Christopher Nolan says his Peloton instructor absolutely dragged him for Tenet
Nothing like hearing "There's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back" about one of your movies while you're just trying to break a sweat
Aux News Christopher Nolan
One of the dangers of being Christopher Nolan—at least, we have to assume—is that the planet’s over-abundance of opinions on Christopher Nolan movies is even harder to cope with for you than it is for the rest of us. Case in point: A recent anecdote, reported by Variety, that Nolan told while picking up a best director award from the New York Film Critics Circle, revealing that he once got completely savaged in a Peloton class by an instructor with some casually dismissive remarks about his movie Tenet.
“I was on my Peloton. I’m dying,” Nolan told the crowd. “And the instructor started talking about one of my films and said, ‘Did anyone see this? That’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back again!’” And, like, fair play to the man: We don’t have to catch crap about some article we spent four hours on while we’re going grocery shopping, so we can’t imagine what hearing this sort of thing about a movie you blew up a whole entire airplane to make, mid-virtual-bike-ride, would feel like.
Nolan, who was being honored for his work on Oppenheimer, was telling the story to illustrate a point about the value of professional criticism, in a world where, much like the humble asshole, everyone possesses both an opinion and a platform with which to expose it. (Even moreso if they have command over a Peloton class! These are the people who murdered Mr. Big!) “When Rex Reed takes a shit on your film he doesn’t ask you to work out,” Nolan joked. “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 be an instinct but it should be a profession.”
Update: Because the internet is, sometimes, amazing, online sleuths (specifically, Samantha Cole of 404 Media) appear to have dug up the actual Peloton clip in question, featuring regular instructor Jenn Sherman, and she actually goes quite a bit harder on Nolan’s movie than he originally gave her credit for. While playing music from the movie’s soundtrack, Sherman asks, “This song is from the soundtrack of a movie called Tenet. Anybody see this shit? Did anybody see this besides me? ‘Cuz I need a manual… I’m not kidding, what the fuck was going on in that movie? You need to be a neuroscientist to understand. That’s two and a half hours of my life I want back.” We cannot imagine hearing that about our movie while trying to do a workout; we also can’t wait to dive in to her Letterboxd next.
68 Comments
Yeah, but when Rex Reed takes a shit on your film, there’s even odds he hasn’t seen the movie, and might not even know what day it is.
Happy to give you “the Christopher Nolan experience” anytime at a grocery store, William. 😀
Jokes on you. Spanfeller doesn’t let any of his content-millers out of the factory.
I was going to say that if Sam Barsanti, for example, is wondering what people think of his critical abilities, it wouldn’t take an excessive amount of time digging in the comments section to find out.
I think all the writers know the score on what their purpose is – clickbaiting. When was the last time you saw a writer wade into the comments section? Only place I ever see that is Jalopnik.
I assume Barsanti doesn’t eat his vegetables and so has little use for real grocery stores.
He’s more a bodega guy. Maybe gas station.
This is along the lines of “If I happen to run into Matt Gaetz in a restaurant, how loud can I legally be?”
I really liked Tenet.
You’re not alone. There’s dozens of people like you! Dozens!
It’s my second favourite after Prestige.
Despite generally being a Nolan fan, I haven’t gotten around to ‘Tenet’ or ‘Dunkirk’. (Not a big one for WWII films, honestly.) I’ve heard mixed things but I should probably check it out someday.
Dunkirk’s worth the watch for the aerial scenes alone. He does his usual time-bending thing and it takes a while to understand the purpose, but does eventually come together in a way that makes sense. Obviously it IS a WWII movie but it has a very different vibe from Private Ryan and the like – it’s not a battle movie.
Well said
As someone who lived over in London for 3 years (embassy brat) in the early 80’s, Dunkirk was pretty cool for me. We took a boat down the Thames to Greenwich and it had a plaque on the inside that stated it was part of the Dunkirk evacuation. Then at the end, this scene hit me right in the feels, still does at times when he slow rolls into Elgar’s “Enigma Variations: Nimrod” which is a very British identity piece of music.
I mean it IS a pretty amazing story. When the officer scoffs that the “civilian fleet” has been mobilized to assist in the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of cornered troops, it’s hard to argue. We’re going to ferry all those men in fishing boats and pleasure cruisers? But they did.And of course the movie’s last five minutes are absolute perfection.
Say what you will about the man, but he knows how to end a movie.
Same. I actually enjoy rewatching it to pick out bits that I’ve missed before. Which I’m sure many people would find to be a bug instead of a future but…my kid is grown and I’m self employed, so life is basically too long for me.
I can understand not liking Tenet because it’s difficult to follow (heck, I’m still not sure I fully get it even tho I think I have a handle on things), but I can’t fathom how someone could think it’s a bad movie.Nolan crashed a real plane into a real airplane hanger, not to mention the Talliin car chase. Tenet is a Bond movie with some sci-fi mumbo jumbo about time moving differently. Where else are people getting this level of filmmaking?
