He can be a visionary storyteller — to see that, look no further than “Oppenheimer.”
Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker with a gigantic talent and an even larger mystique. He can be a visionary storyteller — to see that, look no further than “Oppenheimer.” But if you’re a Nolan cultist-believer, the sort of Nolan-is-God devotee who thinks you’re only starting to “get” “The Prestige” when you’ve seen it four times, then his movies, with their spectacular convolutions and plots that loop around themselves, may exist for you in a realm that’s almost beyond story, a kind of rarefied Nolan Land of spellbinding cinematic purity. Me, I’m a Nolan fan who has often found his films to be haunting and hermetic, resplendent and trying at the same time. (Be warned: I think “Inception” makes no sense.) I don’t think Nolan’s films necessarily get better with repeat viewings (though I always go back). I just think you learn more about their minutiae, which would be perfect if they were video games, which is what I sometimes think, deep down, a lot of them want to be. Here’s my ranking of the known Nolan universe.