Christo­pher Nolan: ​‘I’ve not fought in a war, it’s my worst night­mare to do so’

Christo­pher Nolan is cinema’s bil­lion dol­lar brain. For his mono­lith­ic brand of emo­tion­al­ly-dri­ven block­buster, the sky isn’t the lim­it – it’s the start­ing point. With his tenth film, he heads to the weath­er-beat­en beach­es of north­ern France to restage the 1940 mil­i­tary evac­u­a­tion of Dunkirk. We spoke to the direc­tor in Bur­bank, CA about the art of the movie epic and what makes his immac­u­late­ly engi­neered clock tick.

LWLies: Dunkirk is your first film about a real event. In the cre­ation process, did you ever feel behold­en to doc­u­ment­ed reality?

Nolan: It was very dif­fer­ent for me to be deal­ing with doc­u­ment­ed real­i­ty. The clos­est I’ve ever come to it in the past was prob­a­bly Inter­stel­lar, as the jump­ing off point for a lot of what we did in the film was estab­lished sci­ence. But this was an entire­ly new thing in that we were look­ing at real-life expe­ri­ences and real events. And these events were described from a lot of dif­fer­ent points of view. For me, the process of writ­ing the script was very much one of read­ing, re-read­ing and absorb­ing a lot of the his­to­ry and a lot of eye wit­ness accounts. I just want­ed to get a good ground­ing of the over­all event – the shape of the evac­u­a­tion. Also, I want­ed to know how it looked and how it felt. And this was all done before I start­ed to get my sto­ry into place.

Were books the cen­tral pil­lar of your research?

One of my first points of inspi­ra­tion was read­ing the pri­ma­ry source accounts. There is some­thing about lis­ten­ing to someone’s words as they’re describ­ing what they saw – it has a real imme­di­a­cy to it. When you look at news­reel footage, you’re inter­pos­ing a cam­era between the audi­ence and the sub­ject. The essence of the expe­ri­ence is dilut­ed. There’s some­thing very direct about words on a page. The archival footage was main­ly used to flesh those accounts out.

In the accounts you read, did you find peo­ple describ­ing their feelings?

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent voic­es. It’s a very well doc­u­ment­ed event and you do find a bit of every­thing in there. The thing that you’re con­stant­ly remind­ed of is that you’re deal­ing with almost 400,000 peo­ple, which is the pop­u­la­tion of a small city. You find all sorts of con­trast­ing feel­ings about what’s going on, and all sorts of dif­fer­ent obser­va­tions too. You find peo­ple who speak about the great order and effi­cien­cy. You find peo­ple who talk about absolute chaos. Hav­ing gone and walked on and then filmed on those beach­es, you realise that the beach itself is miles and miles long. It’s mas­sive­ly wide. It’s not one loca­tion, which was some­thing that was key to point out to my crew in the plan­ning stages.

How do you cap­ture that vast set­ting in the script?

On the page, you tend to write a moment as an event that takes place ​‘on the beach’, but it’s not one beach – it’s this mas­sive expanse of sand. There are all sorts of localised events occur­ring at the same time. There’s a myr­i­ad of impres­sions and sto­ries, and I’ve got to try and be inspired by that myr­i­ad nature. I want the film to give peo­ple an insight into the evac­u­a­tion, but also feel what it was like to be part of it. I want them to be there. But, at the same time, I want there to be a con­stant reminder that there’s a guy in the cor­ner of the frame who has his own sto­ry that we’re not get­ting to hear.

You told mem­bers of the crew to watch Ter­rence Malick’s The Thin Red Line before mak­ing this movie. Did you feel that this was a more impres­sion­is­tic mode of film­mak­ing than you’re used to?

To be per­fect­ly hon­est, it’s not the case. I’m a huge fan of the film. And yes, we screened a print of it for the crew. There’s a time­less qual­i­ty to the film that we want­ed to aim for. But beyond that… The Thin Red Line is a very poet­ic film, and that’s one of the things I love about it. And yes, it’s impres­sion­is­tic to the point of skirt­ing the abstract. Yet we wound up going a very dif­fer­ent direc­tion with this film.

How so?

This is actu­al­ly a very ground­ed, con­crete film about phys­i­cal process­es. It’s what I call a ​‘present tense nar­ra­tive’. It throws you into the moment. It gives you very lit­tle extra­ne­ous infor­ma­tion. It engages you in phys­i­cal dilem­mas. How do two sol­diers car­ry a stretch­er between a bombed-out gap in the mole, which is this marine struc­ture – like a jet­ty – that the boats were pulling up to? Can you escape from a sink­ing ves­sel? It’s being in the moment. It’s very sus­pense­ful. There’s almost a thriller qual­i­ty to the sense of time and with the ene­my clos­ing in. It’s peo­ple in life or death situations.

Are there moral ques­tions when it comes to depict­ing his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty, espe­cial­ly in ref­er­ence to war?

