Christopher Nolan, the filmmaker who imposed his vision on Hollywood

A popular legend in film history claims that Akira Kurosawa was the first to point a camera at the sun.

“At the time Rashomon

was made

, that was one of the taboos of cinematography,” the Japanese director wrote in

Autobiography

.

The filmmaker proved that many were wrong, that capturing the great incandescent star would not burn the film.

Kurosawa admits that the appearance of the sun was necessary in one of the most classic film reflections on the chiaroscuros of the human condition.

Decades later, Christopher Nolan has used another taboo, the atomic bomb, to dazzle audiences around the world.

The filmmaker is close to winning his first Oscar thanks to

Oppenheimer

, a film that has a box office of around $1 billion (915 million euros) while wowing critics.

The award can adorn the career of Nolan, 53, a figure whose merits include having made the industry adapt to his vision in a city where it is common for studies to shape authors.

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Christopher Nolan, the time lord

“Very few have earned that right,” says artist Tacita Dean by phone from Berlin.

“If Chris wins the Oscar for that film, he will be able to empower many young directors who want to shoot with photochemical film.

He has been a pioneer in that,” says Dean, an activist who defends celluloid against the digital format and who has won several awards for her portraits of other artists such as Cy Twombly, the choreographer Merce Cunningham or David Hockney, whom she introduced to Nolan. .

Dean believes that

Oppenheimer

has convinced studios to release more films in 70 millimeters, a negative 8.3 times larger than 35 millimeters, which requires an IMAX projector and a 1.43:1 ratio (the most common on screen widescreen is 1.85:1).

Christopher Nolan, with the directors' union award, alongside Cillian Murphy, on February 10.

MARIO ANZUONI (REUTERS)

Nolan and Dean have been friends since 2014, although their paths crossed before.

Both studied, without having coincided, at University College London, where Nolan met his wife, Emma Thomas, with whom he has four children.

Also in the movement to defend photochemical film, which led them to lead events organized by Kodak in Los Angeles, Bombay and Mexico City last decade.

A quote from Dean stuck in Nolan's head: “The camera sees time, and it's the first machine in history to do so.”

The filmmaker, a great reader of Jorge Luis Borges, has explored the passage of time through the lens, even from his early works.

In his second film,

Memento

, a man with memory problems (Guy Pierce) searches for his wife's murderer.

Nolan set out to tell the story from back to front.

The film became a hit at Sundance, but its structure proved too daring for people in the industry.

The film spent a year without finding a distributor.

When it finally did, it was shown in only 11 theaters the first week.

But Nolan immediately found his audience.

Three weeks later, it went on to screen in 76 theaters.

It reached 531 theaters and grossed $25 million.

Guy Pierce in an image from 'Memento'.

Memento

earned Nolan his first Oscar nomination, in 2002, in the best screenplay category, which he shared with his brother Jonathan.

Nominations followed for

Origin

,

in 2011, and for

Dunkirk

, in 2018. It was that year when he finally won the nomination for his direction.

Emma Thomas, his wife, has been nominated as a producer on the three occasions in which she has aspired to win the best film award.

This Sunday,

Oppenheimer

, the

biopic

of Robert Oppenheimer, the chief scientist of the Manhattan Project, is up for 13 Oscars.

She is the great favorite in the year in which

Barbie

has been another phenomenon.

Many believe that Nolan's triumph in mid-February at the Baftas (he took two out of three), the British Academy Awards, which he had been denied in five nominations since 2011, heralds the end of what his followers call a "curse".

The Pulitzer Prize-winning adaptation of Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's ambitious 600-page biography has a dominant presence at the Academy Awards.

Although it does not appear in visual effects, a category full of films where the big stars are computer generated effects.

Nolan prefers to experiment with small-scale models and with optical printing, an old technique for creating an illusion by filming one negative on top of another.

In

The Nolan Variations

(2020), writer Tom Shone quotes the post-production coordinator for

The Dark Knight Rises

, with which Nolan closed his Batman trilogy.

“He says that he has worked on romantic comedies with more effects than that film, which had only 430 effects shots out of a total of 3,000,” he writes.

Christopher Nolan (third from left) with the cast of 'The Dark Knight Rises'. Matt Sayles (MATT SAYLES/INVISION/AP)

That's also how they made the planets and space rockets in

Interstellar

.

The science fiction film made many compare Nolan to Stanley Kubrick, one of his great influences.

“Your head accepts what you are seeing, you are not thinking beyond that and that makes you continue with the story.

It's what Chris is looking for," Ian Hunt, who won an Oscar for visual effects for that film, starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, said in an interview.

For

Oppenheimer

, Nolan sought to repeat Kurosawa's work, photographing a lethal light force, the nuclear bomb test carried out in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

The person in charge of making it possible was Andrew Jackson, winner of an Oscar for

Tenet

.

After a series of experiments, the visual effects expert came up with a volatile cocktail that mixed aluminum powder and iron oxide.

If this was melted at about 2,000 degrees it created shiny pellets that exploded with a bright light.

The speed was slowed down in post-production to give the impression that they were more powerful.

An enigmatic director

The son of an English father who worked in advertising and an American mother who was a teacher and stewardess, Nolan grew up between London and Chicago.

He carries both cultures in his veins.

He is polite and gives his protagonists telegraphic advice on the set, which he follows with a strict rhythm that goes from seven in the morning to seven in the afternoon with a single break for lunch.

Gary Oldman remembers hearing one of the best and shortest pieces of directing advice on the set of Batman.

“There's more at stake,” he heard Nolan say.

He didn't need more.

The director may also have the courage of the Americans.

Michael Caine remembers that a stranger once showed up at his house because he wanted to give him the role of Bruce Wayne's butler.

The veteran Alfie

star

asked him to leave the script with him to read.

“No... can you read it now?” said that stranger, who was Nolan, who stayed in the room drinking tea until Caine finished

Batman Begins

.

Christopher Nolan with his producer and wife, Emma Thomas, at the Golden Globes on January 7.

MARIO ANZUONI (REUTERS)

In a recent interview with Steven Colbert, Nolan admits that he is still waiting in the same room for the stars he wants to sign to finish reading their scripts.

He prints the scripts in red ink on black paper so they cannot be photocopied.

On filming, the copies of the actors have their names printed in large letters so that if one is lost it can be easily traced to whoever neglected it.

The vast majority of the technical team does not manage the full version, but rather the pages necessary to be able to work.

“Chris goes to many extremes to get things done.

The effect of his work is integrated within a negative.

When you start working with what is inside a camera you must be very precise, and that precision is manifested in the final result,” concludes Tacita Dean.

It remains to be seen if Hollywood finally gives up on Christopher Nolan.

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