I was intentionally TRYING not to figure out the twist so that I could just roll with the movie, but halfway through I was like, “Oh, I know what this is” and from there it was all downhill for me because I more or less knew the rest of the film.
I guess because the “twist” comes almost exactly halfway through the film, I never considered that figuring it out beforehand would ruin the film for anyone. For example, if you could figure out who Keyser Söze really is within the first hour of The Usual Suspects, that seems like it would be extremely detrimental to how much you enjoy that film, whereas I think Tenet works much better if you know exactly what’s going to happen next. Part of the reason I’ve watched Tenet so many times is because knowing what’s going to happen helps me appreciate the pacing more, and it helps me observe things that I wasn’t paying attention to before. But I know that I’m in the minority on that.
It ruined it for me because it lowered the threat level. There was no chance that the protagonist wasn’t going to be successful and the world was going to b e destroyed because of the causality loop it would have destroyed. Sure, I didn’t know some of the details, like what was going to happen to the villain’s wife (obviously things left a huge impression on me because I can remember a single character’s name), or how the villain was going to be defeated, but there really were no stakes after the first airport heist.
I’m surprised anyone could hear him over the loud thumping music he insisted they play during his speech.
Unfortunately, his Peloton instructor couldn’t hear Nolan’s response because the background music drowned out his words.
I really like most of his movies but his commitment to unintelligible dialogue is fucking bizarre.Unrelated, but I also think it’s weird and stupid that he wouldn’t use CGI for his trinity test in Oppenheimer.
Yeah, I liked Oppenheimer, and I really get the annoyance with CGI when it is about things like monsters, stunts, etc. But if there is one thing that CGI could help with it is big explosions. The explosion in the movie was underwhelming — not that it really mattered as the movie is more about Oppenheimer the person than the details of the Manhattan Project, but still.
not that it really mattered as the movie is more about Oppenheimer the person than the details of the Manhattan Project, but still.Absolutely but also like… this was what it was all building to. The “will it work? Will it set the air on fire?” moment. I dunno I think it mattered more than you do, for the movie.
What was underwhelming about it? I remember being blown away, but I was also very into the flow of the movie and I caught it in an IMAX, so that probably helped.
It would have been quite something if the Peloton instructor had delivered this message in reverse.
Yeah I agree, this is one situation where CGI was needed. Nolan is known for the incredible lengths he goes for practical effects (He crashed an actual 747 in Tenet, for god’s sake), and I thought here we’d see a really spectacular explosion, and instead what we got was a rather failed attempt at forced perspective, trying to convey the sense of a larger explosion by having a smaller one relatively closer, and framed to look big. But it was obvious, and underwhelming. Either he should’ve used all the tools available to portray the Trinity test with the right scale, or he should’ve just not shown it and instead relied upon conveying the idea of it through blinding light, blast of wind, concussive sound, etc.
Always been stumped by this. I’m a middle-aged veteran of heavy metal shows who watched Tenet on an old and basic sound system at home and I had almost zero problems with understanding dialogue.At the same time, I do understand the frustration. Nolan has obviously become mildly obsessed with a more ‘naturalistic’ audio mix. And while I personally quite like it, it does seem like a bit of a weird hill to die on. I’m personally hoping he keeps trying and finds the right balance between his artistic ambitions and accessibility, but who knows.
Once you’ve translated an inebriated Vince Neil back into English, anything else is easy.
Is that a comment on Nolan’s movies or on the Peloton clip?
There’s scenes in Tenet where the whole ‘unintelligible dialogue’ thing is blatantly, obviously intended.There’s also scenes in that movie and others where it just feels like an incredibly rushed sound mix. I got my money back from my first viewing of The Dark Knight Rises because I was certain there was something wrong with the speakers in that screening…
It’s weird that a director doesn’t want his audience to have (or express) an opinion about his films.He’s not a chef but I’m sure he feels fine having an opinion on the food he eats.
How did you get the impression that he doesn’t want his audience to have an opinion about his films?
I don’t get the feeling he’s against people having any kind of opinion on his work, just that if you’re going to express it in a public forum you should put some though into it. And I don’t entirely disagree. Certainly criticism, when done well, is one of the finest forms of writing.
Meanwhile, announcing you can’t keep up with a movie plot is certainly a choice on her part.
Lol. Nolan fanbois are the best. Like classier, more civilized Rick and Morty fans… mistaking liking a thing as a sign of their own intelligence.
Being English, he of course refers to the device as an exercise footcycle.
Stationary velocipede
a stuck bipedaloid innit?
This is objectively hilarious. I just regret that she’s going to be horribly harassed for years now.
I only have one question. Was Nolan wearing knee-length bike shorts or those little panties that just barely cover bits because I’m betting on the latter.
I also do my best work while sniffing cantaloupes in the produce aisle.Respect.
I’d be damned if the schoolmarm of some class for white people living in fear of their exercise bikes would condescend to me about my creations. Nolan is a bigger man than I.
First thing to know when you’re trying to make art:-If nobody likes what you do, you’re probably doing something wrong.-If everybody likes what you do, you definitely doing something wrond.
two wronds don make a ridht
Yeah well one time my tennis instructor dragged me for the Cash Me Ousside girl. That wasn’t fun either, Chris.