Set­ting out to tell a true sto­ry dur­ing wartime was very daunt­ing. I have not fought in a war. Frankly, it’s my worst night­mare to do so. And I have noth­ing but respect and admi­ra­tion for peo­ple who have been put in that posi­tion. I had to approach Dunkirk not as a war film, but as a sur­vival sto­ry. That was the only way I felt con­fi­dent in my abil­i­ty to be able to address the mate­r­i­al. The empha­sis of the film is very much on indi­vid­ual, phys­i­cal, geo­graph­i­cal dilem­mas. It’s about that moment of try­ing to sur­vive against all the odds. I also didn’t want to speak of any one real individual’s expe­ri­ence. That would not have felt appro­pri­ate. I want­ed to give an audi­ence who had nev­er encoun­tered these events a rep­re­sen­ta­tive expe­ri­ence of Dunkirk with­out claim­ing to speak for any real individuals.

What did Warn­er Bros think about a film which de-empha­sis­es char­ac­ters and context?

The stu­dio were very sup­port­ive of the vis­cer­al nature of this type of sto­ry­telling. While the sub­ject mat­ter is obvi­ous­ly com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, and there had to be a real rev­er­ence for real­i­ty, they have had great suc­cess with films like Alfon­so Cuarón’s Grav­i­ty and George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road – these are nar­ra­tives that just throw you into a sit­u­a­tion. They cre­ate ten­sion and sus­pense through the con­cept of imme­di­a­cy. I felt if we could give the audi­ence the sen­sa­tion of being there and see­ing the things that they would have seen and hav­ing the infor­ma­tion that they would have had, that felt very impor­tant for the way we were try­ing to tell the sto­ry. This is sen­so­ry cin­e­ma. This is about being on the beach, not back in offices in White­hall watch­ing gen­er­als push­ing things around a map. It’s expe­ri­en­tial storytelling.

A lot of your movies can be inter­pret­ed as being about the process of film­mak­ing. Do you feel this epic sto­ry about the line between organ­i­sa­tion and chaos is anoth­er one?

I would say not actu­al­ly. I think it would be glib to say it was. I have made movies in the past that do reflect the film­mak­ing process, such as The Pres­tige and Incep­tion. I think stand­ing there, on that beach, at the same time of year that the evac­u­a­tion actu­al­ly hap­pened – we had real boats come over there and recre­ate the jour­ney of the vol­un­teer sailors – there was a very hum­bling sense of how much sim­pler and small­er what we do as film­mak­ers is. Espe­cial­ly com­pared to any­thing that hap­pens in the the­atre of war. It’s very hum­bling. It gives you a true sense of per­spec­tive on what you do.

You shot Dunkirk in 70mm IMAX. Visu­al­ly speak­ing, how do you keep your­self in that 70mm head­space while you’re mak­ing the film?

There are a few things that help you in terms of keep­ing in that head­space. The cam­eras them­selves, the sheer noise and the weight and the excite­ment of them, frankly, con­stant­ly remind you of the scale of what it is you’re doing. It push­es you towards a very tableaux style of film­mak­ing. It keeps you ground­ed with­in the larg­er frame. We were able to watch dailies in France as we had a very good 70mm pro­jec­tor which we took around with us.

We also had 35mm pro­jec­tion for IMAX reduc­tion prints – it wasn’t real­ly prac­ti­cal to have an IMAX pro­jec­tor on set. They looked very good, but the 70mm stuff was absolute­ly beau­ti­ful. So we’re able to get a real­ly good idea of what we’re doing. You’re watch­ing dailies from a few days before as it takes a while to get them processed and back to set. But it’s con­stant­ly inspir­ing. You’re out there bat­tling the ele­ments, then at the end of the day you grab a plate of food, sit down in a dark­ened cin­e­ma and project what you did three or four days before. And when you see that you got some­thing you were going for, it’s tremendous.

When you’re shoot­ing on a for­mat that gives you so much detail, so much tex­ture, so much infor­ma­tion, does it make the edit­ing eas­i­er? Because every­thing is already in the shot.

It allows you to hold shots longer. Cap­tur­ing detail in a frame is a pow­er­ful sto­ry­telling tool. When you’re cut­ting it togeth­er, there is the feel­ing that you want to give the audi­ence time to scan the whole image. You tend to cut a lit­tle bit slow­er, let things play out a lit­tle bit longer. Com­bin­ing that with a very non-ver­bal script – that is to say, there’s not as much dia­logue in this as in my pre­vi­ous films – it’s very much more of an image-based type of sto­ry­telling. The large for­mat with min­i­mal dia­logue push­es you in an inter­est­ing direc­tion edi­to­ri­al­ly. This was a very dif­fer­ent film to edit, and a very enjoy­able one too.

When you’re think­ing of ideas for movies, do you ever try to imag­ine what sto­ries would look good in 70mm, almost as an excuse to use the format?

