The Heresies of Mr Nolan, or
Why Mr Nolan is Not the Greatest Mind of Our Age
The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.
Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
J. R. R. Tolkien expressed, in a BBC interview, something not very dissimilar to this, when he stated that all human stories come down to this very disquieting presence that lurks about us, as the lion of Psalm 10 lying secretly in wait: death. It is not this that I propose to talk about, but it must be asked: is Christopher Nolan concerned with this problem, the problem from which so many others arise, and without which no meaningful artistic expression can be achieved? As an artist, he does not seem to be. And I repeat: as an artist. Because, for all his technical abilities and ‘visual grandeur,’ his artistic vision is fragmented, and intellect and emotion rarely merge in his films. Besides, he is to blame for a certain hatred of colour, something which seems connected with a strange type of scepticism and a (pseudo-?)scientific understanding of reality – yes, we must not forget that Mr Nolan now (thinks he) believes that science is the truth. Yet his popularity does not cease to grow (to which the widespread approval of a new cinematic failure, The Odyssey, testifies), and his influence on modern cinema gives us cause for worrying.
One need not look too far to see the bleakness and expansion of this influence, particularly since the 2010s. Visually, it is extremely easy to find. For example, the recent teaser for the new Harry Potter series, produced by HBO, shows us a depressingly desaturated palette. But one could mention countless other examples, from other instances of the fantastic and speculative genres like Game of Thrones and The Amazing Spider-Man (whose move away from Raimi’s vivid and vibrant colours is a perfect image of this bleak transition), to films as varied as 1917, Gone Girl, Prometheus (the fifth installment of the Alien series), The Bikeriders, A Quiet Place, Get Out, the 2026 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Villeneuve’s Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, etc.[1] We should be here forever if this list went on. And if it appears to be a rather random assortment of films, that is because it is – for one need only open any of his or her popular streaming platforms, or look among more recent DVDs and put them on, to see how widely this visual canker has spread. (Which is truly a pity, because some of the films mentioned above are otherwise quite good.) Of course, to know to what extent Christopher Nolan is to blame for it is hard to measure.
Therefore, one may elaborate at great length on the reasons why twenty-first-century mainstream cinema is so marked by an absence of colour and/or vividness; however, I wish to focus especially on a few aspects, all of which go beyond that. It seems to me that Nolan’s unambitious palettes have to do with, as I have said, the wish to convey his own scepticism (which is not the topic of this essay) and his scientific, materialistic, and rationalistic understanding of the world. He adores concepts – which define his work – but he cannot push them to their boundaries so as to fuse them with the work that presents them. Time (and space), memory, perception, space travel, illusion, violence, persecution, the mind… All these fascinate him, but his approach usually oscillates between a scientific understanding and some kind of ‘anthropological study’ which finds itself unable to move into the realm of art. One could perhaps think of other labels, and be more precise in this regard, but my intention is not to discuss the ideas present in Nolan’s filmography (there has been some very interesting work done on that): my point is that the ideas themselves are not fused with the films, are not woven enough into the images. They remain always on the surface. When and where Nolan’s movies are art, it is not because of the ‘complex’ themes they coldly give us – it is in spite of them, or at least certainly not because of them. A great poet – and here I mean not someone who writes verse but someone who lives with a certain ‘awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality’ (Tarkovsky 21). This is a way of understanding life and of relating to it which an artist must possess, for he or she must find ‘poetic links’ and associations and live within ‘the logic of poetry’ (18).
