Christopher Nolan names the genre he doesn’t “really get”
Just like the very best musicians, who change, adapt and transform throughout their careers, the very best filmmakers will do something very similar, working in different genres where they exhibit different tones and themes. For proof of this, just look at Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola, who have each made horror flicks and emotional dramas, but while Christopher Nolan is known as one of the best modern directors, he is yet to branch out into too many different genres.
A 21st-century filmmaker, Nolan broke into the industry in 1998 with the independent psychological drama Following, mere years before he would elevate his game with the complex crime flick Memento with Guy Pearce in 2000. Ever since, he’s rarely deviated from this same genre of crime drama, with even his Dark Knight superhero movies being light on fantasy and heavy on realism.
Elsewhere, he’s frequented science fiction, helming Inception in 2010, Interstellar in 2014 and Tenet in 2020, and even entered the biopic game in 2023 with Oppenheimer, yet, every film tends to share the same feel and tone. This is no bad thing, however, with Nolan showing time and time again that he’s a formidable filmmaker and, indeed, his refusal to work outside his comfort zone is no different to the likes of other successful filmmakers Wes Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen.
Yet, while Nolan is a considerable fan of all types of cinema, there is one genre he has admitted that he doesn’t “really get”, confessing that he has little love for the humble movie musical.
“I don’t really get musicals,” he told Scott Holleran, “I always used to say that I would do anything except musicals. Having said which, now that I have kids, I’m re-appraising that. There are a lot of films that [I saw] as a kid that I didn’t really remember as musicals. Like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I completely forgot that it was a musical. I watched it again a few weeks ago and I saw it in a different way. I think as a kid you just accept the groundwork of the film you’re seeing, you’re not judging it as a genre, and you’re much more open”.
Indeed, Nolan’s list of the ten greatest movies of all time includes no such musicals, with the closest to the genre on his list being Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire, with both movies containing iconic soundtracks.
Take a look at the trailer for Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, seemingly the only musical that Nolan can bear, below.
