According to Hollywood director Christopher Nolan, he heard criticisms about one of his movies from a trainer while working out. The 53-year-old filmmaker described being “dying” on his exercise bike while giving his acceptance speech for winning the Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Circle. “And the trainer started talking about one of my movies and said, ‘Has anyone seen that? Those are a few hours of my life I’ll never get back!'”
The British-born director, known for movies like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” “Interstellar,” and most recently “Oppenheimer,” which have been box office successes for many years, apparently had this encounter with the trainer through a video connection, so the trainer was unaware of Nolan’s presence. This experience has made Nolan value professional critics even more: “When a professional critic tears into your film, they’re not asking you to do squats,” he explained. In today’s world, where “opinions are everywhere,” there’s a prevailing idea that film criticism should be democratized. However, Nolan believes “that the critical evaluation of movies should not be an instinct but a profession.”
A fitness trainer, who seems to recognize herself in Nolan’s anecdote, has since spoken up on Instagram, praising Nolan and “Oppenheimer” while admitting to not understanding the movie “Tenet” from 2020.