T. S. Eliot’s notions of unification and dissociation of sensibility can be useful here if applied in a certain way. Eliot believed that in a great work of art thought and feeling must not be separated, that they must appear together. He famously said that ‘[a] thought to Donne was an experience; it modified his sensibility’ (380). For a poet apprehends experience differently:
When a poet’s mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience; the ordinary man’s experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. The latter falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes. (380)
Tarkovsky also knew this, having said that an artistic image must be ‘indivisible’ (40). The forming of this whole, then, is not an empirical process, it is beyond intellectual cognition, and thus ‘the inspiration of the scientist has nothing in common with that of the poet’ (40). Nolan does not understand this. He may have read widely and deeply on time, perception, and memory – or at least one gets that idea from watching, for instance, Inception, a very clever film – but whether he did or not is absolutely irrelevant where art is concerned, because the psychological complexity of the film is not woven into its artistic fabric; it feels more like a puzzle to be solved, a problem that has nothing to say about what it means to be human or what human existence consists in. That is why it does not matter that the movie ends ambiguously. Whether we believe Cobb is awake or not, whatever theories we form, whatever way we look at the spinning top, it does little for us emotionally, and does not bring us into deeper contact with ourselves. The questions it raises are material and – to use a word popular in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England – ‘sublunary’ questions. And art must act ‘above all on the soul, shaping its spiritual structure’ (Tarkovsky 41). ‘And if cold, positivistic, scientific cognition of the world is like the ascent of an unending staircase, its artistic counterpoint suggests an endless system of spheres, each one perfect and contained within itself’ (39). Nolan knows science is like ‘an unending staircase,’ as he has said that it constantly seeks to disprove itself. Yet this thought, evidently, is completely irrelevant to the essence of art, which concerns itself with eternal questions. As Scruton writes, ‘it is implausible to suggest that there is a tendency in literature [and therefore in the other arts as well] to progress – since there is nothing towards which it is progressing’ (8) – or, as Eliot puts it, ‘each venture / Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate’ (‘East Coker’, V 7-8).
Art must be concerned with wholeness, both in its separate artistic images and in the harmony of the complete, finished work. Tarkovsky argues that in a finished, beautiful work it should be ‘impossible to single out or prefer any one element, either of content or of form, without detriment to the whole. For in a masterpiece no component can take precedence; you cannot . . . formulate for him [the artist] his ultimate aims and objectives’ (47). The Russian filmmaker then quotes Ovid: ‘Art consists of its not being noticeable’ (47). This is not to say that there cannot be profound intellectual thought in it, but the fact that that will never be the heart of any great work reveals something important about the nature of art, which must not only deal with emotion, but spring from it. Eliot exemplifies this in ‘Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca’ by contrasting Shakespeare and Dante, claiming that the fact that Dante had the luck to have Aquinas’s coherent thought behind his Divine Comedy does not mean he is a greater poet than Shakespeare, who had the misfortune of living in a time of intellectual and philosophical chaos (252-253). ‘[T]he essential is that each expresses, in perfect language, some permanent human impulse’ (253; emphasis added). And both Dante and Shakespeare are, in respect to this, equally strong – for we must not forget that ‘[w]hat every poet starts from is his own emotions’ (253), not concepts and ideas.[2] That is, a true artist never looks for his subject – ‘it grows within him like a fruit, and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth… The poet has nothing to be proud of: he is not master of the situation, but a servant’ (Tarkovsky 43). ‘Creative work is his only form of existence’ (43). This faintly echoes Ernst’s idea, who thought of himself as a spectator watching the birth of his paintings, ‘[e]ven as the role of the poet . . . consists in writing according to the dictates of that which articulates itself in him’ (8). One could relate these observations to Kandinsky’s exploration of the ‘inner need’ of the artist in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, and Tolkien himself expressed a not very different sentiment in a letter to Milton Waldman: ‘always I had the sense of recording what was already “there,” somewhere: not of “inventing”’ (Letters 204). Or, to put it more briefly, we could say with Picasso that the artist does not seek: he finds (Pedrosa 305).
All these artists belonged to different traditions, but they were all extremely concerned with conveying something authentically, thus trusting in the intuitive role of the artist in finding what it is that he is going to say, rather than consciously or intellectually searching for it. And that is precisely where Nolan frequently fails. Clearly, too, it seems to me that his problem is connected with characterisation. His films are too plot-driven, and the characters that people them are (with a few – and partial – exceptions, e.g. Joker, Oppenheimer) not sufficiently fleshed out – and when they appear to have some depth, that is usually only to fill some part of the narrative, some gap that cannot stay empty if the story is to move forward. ‘That sort of fussily correct way of linking events,’ Tarkovsky argues, ‘usually involves arbitrarily forcing them into sequence in obedience to some abstract notion of order,’ and even if the story is ‘governed by the characters, one finds that the links which hold it together rest on a facile interpretation of life’s complexities’ (20). As a filmmaker, too, Tarkovsky is obviously an excellent example of this.[3] His characters serve a higher purpose, and the artistic images chosen work in harmony and in productive tension with their motives.
