When most of us have a question about a Christopher Nolan movie, our best resources are Google, Quora and Reddit. When Hollywood insiders have similar queries, however, they go right to the source.
That’s exactly what Oscar-winner Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) did when he and his son got into a heated debate over Nolan’s labyrinthine espionage time travel spy thriller, Tenet.
Casey Affleck Called Christopher Nolan To Settle Tenet Debate With His Son
“I was driving home from school with my son, and we were talking about Tenet, and we were disagreeing about it. And I thought, ‘Let’s settle this,'” the actor recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. “We called Chris, which probably was a mistake. I [actually] called Emma [Thomas], his wife, and I said, ‘I just have a quick question,’ and we got him on the phone and asked him something that we probably could have just looked at [on] Reddit and figured out.”
While Affleck didn’t reveal the topic on which he and his son disagreed, he did share that Nolan was kind enough to provide an explanation. “It sounded so obvious,” continued the actor. “Then we said, ‘Thank you.’ And that was it. And I haven’t called back, and he hasn’t called me.”
Still, you can’t blame them for wanting to know more.
Tenet is probably Nolan’s most convoluted movie to date. Perhaps a little too convoluted for its own good. So much so, that a character even says of the time travel element, “Don’t try to understand it, just feel it.”
Tenet also had the great misfortune of opening at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, only grossing $376 million at the worldwide box office against a hefty $205 million budget. At the same time, Nolan clashed with Warner Bros. Pictures over the studio’s decision to pivot to a day-and-date release strategy for its 2021 film slate.
“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service,” he remarked in a scathing statement at the time. “Warner Bros. had an incredible machine for getting a filmmaker’s work out everywhere, both in theaters and in the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak.”
That deep ideological disagreement over the sanctity of the traditional theatrical window led to the dissolution of their partnership, which had lasted for nearly two decades, starting with 2002’s Insomnia.
The filmmaker then moved over to Universal Pictures where he made Best Picture winner Oppenheimer and The Odyssey, the latter of which is the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time. He’s built up enough auteur clout, both critically and financially, to pretty much write his own ticket for the remainder of his career.
“Despite the fact that he makes these gigantic, hugely popular, successful movies,” concluded Affleck, “I don’t think that he’s doing things that he thinks will please other people.”
