He's got a good eye for the mise-en-scene and he can direct his actors well enough (some iffy choices concerning certain character's voices, and I don't mean Bane). He's missing that hint of sarcasm in those epic/symbolic moments that really show you that he understands what he's making. The idea that he is a craftsman is interesting, because I'm a closet formalist. To be a really great craftsman in my view you need to do something different with it, something distinctly your own. The narrative doesn't count. I mean specifically with his use of the physical material that the medium is made up of, or the camera itself. Ozu had a rule that he would never shoot from any height other than his characters eye level when standing or kneeling. This forced him into creative ways of physically shooting the film that otherwise may not have been necessary. This also made the few times he breaks the rule magnificently meaningful.
Nolan gives us all the usual tropes and simply executes them well. For me, it is almost worse, because it seems like a cover up, like he isn't giving it to me straight. It's the small things that can really get you into a story...an unexpected inflection in an actor's voice, a strange color for sunlight, these sometimes draw you in rather than push you out. Nolan makes these into big things...obvious things. He doesn't give a scene a hint of yellow, he turns the whole damn thing yellow. Bane's voice isn't slightly off, its completely whacky. He gives his characters contemporary political rhetoric but doesn't make the movie about anything of the sort. It feels like I'm being placated, and that makes the movies feel condescending, and instead of getting that warm and fuzzy feeling when the gloriously epic cathartic narrative apexes arrive, I find myself scoffing in disbelief, and to a smaller extent, contempt.
EDIT: I'm mixing things up a bit here because I'm trying to talk about the film on its own terms while also criticizing the terms on which it is made. Still, I believe most of what I just wrote.
