radewart wrote: ↑April 19th, 2019, 10:07 pm
I don't know why Nolan gets so criticized about exposition and other directors get a pass for it. I mean watch a Scorsese flick like Goodfellas or Casino and the whole thing is voiceover exposition (I like both movies quite a bit by the way).
II don't think it's not the exposition itself, it's Nolan's present combination of:
1) Sacrificing moments of character for sake of story exposition.
2) Filling the story and device gaps for the audience through surface-level dialogue, as opposed to using other means.*
By this, I mean story exposition is fine, just like CGI in films is fine. It's a matter of its usage and intent though, of course. Goodfellas and Casino has characters that don't belittle the audience or provide 95% exposition. And I'll be honest, even when Nolan does this, I don't mind it that much; you said it yourself, Goodfellas and Casino are both good movies, so it's not like exposition is a bad thing. The people that do mind and call Nolan pretentious as a result are just bitter, and they likely weren't fans of The Dark Knight prior to for whatever reason their opinion was formed that way.
However, for Nolan's films, people really began catching wind of his expository dialogue with Inception, the first film he had sole writing credit since Memento. A film that is riddled with rules in its sci-fi-like dreamscape (as it had to) created pieces on a chessboard designed for the sole purpose of following the rules and playing the game. With the exception of Cobb, outside that film the conscious perspective from audiences is that the other characters didn't live lives. They just "were." Dunkirk has given me promise that he can show more and let the framing, score, nonverbal cues from the actors, or any other imagery make sense to the audience what they are seeing, even if they don't get it the first time.
* Nolan really has this both ways, though. He has been really good at not saying
everything, especially when he wants an audience interpretation (especially regarding the ending of a film). Like, he could have easily had somebody in TDK claim out loud that The Joker said opposite locations of Rachel and Dent in the interrogation room, but he didn't. That was a wise decision.
