‘You’re trying to challenge yourself’ … Christopher Nolan in New York. Photograph: Erik Tanner/New York Times/Redux/eyevine The Odyssey ‘At times I felt I’d bitten off more than I could chew’: Christopher Nolan on sweeping the Oscars, making The Odyssey – and getting a puppy How do you follow Oppenheimer? By spending £250m bringing Homer’s epic poem to the big screen in Imax. Today’s most powerful director talks big swings, trauma-bonding and the healing powers of chocolate labrador Charlie
“I’m in that moment of sheer terror,” says Christopher Nolan , sitting in a suite at the Corinthia hotel in London, in a slightly rumpled suit, next to a pot of tea. Outside, crowds jostle, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the stars within – Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o. It is the day before the world premiere of Nolan’s latest film, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, and the last day of waiting before audiences decide whether the biggest gamble of Nolan’s career has paid off. The film, which reportedly cost $250m (£185m), doesn’t just need an audience to show up. It needs the entire moviegoing world to do so.
“It never gets any easier, because I make films for audiences and the audience tells me what it likes,” he says. “They finish the film. I don’t have anything to hide behind. I can’t just be like: ‘Oh, people don’t get it.’ Those aren’t the films I make. What does the audience make of it? Do they turn up? Do they like it if they do turn up?
“By the way, I don’t think I’d be doing my job right if I wasn’t petrified every time I put a film out, because you’re trying to challenge yourself, you’re trying to take risks.”
He doesn’t seem terrified. He seems about as relaxed and happy as I’ve seen him in 20 years. I’ve interviewed Nolan many times, and he is a famously cautious, if unfailingly amiable, interviewee, who has perfected the art of talking about his films while revealing next to nothing about himself – “the most accessible reclusive director in America” is how he once described himself to me. Interviewing him can at times feel like attempting to debrief John le Carré’s master spy George Smiley.
But whatever the reason – the seven Oscars for Oppenheimer , the happy exhaustion of having finally finished The Odyssey, shot over a period of six months in as many countries – something seems to have thawed in Nolan. Maybe it’s the new dog, a chocolate lab named Charlie “who can hear the fridge open from a mile away”, acquired by Nolan and his wife, Emma Thomas, after the last of their four children left home.
“They’re all off in the world,” he says. “We’ve got a dog and then I decided to make The Odyssey because it’s the ultimate dog movie. I never had a dog as a kid, and we never got a dog when the kids were younger because we travelled too much. They’re a bit fed up that we got one as soon as they left, although they love the dog. And then coming to the Odyssey, I’m not being glib, but it really is a very important part of that story.” When Odysseus finally makes it home to Ithaca, after 20 years, he is instantly recognised by his old hunting dog Argos, who is glimpsed in Nolan’s trailer as a puppy. “A little taste of young Argos was a fun thing to have and I was pleased they did that,” he says.
View image in fullscreen Cillian Murphy and Christopher Nolan on the se…