To take an example, I invite the reader to look at Ivan’s dream in Ivan’s Childhood, which starts at 1:05:01. (For which those who have not seen the movie should bear in mind – and I am putting it rather simplistically – that the war’s horrors have caused the loss of Ivan’s innocence, and the death of his sister.) It is stormy, something not consonant with the children’s nearly ecstatic happiness (the blinding whiteness of the background forest accentuates this tension between their inner world of joy and the threateningly ominous external world), the rain is pouring down, and Ivan and his sister are riding on the back of a lorry full of apples. Ivan delightfully picks one, and offers it to his sister, which we see in a close-up where the camera rolls slowly towards the right side, which she occupies. She smiles, but her smile looks confused, and she does not accept the fruit, though she looks shyly at the abundance of apples that surrounds them. Unlike him, we never see her eating anything, and she, unlike him, dies. A range of associations and references could be mentioned, and many viewers are probably reminded especially of Adam and Eve. This is blended with the traditional association of appealing bright apples with poison and danger. Yet Ivan eats and lives, while she does not and dies – meaning innocence and purity are not for this (modern?) world? Many questions could arise – but what I would like the reader to understand is that these questions are not separated from the emotional fabric of the scene, which is there to generate an individual response from each viewer, beyond intellectual understanding. That is why my description and partial attempt at an explanation was so unsatisfactory. I believe it is valid, of course, to explore such dimensions in a work of criticism, but the work of art must always remain at the centre of one’s attention and analysis.
Meaningful individual responses, in fact, are the reason why ekphrasis is such a fascinating device, and why Avelar’s book, Poesia e Artes Visuais, remains one of the critical texts I return to the most. Many works of art, as well as details and scenes from them, have been profoundly personal responses to other works (not necessarily visual) that preceded them (as well as imaginary ones). One may be reminded of Myshkin’s reaction to Hans Holbein’s Christ, or Auden’s ‘The Shield of Achilles’ (and of course the Iliad episode itself), Keats’s ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ Don McLean’s ‘Vincent,’ Dorian’s portrait in Wilde’s Dorian Gray, Quasimodo’s relationship with the cathedral in Notre-Dame de Paris, Jorge de Sena’s Metamorfoses, and many others. In all of these examples, the work contemplated is absorbed by the speaker or character, arousing in him or her a personal meditation, it being therefore an extremely important possibility for strong characterisation. And although one may not be able to transform his or her reaction to a painting, book, poem, movie, etc., into another work of art, it is clear that the goal of true art is also, then, to move something inside ourselves as viewers, readers, listeners, etc., to make us confront death and our own selves, to provoke catharsis through aesthetic order, and thus lead us to reorder our souls (which may seem a paradox). But this can only happen if we trust the artist, if we engage with the work of art in a spirit of openness (cf. Tarkovsky 42), which is why, for instance, the relaxed or purely intellectual viewing of a film cannot bring us into meaningful contact with it. ‘Part of the magic of going to a movie is surrendering to it, letting it dominate you’ (Wallace 169). For this openness, one must have what Tarkovsky calls ‘a particular spiritual potentiality’ (42) – for after all all art is spiritual. It is this sensibility, both in the artist and in the viewer (both of whom must enter into a certain communion through the work), which will allow one to perceive the deeper truth of reality, without his or her being ‘[d]istracted from distraction by distraction,’ as Eliot put it (‘Burnt Norton,’ III 12).
