Interstellar is celebrating its 10th birthday this week, but rather than write about what a kick-ass movie it remains, I’m going to state exactly why the sci-fi classic proves Christopher Nolan’s most vocal critics wrong. Christopher Nolan is one of the most successful directors in the history of cinema, with his 12 movies making more than $6 billion at the global box office. He’s also reached something of a celluloid summit by combining commercial success with critical acclaim and Oscar glory , culminating in Oppenheimer grossing nearly $1 billion and winning seven Academy Awards.
But along the way, Nolan has also developed a reputation for making movies that are cold, detached, and, above all, lacking emotion. The criticism crops up time and time again, in reviews and profiles , during brutal takedowns , and on neverending Reddit threads where fans argue both for and against. Indeed, even while praising his work in a largely positive 2014 piece, The New York Times wrote that in many of his movies, “the human relationships can feel like an afterthought.
” That’s true of some of his work. But at times, it’s in service of form matching theme. Nolan’s first three movies – Following, Memento, and Insomnia – were neo-noirs, a sub-genre that isn’t exactly filled with people pouring their hearts out.
Style is just as important as substance in those movies, while protagonists tend to be tough, tortured, obsessive, and morally ambiguous, traits that don’t exact.