A Twenty-First Century New Hollywood Director (The Case of Christopher Nolan)

It seems that these days Christopher Nolan is neither making small critics' darling movies that win Oscars but go little seen (like a Paul Thomas Anderson), nor giant franchise films that overshadow any would-be auteur behind the camera (as Marvel Cinematic Universe film helmers the Russo brothers are). Rather he has, post-Batman, but especially these past few years, been a maker of relatively idiosyncratic movies which are also big-budget, and score both critical raves and wide audiences, in part because the director is himself a "brand." Indeed, the combination of idiosyncrasy, critical renown, box office success, and name recognition Nolan presently enjoys make me think of the New Hollywood of the '70s, where as is the case with Nolan directors who made a name for themselves, if they were willing to press for it, got the chance to gamble big on an artistic vision, and if they won big, gamble again--as a well-established Nolan gambled on the indisputably risky Oppenheimer. By contrast The Odyssey seemed to me a "safe" choice of project, enough so that I couldn't help thinking of, for example, Orson Welles, after having gone through hell to make the thematically, structurally, technically audacious Citizen Kane going with for his next project the ultra-safe route of adapting, of all things, a Booth Tarkington novel. Still, if I'm not sure I was entirely wrong about that (the movie is, for many, an "epic action movie," a Classical-era Lord of the Rings almost), setting aside the melodrama about some of the casting choices (not that I deny that they were not a purist's choices) and the politically partisan whining from the daughter of a Daily Mail writer (why is everyone overlooking that?), Nolan does, just as when he made the last movie, seem to have had some serious concerns on his mind, enough so to get the result some respect from one very tough critic who had not been at all impressed with him before Oppenheimer (enough so that after Nolan's two latest he suggested that "[p]erhaps" his long string of prior films were "a mere tuning up, an apprenticeship").

It does not seem surprising that there should be such a director working in Hollywood today. Today, just as was the case a half century ago, the movie studios are in a state of crisis amid a collapse in admissions (down forty percent from before the pandemic, fifty percent from before the Great Recession), and the breakdown of their old model for reliably generating hits (just as the musicals and historical epics weren't packing moviegoers in anymore, the sci-fi action spectacles, the superhero flicks, are a shakier earner than before; yes, despite the stupid denials "superhero fatigue" prevails).

Still, in contrast with the situation in the '70s Nolan seems nearly alone, rather than part of a generation of such directors--and that bespeaks the ways in which if there are parallels with the '70s there are also differences here. Not the least of them is that even in its present desperate straits, with so much more money on the line with every movie release than before, with that form of degenerate called the "activist shareholder" breathing down the executives' necks, with Hollywood deeply in denial about the need to change its way of doing business (hence the entertainment press over every Deadpool and Spider-Man, every uptick in the box office, every soon-to-look ridiculous prediction about how "This year we'll see business getting back to what it was before the pandemic!") means that much less room, or willingness, to take the kinds of risks that meant letting the Nolans gamble with their careers, and the studios' money. Of course, as those who recall the New Hollywood's end know well the readiness to permit the odd gamble was part of what led Hollywood out of their difficulties--a young Steven Spielberg and George Lucas pointing the way to a new model for generating hits with films like the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sagas. However, instead of allowing that the "dumbest guys in any room" inhabiting the C-suites hope to save the old model somehow, such that for the time being we are not likely to see very many directors succeeding in following Nolan's path--all as, per the New Hollywood-ish rule book, if Nolan has gambled big and won big twice in a row, a far from impossible misstep is likely to mean an end to this particular run as a formerly obsequious media becomes both cynical and psychotic in its brutality.