Starred review from August 15, 2020
An up-close and personal look at one of Hollywood's most successful directors. In his latest, film historian and critic Shone wrote in close collaboration with Nolan (b. 1970), and their longtime friendship (they met in 2001, not long after Memento was released) provides him with unique access to the "most successful filmmaker to come out of the British Isles since Alfred Hitchcock." This erudite book is packed with extensive, expansive discussions about Nolan's films, all written or co-written by the director; insights into what he was trying to accomplish with each film; methodologies; and the movies, directors, books, art, architecture, and music that influenced him. Shone calls Nolan a "classicist" who prefers "to shoot every frame himself." His films, writes the author, are "variations on a series of themes, repeated in different voices and keys, inverted, slowed down or sped up, creating an impression of ceaseless movement." On Following, his first film, Nolan says he tried "to tell a story in something like three dimensions." With Memento, he wondered: "Can you really make a movie backward?" For Shone, the "world's first spoiler-proof movie" is like "Groundhog Day as written by Mickey Spillane." Nolan believes that Insomnia, his first studio film with big-time actors (Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank) is the "most underrated" of all his films. His three Batman films, Nolan suggests, trace "what being Batman is costing Bruce Wayne," and The Prestige, writes Shone, "is the "locus classicus of all his themes and concerns." After the $1 billion box-office take for The Dark Knight, Nolan was free to do anything. He first had the idea for Inception when he was a student. The film, which broke all kinds of conventional notions of cinema, is "possibly Nolan's greatest feat of structural engineering." Interstellar "came from a very personal place," and Dunkirk, notes Shone, "narrows as it proceeds, like a noose." The author concludes that "Nolan's films leave an echo whose reverberations are felt only once it is over." Fans of Nolan's films will find this revealing book invaluable.
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August 24, 2020
Drawing on interviews conducted over three years, film critic Shone (The Irishman: The Making of the Movie) shines a light on Christopher Nolan, who has “long perfected the art of talking about his films while giving away nothing about himself.” Shone devotes a chapter to each of Nolan’s films, from his 1998 debut, Following, to the forthcoming Tenet, while tracing a few common themes. These include what the Anglo-American Nolan gained from his teenage years attending a “really establishment, old-fashioned” U.K. boarding school (principally, “how to relate to an establishment you’re inherently rebelling against but can’t push too far”). Another is the counterpoint between his exacting planning while scripting and shooting (“rules are very important” in giving a fantastical story credibility) and his openness to experimentation and “surprise,” as when he unexpectedly discovered the perfect last shot for The Dark Knight in unedited stunt footage. Shone also emphasizes the importance of collaboration for Nolan, including with composer Hans Zimmer (who “teaches me a new musical term with each film”) and Inception’s star Leonardo DiCaprio, whom Nolan credits with pushing the project from a genre heist film toward a “more character-based direction.” Shone provides thoughtful context for Nolan’s commentary, but readers will most value Nolan’s own words about his work.
September 1, 2020
Film critic and historian Shone has known director Christopher Nolan (Memento, The Dark Knight, Dunkirk) for nearly 20 years. It took a long time, but Shone finally convinced Nolan to sit down for the series of interviews that form the basis of this insightful biography. Although Nolan's films are about as modern as films can be, both in subject and in execution, the artists he cites as key influences?Dickens, Goethe, Poe, Wilkie Collins?make him, according to Shone, the greatest living filmmaker of the Victorian era. Shone explores the director's fascination with time, chronology, and structure (both real and metaphorical); he provides a sharp analysis of each of Nolan's films; and he examines the way the director's shooting style (he doesn't use monitors, doesn't have a second unit, and prefers practical effects over CGI) gives him a unique vision. This is an erudite book, written primarily for serious film fans, but Shone's prose is easygoing and mostly nontechnical, and the text has plenty to say to readers of all levels of interest. A first-class book about an intriguing filmmaker.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)
Starred review from September 1, 2020
Quite simply, this is the book for which director Christopher Nolan's many admirers have long been waiting. While his enigmatic and labyrinthine filmmaking style has drawn praise from viewers and critics alike, he has kept a similarly mysterious air about himself and his work. Yet film critic Shone (Tarantino: A Retrospective) sat with Nolan for numerous conversations over three years, producing what is almost a coauthored exploration of Nolan's creative process, his extensive influences, and his films, from 1998's Following to his latest, Tenet. Shone seamlessly weaves these conversations within a narrative that stretches from Nolan's formative boarding school days in England to the evolution of his career and his work with key contributors such as composer Hans Zimmer, his screenwriter brother Jonathan, and his wife Emma Thomas, who has served as a producer on all his films. Only a handful of contemporary writer-directors truly merit this kind of mid-career assessment, and Shone has crafted a thoroughly entertaining and fascinating portrait. VERDICT For the foreseeable future, this is the definitive word on Nolan and a must for film buffs.--Peter Thornell, Hingham P.L., MA
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