The World Could Learn a Lot From Christopher Nolan About the Value of Film Criticism

With over 25 years of experience under his belt, to say nothing of his inarguable status as one of the most prolific filmmakers of our time, Christopher Nolan is a figure whose voice tends to make people listen.

That’s an incalculable blessing, given the Oppenheimer mastermind’s measured, insightful takes on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to creative processes to respecting your audience. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the filmmaker’s outlook on film criticism—a practice that hasn’t always painted his uncompromising artistry in a favorable light (see: Tenet)—is one of unwavering, even necessary respect that only Nolan could articulate.

As reported by Variety, Nolan’s acceptance speech for his Best Director award—courtesy of the New York Film Critics Circle—saw him honor the film criticism profession and its long-standing role in helping to build the medium of cinema into what it is today.

“Obviously writing about cinema objectively is a paradox, but the aspirations of objectivity is what makes criticism vital and timeless and useful to filmmakers and the filmmaking community.”

He would go on to note that the practice of film criticism has helped wrestle films away from total authorial intent, which has not only allowed films to breathe on their own presentational merits, but has further enabled them to reach their full potential as an art form, so to speak; to quote Leonard Bernstein, “a work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.”

“In today’s world, as filmmakers you can’t hide behind authorial intent. You can’t say, ‘This is what I intended.’ We live in a world where the person receiving the story has the right to say what it means to them. I for one love that. It means the work should speak for itself. It’s not about what I say it is. It’s about what you receive it to be. In that world, the role of the professional critic, or the interpreter and the person who tries to give context for the reader…it’s incredibly important.”

Indeed, one of the greatest gifts a film can leave behind is an intellectually stimulating playground for friends and colleagues to jump into both shortly after and in the years that follow, and that’s a world we may have missed out on if not for professional, honest film criticism; it’s no wonder a filmmaker of Nolan’s caliber is so fond of it.

(featured image: Samir Hussein/WireImage)