyed but have a certain ambivalence about. I think they're all too long. I don't think all long films are too long, but I think all the long Nolan ones are, by somewhere between 10 minutes and an hour. Some (Inception and Interstellar, say) have too much promise early on, too much sense they're going to be masterpieces, that the endgame is inevitably frustrating. Tenet is just too much hard work that even though it does come together to some extent, you ask yourself if it was worth it. Oppenheimer was very good, but I'm not sure I found Downey's character as interesting as I might have done. The Batman films wander a bit ...

Also, just comparing him to Spielberg - Spielberg made some real brave flops. There's really all sorts of films in there. Making Jurassic Park and Schindler's List in the same couple of years was really an incredible move. I'd like to see Nolan make a romcom, or, failing that, a pure pulsating action thriller. His subject matters are pretty different, but they are nearly all about arms and a man.

Anyway, many more people have written many more interesting things about Nolan, but, you know, good for him that we've all got an opinion.

Here is my ranking:

• Memento
• Dunkirk
• Oppenheimer
• The Dark Knight
• Batman Begins
• Inception
• Tenet
• The Dark Knight Rises
• The Odyssey
• Interstellar

It means nothing ...