Christopher Nolan Met His Harshest Critic: His Peloton Instructor
Christopher Nolan might be one of the most important and celebrated directors of his generation, but he's not for everyone. Even "Oppenheimer," which made almost $1 billion, becoming one of the biggest box office hits of 2023 and the highest grossing biopic of all time, had its detractors. Richard Brody of the New Yorker, for example, penned an insightful critique of Nolan's film that suggested the director had missed one crucial aspect of J. Robert Oppenheimer, namely that he was a "renowned aesthete." Whether you agree or not, the point is that even a major box office success and cultural phenomenon on the level of "Oppenheimer" isn't universally beloved.
Of course, Nolan has had much more to worry about in terms of critical response than Richard Brody and the New Yorker. His prior film, "Tenet," aimed for high-concept, big-budget sci-fi action but ended up bewildering pretty much anyone that watched, making it the worst-reviewed of the director's films on Rotten Tomatoes (though it still garnered a respectable 69%). While many critics wrote favorably about "Tenet," Nolan's old nemesis the New Yorker dubbed the film "devoid of feeling" while the A.V Club proclaimed it to be "a shiny clockwork contraption with a hollow center."
But none of these scathing appraisals of Nolan's work come close to what the director was subjected to during one of his workout sessions.
'That's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back'
Despite garnering his share of negative reviews, there's no doubt Christopher Nolan represents an important and rare form of filmmaker in 2023. A director capable of delivering cerebral, thought-provoking films while also demonstrating a consistent ability to absolutely rake it in at the box office is a fine thing in the age of Marvel Cinematic Universe overload. The New York Film Critics Circle certainly thinks so, anyway, awarding Nolan the best director prize at a recent ceremony.
During his acceptance speech, the director provided an array of typically thoughtful and lucid observations on the state of film criticism. But he also took the opportunity to reveal what might be the most withering critical appraisal of his films yet. As Variety reports, Nolan recalled a time where he was working out on his Peloton exercise bike when suddenly, in the midst of a particularly strenuous session, he was confronted with an impromptu review of one of his latest films:
"The instructor started talking about one of my films and said, 'Has anyone else seen this because that's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back.' When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a s**t on your film he doesn't ask you to work out more with him."
Nolan didn't reveal which film had upset the instructor, but since "Oppenheimer" runs for three hours, we might well have yet another "Tenet" detractor on our hands.
Christopher Nolan's defense of film criticism
The Peloton anecdote certainly got a laugh at the awards ceremony (the full speech can be seen here). But Christopher Nolan also made sure to provide some more considered and thoughtful comments, even subtly critiquing the contemporary state of film criticism:
"In today's world, where opinions are everywhere, there is a sort of idea that film criticism is being democratized, but I for one think the critical appreciation of films shouldn't just be an instinct, it should be a profession. What we have here tonight is a group of professionals who attempt objectivity. Obviously writing about cinema objectively is a paradox, but the aspiration to objectivity is what makes criticism vital and timeless and useful to filmmakers, to the filmmaking community"
The democratization of film criticism is inevitable at a time when the internet has pretty much democratized everything. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either, as thoughtful and intelligent people who might never have got the chance to express their views on a legacy media platform can now contribute to the discourse. But in an age where social media influencers are often given precedence over film critics ahead of a movie's release, and Letterboxd seems to have much more cultural sway than whatever a New York Times critic might think about the latest release, it is nice to hear Nolan defending film criticism as a profession — even if he stopped reading reviews a long time ago. Let's hope that next time he's on his Peloton, his instructor gives him a more positive review.