Denis Villeneuve on his favourite Christopher Nolan movies
Christopher Nolan has mastered the art of the modern blockbuster, pairing box office appeal and enormous cinematic scope with complex themes and non-linear storytelling. For his big-budget epics, Nolan has amassed unparalleled critical and commercial success in equal parts. Accordingly, he has also garnered the admiration of his filmmaking peers.
If there is any other modern director who has looked to combine epic cinema with complex storytelling, it’s Denis Villeneuve. After finding acclaim with intriguing thrillers like Prisoners and Enemy in the early 2010s, Villeneuve widened his scope with the emotional and extra-terrestrial Arrival, a lengthy neo-noir Blade Runner sequel, and an adaptation of Dune.
With striking cinematography contributed by Roger Deakins, his films contain slightly less commercial pull than many of Nolan’s, appealing more to cinephiles than casual cinema-goers. Still, the two directors seem to share an interest in telling big-budget, epic stories in artistic ways.
Praise between the two certainly isn’t one-sided, as Nolan has previously spoken about his admiration for Dune, but Villeneuve, in particular, seems to jump at every opportunity to share his love for Nolan. Druing an interview with IndieWire, he dubbed him “a very impressive filmmaker” for his ability to “keep his identity and create his own universe in that large scope”.
“To bring intellectual concepts and to bring them in that scope to the screen right now – it’s very rare,” he continued, “Every movie that he comes out with, I have more admiration for his work.”
This ever-mounting admiration is demonstrated in Villeneuve’s praise for specific films. The dream-infiltrating 2010 hit Inception was the director’s top Nolan film, according to a list of Villeneuve’s favourites, until the non-linear war thriller Dunkirk arrived in 2017.
Since then, Villeneuve has also openly proclaimed his love for another of Nolan’s time-bending blockbusters, Tenet. Speaking on an episode of the Reelblend podcast, the Canadian director stated that he was “blown away” by the film and considered it to be a masterpiece”.
He said: “I think it’s a movie that’s an incredible cinematic achievement. I think that it’s a very complex movie. I had so much fun, I saw it several times, and each time it was a blast, and I think the level of mastery of Christopher Nolan is unmatched.”
Villeneuve went on to gush about the director’s work and the “eye level of his cinematic mastery”, adding that he always makes an effort to see Nolan’s features on the big screen. He explained: “You can’t watch a Nolan movie at home; that’s like, that makes absolutely no sense… You have to, at first, receive the full impact of a Nolan movie in a theatre.”
Inception, Dunkirk, and Tenet are all worthy picks, each containing that blend of the epic and the intimate, appealing to the masses while retaining cinematic artistry. It’s no surprise that Villeneuve admires them. Still, his favourites are not static – he seems more interested in what Nolan might put to screen next, concluding: “It’s really fascinating to see him evolving from one movie to another and always pushing the envelope, technically, narratively, and always reinventing himself…for me, it’s deeply inspiring to see that master at work.”
