Has a Christopher Nolan movie ever passed the Bechdel Test?
‘Has Christopher Nolan ever met a woman?’, one reviewer asked on the Letterboxd page for Oppenheimer. As another extended epic came out from the director, audiences were once again disappointed by his inability, or refusal, to write a female character with any genuine depth.
Though Nolan’s filmography has made him a legend of cinema, now considered a modern master, it has not, in any shape or form, made him a feminist favourite.
From his debut film, Following, to his most recent award-season success, Christopher Nolan has often been criticised for failing to give women substantial or deeply developed roles. Instead, his films tend to focus heavily on male characters… Since he largely works within genres like crime, war and thrillers, which are traditionally male-dominated, that imbalance becomes even more noticeable – in Dunkirk, for example, the setting and subject matter leave little room for female characters, resulting in a main cast made up almost entirely of men.
But even in the projects where women do appear, there is often criticism that little real space is made for them, and that they rarely have major storylines of their own – in Memento, women are largely reduced to roles like dead wives or femme-fatale bartenders, existing mainly in relation to the male characters.
In Oppenheimer, meanwhile, the two most prominent female performances, from Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt, are both centred around romantic relationships with the title character… Critics of the film repeatedly argued that the nudity felt unnecessary and that the characters of Kitty and Jean were never given enough depth or importance within the wider story.
Across his now 27-year-long career, Nolan has yet to have a female protagonist. Overwhelmingly, in his projects. If you’re looking for a female character with any sort of personality, any personal motivation or goal, any spark beyond the men around her, you won’t find them in a Nolan feature. So with all of that in mind, how about the Bechdel Test?
Do any Christopher Nolan movies pass the Bechdel Test?
For those who don’t know, the Bechdel Test acts like a sort of filter in pop culture to determine whether the representation of women in works of fiction is multi-dimensional and progressive enough by checking if it has at least two women discussing something other than a man… Named after cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who featured it in a comic strip, it has become the go-to method of mainstream audiences for verifying whether female characters are well-written or not.
Obviously, the Bechdel Test is not the be-all and end-all of film analysis, and in no way is a accurate or really adequate way of measuring the inclusivity of a film, but as the test measures whether any two female characters talk to each other about something other than a man, it goes some way to consider how in-depth a character is. Overwhelmingly, Nolan’s movies fail, except Interstellar.
However, this is a pass so slim it feels like it shouldn’t count. At one point, Ellen Burstyn’s character, Murph, talks to Lois, played by Leah Cairns, about work. In the most simplified version of the roles, that means it passes.
But the moment that brief conversation is over, they’re then talking about Lois’ son’s cough, relegating them back to stereotypical womanly discussions of boys and men. Also, the whole time they’re talking, Casey Affleck’s Tom Cooper is right there, meaning that there’s never even a point where the two female characters are on screen alone together without a man.
So really, it still looks like, unless Nolan dramatically shifts focus and writing styles, we’re a way off seeing a feminist classic from the man.