Christopher Nolan fails to impress in the viewer a sense of that reality. In his art, he almost always remains – even when the characters of Inception are (literally) getting in other people’s dreams – in what David Lynch called ‘the marketplace,’ that is, the events of daily life and our normal activities and occupations, which is like being in a dream, not to have a hold of truth. Behind this ‘marketplace,’ Lynch believed there was a deeper reality, the real reality, saying that ‘Reality is a universal cosmic consciousness.’[4] Nolan, however, is an advocate of practical naturalism, or whatever else one may wish to call it. Yet
You can play a scene with documentary precision, dress the characters correctly to the point of naturalism, have all the details exactly like real life, and the picture that emerges in consequence will still be nowhere near reality, it will seem utterly artificial, that is, not faithful to life, even though artificiality was precisely what the author was trying to avoid. (Tarkovsky 21)
For ‘[a]n artist may achieve an outward illusion, a life-like effect, but that is not at all the same as examining life beneath the surface’ (21). One may retort, ‘But Nolan is interested in the dream logic behind Tarkovsky’s Mirror, for instance. Is that not going beneath the surface?’ No! That is exactly the problem. Literally, it is going beneath the surface, especially if one is concerned with the field of psychology – but when it comes down to what actually matters – to what permanently matters, I should say – to the deep sources of the human soul, then it does not seem to be enough. Nolan enjoys giving us very intelligent mind tricks (among other things), to keep us occupied and curious while we are watching his films, but he cannot fuse those tricks with the artistic core that constitutes the film’s visual essence, nor can he meaningfully relate them to the characters as real human beings. In fewer words, he cannot translate it all into the expression of spiritual longing. And what does not express spiritual longing is not true art, though there may be moments of it (in his case, they often seem unintentional). Needless to say – if I am allowed to generalise – the effects of this in a spiritually impotent age are and have been catastrophic. Nolan seems to believe art has a practical, material aim. But art, described by Tarkovsky as a ‘metalanguage’ (40), has, unlike science, nothing to do with that – rather, it wants to realise ‘the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism’ (40). It is a very Tarkovskian idea – and he did express it – that art is like prayer. Yes, all true art is very much like prayer. And the imagination of an artist must move within the images that move him, in which he must believe, which he must blend and water ceaselessly. That is part of the artist’s vocation.
I cannot be convinced that Nolan can truly apprehend this idea, though – perhaps because it is also much more than an idea, since it requires of you to absorb it into your own being. Furthermore, it involves transcendence, not science, and not simply intellect, not simply thought. There must be an ‘organic link between idea [i.e. thought] and form. Indeed, any imbalance between form and concept will preclude the creation of an artistic image, for the work will remain outside the realm of art’ (Tarkovsky 26). So, I hope to have made clear that concepts and thought are not a problem in art – the issue is when they are not fused with the artistic core of the work that presents them, thus preventing unity and causing a fragmentation that is not akin to what constitutes genuine art. In Nolan’s case, it has often led him to a peculiar deconstructionism, to a dissection of reality that is artistically unproductive and has proved to be harmful to mainstream cinema. ‘He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom’ (Tolkien, Fellowship of the Ring 259). However, this is just a brief note, since Nolan’s deconstructionism is not my topic.
Therefore, the concepts are not the problem of Nolan’s films – the problem is the approach, and the fact that the films themselves rise out of the concepts. Take a look at not only Tarkovsky but Bergman, Lynch, Kubrick – to mention only very few of the great cinematic minds of the last century. For example, would it not be a glaringly obvious mistake to view – in terms of time, memory, dreams – Inception alongside Mirror (1975) and Lost Highway (1997)? Or – within the science fiction genre – Interstellar alongside Solaris (1972) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)? Kubrick is an excellent example, I should say, because like Nolan he is praised for his technical precision, a meticulous attention to detail, and science also fascinated him. But Kubrick’s 2001 is not only a moving symphony, it is not only a space waltz, not only an adventure, not only a sequence of astonishingly beautiful images, not only an ontological investigation of human existence: it is all these combined, and by virtue of that it is much more. It is understood emotionally. Interstellar, on the other hand, requires constant explanation, whether through its narratively picked images or through dialogue. This does not allow in the viewer a sense of full immersion in the film, and by immersion I mean the profound confrontation with otherness, death and oneself that characterises art – a sort of revelation. Almost all moments in Interstellar are overly controlled, including the supposedly emotional ones, where music acts as a stimulant where otherwise there would be no connection between film and viewer. Control in art has to be sober and subtle – ‘thus “triumph” over a work of art (in other words a one-sided explanation of its thought and aim) becomes impossible’ (Tarkovsky 47). And then there is Tenet, that embarrasingly atrocious abomination. I cannot put it better than Srivastava, who, amusingly remarking that the movie ‘feels like Nolan showing off,’ observes that it is a ‘confusing, emotionless exercise in overcomplication,’ noting its ‘lack of human connection’ (‘Paradox of Christopher Nolan’). I would add that it is, aesthetically speaking, Nolan’s worst movie, and nowhere in his filmography is there such a case of dissociation of sensibility (to use Eliot’s term) as in that one. Or, to continue with my comparisons, what a silly thing it would be to place The Prestige alongside Bergman’s (Kierkegaardian) The Magician, where illusion is not something to be rationally explored (and much less explained), not something separate from the emotional core of the film, but functions as a tool with the help of which the tension between reason and what is beyond reason is presented, a productive clash that appeals to any viewer who has acknowledged (or perhaps not) his or her own irrational longing for something beyond him or herself, something not of this world only.
