He shocked the world by telling a story in reverse with “Memento,” he revitalized the superhero genre with “The Dark Knight” trilogy, he created an incredibly complex sci-fi world with “Inception,” he gave us the IMAX experience of a lifetime with “Interstellar” and he made an almost completely bloodless war movie with “Dunkirk.”
A few weeks ago, Christopher Nolan announced that his next project will be released July 2020. The only description he has disclosed about the film publicly is that it will be an “event movie.”
However, The Rectangle conducted an exclusive interview with Nolan and the cast last week, in which Nolan revealed that his next project will be a high-school romance about a boy who falls in love with his best friend’s fidget spinner.
Renowned actor Michael Caine will collaborate with Nolan for the seventh time. Caine has played supporting roles in most of Nolan’s other works, but he is now taking on the lead role of the film’s fifteen-year-old protagonist. Despite turning 86 last month, Caine says he feels confident that he’s right for the role.
“Older actors play high schoolers all the time,” Caine said. “If the makeup artists can make Gary Oldman look like Churchill, or Christian Bale look like Dick Cheney, they can pass me off for a teenage boy.”
The Rectangle asked Nolan if he thought that this new project might finally earn him an Oscar for Best Director. Nolan replied that he actually made drastic changes to the story in light of “Dunkirk” losing out to Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” in 2017.
“Anyone can make a love story about a humanoid,” Nolan said. “But a love story with an inanimate object? That takes a real filmmaker. If all it takes to win an Oscar is to have a story about a mute woman with a thing for fish, then screw it. I’ll beat del Toro at his own game.”
Despite this admission that he will be catering to the tastes of the Academy, Nolan has assured audiences that this will still be a film for Nolan-ites. The story will be told non-linearly, and, to increase it’s Oscar potential, will be a period piece set in the ’70s.
The Rectangle asked Nolan how he plans to reconcile this premise with the fact that fidget spinners were not invented until the ’90s.
“If time heals all things, then time manipulation heals all plot holes,” he replied.
It will also feature a “hallway scene” that Nolan says will be even more technically impressive than the rotating hallway scene in “Inception.” Given the things that can and do go down in the hallways of high schools, there is no limit to how creative Nolan can get in exploring the cinematic potential of hallways in his new project.
At the moment, Nolan said the main problem he and Emma Thomas, his wife and producing partner, are facing is the casting of the fidget spinner. Thomas says that she is on board with the project, but he has admitted that she is starting to regret having Caine involved.
“We’ve been shopping for the fidget spinner to use, and he [Caine] refuses to stop making bad puns,” Thomas said. “He’s constantly giggling about ‘taking her for a spin’ and ‘flicking her brains out’. I could have punched him when he said the movie was going to be a ‘real work of spin-art’. Maybe he’s just being immature to get in character.”
Cast member Tom Hardy, who is playing the role of Caine’s character’s father, also confessed that he has doubts about the project.
“I’ve got tons of respect for both Nolan and Caine,” Hardy said, “but this is a film that would only sound like a good idea if I were drunk, thirteen-years old or Mel Gibson looking for a paycheck.”
Will Nolan pull this off and finally get his Oscar? Or has the Academy finally pushed artists too far in search for recognition?