Nolan Breaks Himself: The Odyssey Wins
Christopher Nolan just out-Nolaned Christopher Nolan, and the film he used to do it isn't a Batman movie.
Nolan Breaks Himself: The Odyssey Wins
Christopher Nolan just out-Nolaned Christopher Nolan, and the film he used to do it isn't a Batman movie.
The Odyssey has overtaken The Dark Knight Rises to become Christopher Nolan's highest-grossing directorial credit ever, which means the man spent two decades building one of the most beloved blockbuster trilogies in cinema history only to be surpassed by a mythology epic that nobody was entirely sure audiences would show up for. They showed up. In considerable numbers. The kind that make studio executives send flowers and immediately greenlight whatever Nolan types next on a napkin.
This is worth sitting with, because The Dark Knight Rises was not a small film. It was the conclusion to a trilogy that rewired what people believed superhero cinema could be — morally serious, architecturally composed, Bane's voice genuinely alarming in an IMAX theatre at midnight. For that to be knocked off its own director's personal chart by something entirely different, something rooted in Homer rather than DC Comics, says something specific about where audiences are right now. They are hungry for scale that isn't franchise obligation. They want the epic without the cinematic universe maintenance contract attached.
Meanwhile, in a different kind of breaking news, Brad Pitt has told Esquire that he has started drinking again after seven years of sobriety, framing it as a personal decision made in the context of a life that had changed. There is nothing to mock here and I won't. What is worth noting is that Pitt chose to say it publicly, in a magazine, in his own words — which is a particular kind of control over a narrative that could easily have been broken by someone else first. That's not spin. That's self-possession.
And over at Netflix, Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds are doing everything they can with *Midwinter Break*, a quiet marital drama that the critics agree is hampered by the one thing no amount of extraordinary acting can fix: a screenplay that simply hasn't earned the weight it's trying to carry. Two of the best performers of their generation, doing their best work in service of material that doesn't quite deserve them.
That last one is the real tragedy of the week. Not the box office records. Not the sobriety. Two actors at the peak of their instrument, and the script left them standing in the cold.
