Christopher Nolan is a British filmmaker, known for his complex Hollywood blockbusters, and considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. His films have earned over $7.7 billion worldwide, and won two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and two British Academy Film Awards.
Some of his most remarkable works are The Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012), Interstellar (2014), Oppenheimer (2023), and, most recently, The Odyssey, a film that premiered in July of this year and has already established itself as one of the year’s greatest successes.
What makes him one of today’s most successful directors is his commitment to the “craft of filmmaking”, prioritizing technical aspects and constantly seeking innovation through unconventional narrative structures, practical special effects and experimental soundscapes. This appreciation drives ideas such as shooting an entire film in IMAX, following the example of The Odyssey.
Furthermore, his films explore themes such as epistemology, existentialism, ethics, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. He often chooses to make the public see themselves in his movies and relate to the story at some level. This aspect is the key to making the audience connect with the movie.
However, one of the major criticisms leveled at Nolan is the lack of depth in his characters, especially his female characters. They are constantly portrayed merely as romantic interests or reduced to an ideal, without personality or individual ambitions.
Even so, this is a long-standing debate, since the beginning of his career and became more pronounced with Inception (2010) and reached its peak with Oppenheimer (2023).
HOW HAS HE PORTRAITED FEMALE CHARACTERS?
Many fans argue that this is him prioritizing plot over characters in his films, however, the impression is that Nolan underestimates his own characters and the strength they can bring to the stories. For example, Dr. Amelia Brand, Anne Hathaway’s character in Interstellar, is mostly defined by the men around her, which sometimes, makes her seem disconnected from the narrative.
Indeed, this is the fate of most women in his films, when they aren’t already dead and merely haunting the plot.
Despite the quality of his films, the lack of depth in his characters, particularly the women, is frustrating, and there is no sign of when things might change. In his latest work, The Odyssey, it happens again: key figures like Circe and Calypso are reduced to one of the various obstacles on Odysseus’s journey, while Penelope is simply “the waiting wife”; his vision of the women in the Odyssey completely loses the point of the original story. Of course, it’s Nolan’s Odyssey, but his film misunderstands classic characters known for centuries.
The major problem is that the man in his films are the perfect relatable man: they suffer, they commit mistakes and fix them, they go through heaven and hell. While women in his films are just one more of the many pieces used to build his protagonists, they often are the way to develop his characters, which result in shallow vain females and complex tridimensional males in his movies.
To the audience, it feels like we are watching the same story being told over and over again, it has become such a cliché that it’s almost a joke, leading one to ask: “Is Nolan really that brilliant?”
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The article above was edited by Isabela Raucci.
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