I hope the reader is able to continue this kind of comparison, as long as it remains productive, and that he or she can, based on the above considerations, realise in a more conscious manner and more exactly what Nolan’s shortcomings consist in. Of course, Nolan has had his moments, and several of his movies are good entertainment, including a few of the ones already mentioned. But that does not justify the claims that he is ‘the greatest filmmaker of our time; he’s just the most overhyped one’ (Srivastava). I mostly disagree with Srivastava, however, regarding Oppenheimer. Alongside Joker in The Dark Knight, it seems to me that it is his most accomplished achievement. It is flawed, of course, because Nolan is not a poet (in the sense mentioned above), but somehow in Oppenheimer he created something very different from the rest of his oeuvre. Unlike Srivastava, I would say that the film benefits greatly from its non-linear storytelling, and the ‘mess,’ the disconnectedness Srivastava complains of, is, I would argue, where Nolan has most approached an authentic mode of expression. He owes it, of course, to his admiration for Malick, Lynch, and Tarkovsky, none of whom he seems to be able to fully appreciate or understand. (Cillian Murphy’s fine performance must not be overlooked either.) Srivastava also seems to believe the Trinity test scene feels anticlimactic. I would say that is why it is a good moment. It enhances Oppenheimer’s subjective experience, as does the fact that we do not see the actual aftermath of the bomb, except in his imagination. This is not brilliant, but it is the closest Nolan has come to producing something genuine. Yet it may not be genuinely his, and I daresay it is not – at least, there is still a certain coldness that cannot be overcome. Here, a good comparison would be with Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, a film that is often criticised for being unpleasantly cold and lacking emotion. But emotion does not always have to be made of fierce tears [cf. Matthew McConaughey’s ineffective emotional moments in Interstellar] or the much-applauded Hollywood scenes of a character losing his mind. I cannot watch Barry Lyndon except as a humbled human being receiving a powerful revelation, and Barry’s restrained tears in the scene where he and his wife are sitting by their dying child’s bedside is one of the most emotionally powerful scenes in the history of cinema. That short moment is the beginning of the film’s climax, and Kubrick himself has, in my opinion, only rarely surpassed its excellence. But, to repeat myself, to be able to engage with these apparently cold moments, the viewer must open himself, must submit to the movie, must approach it in the spirit of love. Art prepares us also for this: it shows us how it feels to forget ourselves, to experience life in that same loving spirit. It certainly cannot turn us into good people, but it may – in its endless ways – allow us to get on the path that will lead us there.
That is not, of course, one of Nolan’s aims. As Srivastava notes, ‘his biggest flaw is his arrogance.’ His sceptically dogmatic mindset has, too, kept him in a profound ignorance of the power of myth, religion, theology (and the real power of the branches that have grown out of it: philosophy, science, etc.), and the actual role of the arts in our civilisation. Because he cannot transcend the temporal and the material (not in his work, at least), and though he, in a very deterministic way, is obsessed with causality, he cannot look for cause outside our rational modes of apprehension – for the deep fountains beyond the material. Although he may seem to, he does not follow in the footsteps of the great masters of this very recent art: cinema. But fortunately there are others to whom the torch has been passed, who desire to follow that great tradition. Malick, for instance, has produced one of the masterpieces of this century, a two-hour prayer titled The Tree of Life. Eggers, too, deals in universals (appearing to understand deeply the power of myth which Nolan thought he was superior to in his new abomination),[5] while never abandoning the quest for authenticity or forgetting the role of strong characterisation. Others could be mentioned. The point is, these (true) artists (i.e. poets) must be allowed to keep growing, to water their vision – because we need them more than we realise.