She’s right, Chris.
“some article we spent four hours on”
Four hours? It takes you FOUR HOURS to write this shit??
I personally would not have dragged Nolan like that, the forum was inappropriate. I think it was kind of tacky of her to do that in front of a bunch of people.
But at least someone told him to his face. That movie was bloodless, dull, plodding, and overlong for that kind of thin plot conceit.
If it was Peloton he almost 100% wasn’t in the same room (probably even the same state or country for that matter) with her and she most likely had no idea he was even taking that class as most of the people are using the bikes are using them from the comfort of their own homes. That is of course his user name is something like “TheRealChristopherNolanOffical-It’sReallyMeTheGuyThatDirectedTheDarkKnight”.
I didn’t get the impression that Christopher Nolan was attending a Peloton class in person.
That’s not how Peloton works.The instructors don’t see the attendees. At most they see a list of names, which usually aren’t real full names, cause nobody puts their real name on the internet.
Fair enough. I don’t even know what Peloton is, outside of a trendy exercise format with bikes. I’m more of a boxing/judo type.My points largely remain. It’s rad that 3 people jumped to correct me though. The internet is always reliable for that.
If you don’t know how Peloton works, why would you make a comment that depends on knowing how Peloton works?
How dare you! All you’re doing is announcing you’re too dumb to follow his impeccable plot!- Nolan fanbois
“You need to be a neuroscientist to understand.”So I never saw Tenet, and I know that some Nolan movies can be a bit wibbly wobbly timey wimey, but I can’t imagine announcing to hundreds of people that I’m not smart enough to understand something and thinking it’s a burn on anyone but myself.That said, maybe she saw he was in the class and was trying to make him angry so he would work out harder. lol
Lots of people will proudly tell you that they haven’t read a novel since they were required to in High School. Being ignorant is a badge of honor for way too many people.
Speaking of high school, I remember in high school (25 years ago) writing a paper on themes of anti-intellectualism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I don’t know if it’s more or less comforting to know that it isn’t new. :/
I don’t think she was making a burn on herself. In most cases, I could sort of agree with your point here, but in this particular case, I don’t blame her. I’m a smart guy, and I love complicated movies (I liked memento, inception, most Nolan movies) Tenet was fucking imperceptible. The plot was complete nonsense and I still can’t make heads or tails of it. The direction itself, dialogue, aesthetician, action, etc. is all very good, but the plot is absolute cabbage. And I don’t blame her for voicing that. Instructors are supposed to have some personality in these classes, so it’s was totally a fine forum for her to voice this kind of informal banner
“I don’t think she was making a burn on herself.”She wasn’t. That was exactly my point. It would be fine if she just said the movie was hard to understand. But she didn’t say that. She said, basically, “I’m too stupid to understand it and it’s the movie’s fault.” I personally would have left off the “I’m too stupid” part and just said “I didn’t understand this movie.”She can have whatever kind of banter she wants, but when she’s making fun of someone’s work, she could choose, if she wanted, to be aware that the person who’s work she’s making fun of could be in the audience.
You spend four hours writing a several hundred word article? Most of which is just copy and pasted straight from the article you link to?
Watching and understanding movies is hard, thoughts and prayers to the stationary bike lady.
I see both sides of this. On one hand, people are deeply, profoundly stupid. It certainly inhibits certain kinds of art — challenging art, outsider art, anything “new” or deemed “offensive” or “difficult” or “complicated” — when the pop culture zeitgeist is driven by morons with terrible taste. On the other hand, reverting to a professional gatekeeper system leads us to a world where the only people “allowed” to have opinions — at least opinions that matter — are of a privileged class. Systemic inequities guarantee those gatekeepers will primarily think like, look like, and identify with the same kind of people who are “allowed” to make art that matters (paid by major studios for work that is given a wide-release). And those people by-and-large think like, look like, and identify with Nolan. A lot of folks who bought the promise of technology as a tool for democratization believed it would provide voice to the voiceless and a platform to those who’d been denied a platform by inequity and injustice. And while it’s done that, it’s also served as a bull horn for the loudest, dumbest Dunning Kruger cases that walk amongst us.
I’m of two minds on Tenet. I love it’s ambition. It is the Nolan film I ponder the most in terms of structure, of how it works, of its logic and function. I think it’s really brilliant in that regard.The problem for me, is the central character is fatally miscast. John David Washington’s casting is a fatal mistake. His whole career baffles me, because he is so forgettable and without an ounce of screen presence or personality. He makes Sam Worthington seem like Timothy Carey by comparison. Nolan should’ve cast Chiwetel Ejiofor or Daryl McCormack or Lakeith Stanfield. But casting Washington was for me, one of the most disastrous casting choices in recent memory. Because he has, to paraphrase an MST3K riff, a total screen absence.
I love time travel movies and generally have no trouble following whatever rules they’ve set up, but Tenet was just a ridiculous mess.
I’m no Peleton instructor, but I didn’t like Tenet much.