A singularly uncompromising talent and a true champion of the cinematic experience.

This summer, ahead of The Odyssey, TIFF celebrates Christopher Nolan with a full celluloid retrospective, from breakthrough beginnings to landmark blockbusters, featuring special guests and exciting events.

Even at the outset of his career, Christopher Nolan saw himself purely as a purveyor of popular, large-scale entertainment. Back in 2001, when he had only his self-funded, $6,000-budget debut Following and the chronology-reversing indie neo-noir Memento under his belt, Nolan balked at the suggestion that he made “art movies.” He’d be “very disappointed” to be seen that way, the then-31-year-old writer-director said. “I think of myself as a pretty mainstream filmmaker.”

At the time, this may have been interpreted as youthful braggadocio. But few people know their own minds better than Nolan. Raised on the expansive, world-building cinema of Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, and Ridley Scott, he was simply stating what, to him, was a self-evident truth.

In just a few years, this London-born autodidact with no filmmaking qualifications went from DIY production to studio blockbuster, giving the superhero genre an unprecedented legitimacy with 2005’s Batman Begins. That film’s sequel, The Dark Knight, was Nolan’s first $1 billion blockbuster — and critically lauded to boot, drawing closer comparison with the crime epics of Michael Mann than the caped antics of other cinematic vigilantes. But even more remarkable were the non-franchise movies he wrote, directed and produced, all alongside his producer wife Emma Thomas. These were executed on an increasingly grand scale while also serving up complex, genre-elevating concepts in a rarely linear form: Insomnia, The Prestige, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tenet, and Oppenheimer — the latter finally winning Nolan his first Oscars for Director and Motion Picture.

Looking at these, it is not difficult to tease out the themes that most engage him. Distant fathers struggling to return to their families (see also this year’s The Odyssey). The fracturing of experience, and objective reality, through subjective perspective. The dislocation of characters from time’s flow (both literally and narratively). The intense pressure of dealing with existentially high stakes. But his narratives have never become indigestible; again and again he has challenged his audiences without leaving them behind… Then rewarded them for their attention with eye-popping action spectacle and mind-blowing revelations.

Throughout this incredible 28-year run — which brings us to the present day with his colossally ambitious adaptation of Homer’s original epic — Nolan has also carved a formidable reputation as both a singularly uncompromising talent and a true champion of the cinematic experience. His films have a distinctly different visual texture from other blockbusters. One that demands they be seen on the biggest screen possible.

Rejecting the familiar palette and patina of what is now predominantly a digital art form, Nolan’s approach represents a dogged commitment to both traditional techniques and the unconventionally cutting edge. He eschews digital photography, favouring large-format film — a commitment reflected in this series, which is presented exclusively on film, including four titles screening on 70mm.

IMAX, a luscious but cumbersome format, is something he’s increasingly embraced and incrementally improved since first employing it on The Dark Knight. He’s taken it handheld, run it backwards, shot it in black-and-white, and now, with The Odyssey, upgraded it to capture live sound, enabling him to make the entire picture in IMAX, a first for any commercial feature filmmaker.

Not wanting to waste a single grain, Nolan endeavours to capture as much as possible in camera, entailing the rigorous avoidance of CGI — unless absolutely necessary — in favour of more traditional, practical techniques, and a commitment to shooting on location no matter how remote or weather-lashed. “By embracing the physicality of the real world in the making of the film you inform the telling of the story in interesting ways,” he recently said of shooting The Odyssey. “Because you’re confronted on a daily basis by the world pushing back at you.” Tales of filmmaking forbearance amid brutal environmental conditions, from Icelandic windstorms to heaving seas, have become a staple of the Nolan set report (in which mention of his ever-present flask of Earl Grey tea and the fact that he never sits down are also obligatory). Oh, and he only ever operates a single unit, refusing to delegate action scenes on even his most kinetic pictures.

This all may suggest that he’s an exhaustingly difficult director, plaguing his backers with unreasonable demands and runaway costs. Yet he has never had a production go over schedule or bust its budget. In fact, they consistently come in ahead of time and under budget, thanks to his meticulous planning, unerring precision and ability to roll with setbacks or even absorb them into his process.

No wonder he maintains such creative freedom. By blending reliability and responsibility with cinematic adventurousness and, quite frankly, damn good taste in everything from his source materials to his composers (David Julyan, Hans Zimmer, and Ludwig Göransson have each done their best work for Nolan), he has become much more than “a pretty mainstream filmmaker.” He’s ascended to the pantheon of directors who forge their own creative paths within big studios — directors like Kubrick and Spielberg, who so inspired him as a kid. He is, in short, that rarest of filmmakers: the blockbuster auteur.

DAN JOLIN

Dan Jolin is the author of Christopher Nolan: The Complete Unofficial Guide, which is available for purchase at the TIFF Shop(open in new tab)open_in_new.