Christopher Nolan on his most “unique” movie ending
It isn’t a Christopher Nolan film unless there’s a bananas ending. Whether it’s the time-warped beginning-conclusion on Memento or the downer finale that closes out The Dark Night, Nolan has a penchant for bringing the goods at the end of his films.
“To be honest, it’s hard to single one out because endings are very, very important to me,” Nolan told Insider when asked about his own personal favourite ending in his filmography. “I don’t fully commit to a film unless I know where it’s going and how I’m going to end it.”
This year’s Oppenheimer was no exception: a fateful meeting between the titular figure and legendary theoretical physicist Albert Einstein underscores how Oppenheimer would change the world forever. Nolan wanted it to be clear that “like it or not, we live in his world, and we always will”. But when he was pressed about which ending he feels closest to, Nolan went with another one of his most remembered and controversial: Inception.
“Certainly, from an audience point of view, in terms of sitting with a crowd and experiencing the end of the film, Inception was a very unique type of ending,” Nolan admitted. “If I would sneak into the back of the theatre when it was playing and we would get to the end, there would be a tremendous sort of gasp, groans, frustrations — it was an incredible mixture, and I would feel very much like I need to get out of here before anybody notices I’m there [laughs]. So that was a pretty remarkable ending to sit through with audiences over the years. But to single one out beyond that is like asking which of the films is my favourite, and that’s certainly not something I’m qualified to say.”
Nolan was also asked if he had the ending of Inception fully mapped out from the beginning. “Saying it that extremely is not quite accurate, but certainly, as I’m planning a project, as I’m starting to write, I spend months writing notes and thinking about the thing before I’m really ready to start the business of actually writing the script, and I certainly have always felt with movies it’s very important to know the final destination before you really commit to the project,” he claimed.
“For me as a writer-director, the commitment is really hammering on that first draft of the script and putting all of the months and months of work that has to go into that,” Nolan said. “I can go a certain way down the road, I can have a concept or a certain set of ideas, but until I know where that’s going, I don’t feel that I can fully commit to that project and moving it forward.”
Check out the final scene of Inception below.
