Why Christopher Nolan’s Best Director Win Matters to This Critic

It’s hard to believe that it took nearly thirty years of filmmaking for an impeccable director like Christopher Nolan to get recognition from The Academy finally. It’s hard to believe that the accolades didn’t come pouring down after everything he perfected with The Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, The Prestige, Dunkirk, etc. 

Nolan is (and has often been) one of the greatest directors of our time. He’s always done something consistently jaw-dropping, clever, and thought-provoking. But it feels appropriate still that the award comes to him for his magnum opus in Oppenheimer—a brilliant explosion where character studies are concerned and a worthy winner of the Best Picture award. There’s no denying that he (and the film) deserves every little accolade, and for Steven Spielberg to present the award to him is something else entirely.

It feels silly to be so happy for someone you don’t know, but as a critic, I owe a lot to Christopher Nolan’s work. For those who don’t know, I am a second-generation Armenian-American immigrant, and since I was little, movies have meant everything to me. (Seriously, every time someone bought me a VHS tape of something I loved, I took photos posing with them. Apparently, little old me knew where I’d end up before I did.) But it all started with a summer in Armenia, at a time with no Wifi or dial-up internet for that matter, a VHS player, and the 1989 Batman. It was the only thing that piqued my interest, the only thing in English (thanks to my father, who bought it from a local mom-and-pop video store). That entire summer consisted of me solely watching that film and nothing else. 

So, Batman and I have always had a special bond. But it wasn’t until Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight series that it turned into something bigger—a need to learn more and understand every detail of the film, the performances, the directing. I was thirteen years old when Batman Begins was released, and the internet was still very much a new phenomenon. I did what I could, but my searches came up short. I knew very little about researching films, so I focused on other elements and broke things down on my own, using the analytical skills I’d acquired as someone who loved English classes most. 

At fifteen, my father passed away, so I leaned more into the nostalgia. I understood Bruce Wayne far more as a character who knew profound grief. I understood my own need to write about things I adore and how it can be healing. I stumbled upon reviews with the help of more internet access, continued to obsess, and started watching movies differently. I started focusing on things that I wasn’t even fully understanding, set on the belief that I was going to major in English to teach because I didn’t know that being a critic could pay the bills. (Not that it really does, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Fast forward to 2010 when Inception was released, and I walked out of the theatre, still very much clueless about how to make films my entire personality, too introverted to ask for help, and unsure whether it was something I could ever do. However, I often credit Christopher Nolan for my love for film analysis because I came out of Inception not only wanting to show everyone and their mothers the movie, but I wanted to help them understand it. I wanted to wax poetic about why it’s one of the greatest things we’ll ever see. 

The funny thing is, Nolan’s films don’t even make it to my top ten all-time favorite movies, which is what’s so riveting about how a trilogy and one film can have such a magnanimous impact.

Long story short (because this can, in fact, get very long), it’s a sweet, full circle for me, personally, because Oppenheimer is the first film I covered after getting individually approved as a Tomatometer critic. Thus, watching the director who sparked so much of my interest in filmmaking get the accolades he’s due just feels a little personal. It’s a cliché reminder that there’s a time and place for everything—the right film, the right cast, the right director, the right story.

So, yeah. It’s easy to admire the win and maybe even shed a tear or two because when you look back at where you’ve been and where you end up, it’s hard not to believe that, for a moment, all is as it should be.