Prob­a­bly not con­scious­ly. Hav­ing writ­ten the script, I then sat down with my direc­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy, Hoyte Van Hoytema, and we talked about what for­mat would work. Hav­ing used IMAX on Inter­stel­lar, we threw out a lot of ideas, like 35mm anamor­phic which chimed nice­ly with the hor­i­zon­tal nature of the beach. But then at the end of the day, we knew how to use this for­mat which has the high­est image qual­i­ty of any visu­al for­mat ever invent­ed. We did won­der what would it be like to take those cam­eras to the beach. I try not to think about these ques­tions too ear­ly on. I try and save those con­ver­sa­tions for when we have the words on the page.

Do you treat film as a pre­cious mate­r­i­al? Does it make the shoot harder?

I wouldn’t say it makes the shoot hard­er, but it does help you to focus. The inter­est­ing thing about work­ing with wide-gauge for­mats is that the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion hasn’t altered the pro­duc­tion process in the slight­est. There are still as many peo­ple on the set and sched­ules haven’t got any short­er. The truth is, on a large scale film, the type of cam­era you’re using tends to be a fair­ly small con­sid­er­a­tion. In Dunkirk we rebuilt a mas­sive sec­tion of the mole out onto the water. We had marine con­struc­tion involved. When you’ve done things like that, whether you’re going to shoot on this for­mat or that for­mat is a fair­ly min­i­mal con­sid­er­a­tion. The dif­fi­cul­ties that come from hav­ing a larg­er cam­era are insignif­i­cant com­pared to the forces you’re mar­shalling and the mon­ey you’re spend­ing to mount a large scale pro­duc­tion. Hav­ing gone to all this effort in build­ing these things and putting thou­sands of extras in uni­form on the beach and assem­bling a crew and get­ting a real destroy­er in the sea, I then feel a huge respon­si­bil­i­ty to cap­ture that in the best pos­si­ble way.

Paul Thomas Ander­son released Inher­ent Vice in 70mm, and Quentin Taran­ti­no made The Hate­ful Eight in 70mm Cin­era­ma – are you guys in a 70mm club? Do you meet up and trade secrets about shoot­ing in this format?

Absolute­ly. We all learn from each oth­er. In the last few years, pho­to­chem­i­cal process has come under threat from elec­tron­ics com­pa­nies and stu­dios. I got in touch with Quentin and Paul and we spent a lot of time talk­ing about what can be done. I had a lot of inspir­ing con­ver­sa­tions with JJ Abrams about shoot­ing in IMAX. I actu­al­ly have a very good IMAX lens that helps to shoot at night which I lent to JJ. I also lent it to Zack Sny­der for Bat­man v Super­man. There’s a lot of inter­est­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion that goes on. As pho­to­chem­i­cals come under such pres­sure and such threat from eco­nom­ic forces – those not want­i­ng to deal with it from a busi­ness or an indus­tri­al point of view – film­mak­ers have had to stand up and be counted.

Is the think­ing behind that threat a fal­la­cy? Is dig­i­tal real­ly cheaper?

As far as the cost, it’s a com­plete fal­la­cy. I’m mak­ing my films cheap­er than any­body work­ing at the same scale on dig­i­tal. There are no effi­cien­cies to be gained there and no mon­ey to be saved. There’s been an aggres­sive fight against pho­to­chem­i­cals by com­pa­nies who make mon­ey by change. They make mon­ey by sell­ing you new equip­ment and build­ing new equip­ment. The stu­dios saw an oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop pay­ing as much for release prints and fol­low more of a tele­vi­sion mod­el where you’re broad­cast­ing films rather than phys­i­cal­ly ship­ping them. But all of that’s irrel­e­vant. I gave a speech some years ago where I was asked to defend film, and I said that I felt like a stone­ma­son defend­ing mar­ble. It’s ridicu­lous. This is why we’re all here. It’s what we do. This is film. Every dig­i­tal for­mat so far devised is just an imi­ta­tion of film.

You talk a lot about how you immerse your­self in a movie for years when you’re mak­ing it. Is it dif­fi­cult or even sad to have to move on and leave a sub­ject behind?

You leave it behind, but only tem­porar­i­ly. All that infor­ma­tion, it nev­er quite leaves you. One of the great joys of my pro­fes­sion is that you get to ful­ly immerse your­self in a sub­ject for a cou­ple of years, and then you move on to some­thing else. But you car­ry an affec­tion and a fas­ci­na­tion with you always. It’s the same with loca­tions you’ve been to – some­times you want to go back. We went back to Ice­land for Inter­stel­lar hav­ing shot Bat­man Begins there. We con­tin­u­al­ly go back to loca­tions we like in Lon­don or Los Ange­les. There’s an inter­est­ing rela­tion­ship between the films you’ve made in the past and the one you’re mak­ing in the present. A lot of our aer­i­al work, which is a huge focus in Dunkirk, builds on things we learned mak­ing The Dark Knight Ris­es. So you’re not say­ing good­bye, it’s more you’re ling it away. Over time, you make con­nec­tions between the films. Knowl­edge you gain from one film helps you out lat­er in ways you might not have pre­dict­ed. The expe­ri­ences form a pattern.

Read the full unabridged inter­view in our lat­est print edi­tion.