The Film Thread: Page 111 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

The Film Thread

Timbob

The twist loses some of its impact on repeat viewings though. 😛

Burnwinter

The Prestige & Memento are my two favourites of his. Coincidentally neither of them has a dubious bloated screenplay that completely loses its way about two thirds of the way through.

Burnwinter

Insane. Just goes on and on and on with disparate exciting shit happening in disparate exotic locales. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to it.

Coombs

Good holy god, that wasn't a trailer, that was an assault.

Klaus

Burnwinter wrote:
The Prestige & Memento are my two favourites of his. Coincidentally neither of them has a dubious bloated screenplay that completely loses its way about two thirds of the way through.

Those are my favourites too. I read Christopher Priest's novel that they based The Prestige on a while back, and interestingly most of the things I had a problem with in the film could be traced back to stuff the Nolan brothers had altered from the original story. It made perfect sense finding out that it was originally written as a epistolary novel. I think it was a mistake to change that structure. It resulted in the weakest and most annoying part of the film where a huge chunk of exposition is communicated through confusing voiceovers and diaries read out loud.

In any case, The Prestige is easily the best film Nolan has made to date, and most of its strength is drawn from the original script. As far as adaptations are concerned it's probably up there with Solaris and To Kill A Mocking Bird. It makes me wonder what would happen if Nolan started working with other people's screenplays as a rule rather than an exception. In my opinion his biggest strengths lie in visuals and casting. He and his brother comes across as a bit immature in their own script writing though. Sometimes, like in Inception, the result is embarrassing (not to mention that awful fucking show called Person of Interest that Jonathan Nolan created and penned).

Coombs

I don't think he's particularly talented as a director, and I completely agree with your analysis of his writing, Klaus. His strengths are in visuals, yes, but they are almost always the most obvious/idealized method of interpretation. It makes for entertaining stuff, and they are well executed, but I'm never impressed the conceptual quality of his work as it all feels very vanilla. It's exacerbated by the way he arranges said imagery in the most conventional structure possible, which is often overlain with some kind of gimmick (like the voiceover diaries of Prestige or going backwards in Memento). He's frustrating to watch, for me, because the things he's interested in and the way he purports to make his films is very interesting to me, while the work itself fails to live up to the idea.

Burnwinter

@[deleted] We are on exactly the same page regarding the screenplays, you pretty much just said what I've been saying to others in the last fortnight or so.

I feel that almost all the shortfall in sf & fantasy film in the past few years has been on the writing side. This holds true of Prometheus, Avengers, Avatar etc. Politically, they may be objectionable as some have argued re TDKR, but dramatically, they're trash.

Look at Nolan's most generally acclaimed film The Dark Knight - it won critics over by having a certain level of psychological depth, a tight first half, a few arresting set pieces, and just one villain - just one! - with great dialogue.

If they would just spend longer on the scripts, use better source material, and have the results vetted by more eyes many of these incredibly expensive films could be made not just a few percent, but several times better. It's frustrating.

banduan

A director's job is not to write a screenplay. I can quite easily separate the two and view them objectively.

There's not much to convince me that Nolan isn't a great director, from his ability to get the most out of his cast to the way he sets his scenes.

Coombs, I don't agree that alternate narrative devices should be dismissed as gimmicky. Nor do I think its fair that a director needs to break convention to be good.

edit:
As for the Prestige- it was panned by some critics. And I was suprised by how so many missed the point of it too. As Coombs says- twist or no, Nolan is a fairly conventional director and he does not attempt to obfuscate his themes inside layers of meaning. Yet I've read discussions on how it fails due to the introduction of sci-fi elements as some sort of Deus Ex Machina major copout machine.

Burnwinter

A director's job is not to write a screenplay. I can quite easily separate the two and view them objectively.

Nolan's brother writes his screenplays and clearly doesn't win the position based solely on merit.

When a director gets involved in the creative process of screenwriting or tries to bring "his vision" to the screen in terms of plot and pacing, he carries plenty of responsibility. Same goes for Scott on Prometheus, the premise of which is reportedly based on a story outline put together before Lindelof was even born.

If you want to be an auteur, you've got to carry the can like an auteur. Nolan is clearly a very gifted man but I wish it was William Goldman writing his scripts. Just hire a professional.

RonBurgundy

Klaus wrote:
He and his brother comes across as a bit immature in their own script writing though. Sometimes, like in Inception, the result is embarrassing.

What? Inception embarrassing? Give me a break. It's phenomenal: the premise, the scope, the plot, the execution. It's arguably Nolan's masterpiece (although personally I don't hold that opinion).

Timbob

Dont listen to the snobs Ronald.

RocktheCasbah

I don't see how anyone could have found Inception embarrassing.

Klaus

It's an absolute wank-job of a story.

Rex

It really is.

RocktheCasbah

Klaus wrote:
It's an absolute wank-job of a story.

Fair enough!

Timbob

Swedish people don't dream so it's hard for them to grasp the concept. Poor lambs.

Captain

Except for memento and maybe batman begins, his films could do with someone insisting he cuts the running time by 20-30mins. There's alot of bloat in most of them.

Timbob

Memento is a reasonably interesting, quirky little story, but the only thing that makes it particularly memorable for me (heh) is the fact that it's told backwards. Nothing wrong with the movie at all, but not comparable to some of his other films imo.

Captain

Guess it feeds into the positive casting decisions mentioned earlier, but Guy Pearce was excellent in Memento. To be fair, he's excellent in most things but is a bit too 'serious' for mainstream.

RocktheCasbah

Captain wrote:
Except for memento and maybe batman begins, his films could do with someone insisting he cuts the running time by 20-30mins. There's alot of bloat in most of them.

I'd probably agree with that.

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