Think of great poets: Shakespeare, Dante, Tarkovsky, Eliot, Dostoyevsky, Kubrick, Lynch, Pessoa, Melville, Bach, Joyce, Blake, van Gogh, Leonardo, Beethoven, Bergman, Kurosawa, Homer, Ovid, F. F. Coppola, Pasolini, Donne, Chaucer, Tolkien, Buñuel, Bresson, C. T. Dreyer, Wagner, Augustine, Tolstoy, Woolf, Proust, Pasternak, Steinbeck, Miyazaki, Yeats, Kieślowski, Twain, Whitman, Ibsen, Thomas Mann, Cervantes, Camões, Kierkegaard, Orson Welles, Michael Powell – and countless (countless!) others. Would you really dare place Nolan’s name among these, or among other such figures? Christopher Nolan may be many good things, but he does not have the mind of a poet, of a visionary – of a genuine artist.
Bibliography
Avelar, Mário. Poesia e Artes Visuais: Confessionalismo e Écfrase. Imprensa Nacional, 2018.
Ernst, Max. Beyond Painting. Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc., 1948.
Holy Bible. Authorised King James Version, William Collins, 1991.
Ivan’s Childhood. Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, Mosfilm, 1962. YouTube, uploaded by Mosfilm, 4 Mar. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lnb1bI0VIk&rco=1.
Kandinsky, Wassily. Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Project Gutenberg, 2011.
Pedrosa, Mário. Primary Documents. Museum of Modern Art, 2015.
Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy. Routledge, 1995.
Srivastava, Yashraj. ‘The Paradox of Christopher Nolan: Brilliance Lost in Confusion.’ Medium, 29 Mar. 2025, https://medium.com/@yash_rajjwrites/the-paradix-of-christopher-nolan-brilliance-lost-in-confusion-05771b614665.
Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time. University of Texas Press, 2021.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2020.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. HarperCollinsPublishers, 2025.
Wallace, David Foster. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. Abacus Books, 1998.
- The reason I draw the reader’s attention to Villeneuve’s name is that he seems to be one of today’s most commercially successful directors to have repeatedly borrowed from Nolan. In fact, one wonders whether, or to what extent, Nolan’s vision may have played a part in Villeneuve’s Hollywood period, which began in 2013, before which he had been associated with French-Canadian arthouse cinema. Prior to 2013, Nolan had already directed Following, Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, and The Dark Knight Rises. In 2013, he produced Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, another visually drab movie. ↑
- Cf. Tarkovsky: ‘if an author is moved by the landscape chosen, if it brings back memories to him and suggests associations, even subjective ones, then this will in turn affect the audience with particular excitement’ (28). ↑
- About Tarkovsky’s particular mode of characterisation: I firmly believe he is, in fact, the greatest heir of Dostoyevsky in the twentieth century. He learned more from the nineteenth-century author than one may realise, and acknowledged it: ‘In a non-developing, constant state of tension, passions reach the highest possible pitch, and manifest themselves more vividly and convincingly than in a gradual process of change. It is this predilection of mine that makes me so fond of Dostoievsky. For me the most interesting characters are outwardly static, but inwardly charged with energy by an overriding passion’ (17). ↑
- I owe my knowledge of the Lynchian term ‘marketplace’ to film critic Martha P. Nochimson, whom I listened to on 26 May 2026, in a lecture at the University of Lisbon. It was also she who quoted Lynch as having said to her that ‘reality is a universal cosmic consciousness.’ ↑
- Eggers has said that ‘I’m envious of medieval craftsmen who are doing the work for God. And that becomes a way to… you get to be creative to celebrate something else. And also, you’re censoring yourself because it’s not about . . . me, me, me, me, me, me. So you say, “Oh, I got to rein that back because that’s not what this altar piece needs to be.” Any worldview where everything around them is full of meaning is exciting to me, because we live in such a tiresome, lame, commercial culture now.’
Tarkovsky has expressed a similar sentiment: ‘Modern art has taken a wrong turn in abandoning the search for the meaning of existence in order to affirm the value of the individual for its own sake. What purports to be art begins to look like an eccentric occupation for suspect characters who maintain that any personalised action is of intrinsic value simply as a display of self-will. But in artistic creation the personality does not assert itself, it serves another, higher and communal idea. The artist is always a servant . . .’ (38). ↑
