Christopher Nolan: Quentin Tarantino has a ‘very purist’ approach to retirement
Christopher Nolan admires Quentin Tarantino’s approach to how he intends to leave his film career.
About on the “ReelBlend” podcast (via CinemaBlend), the “Oppenheimer” director opened up about Tarantino’s plans to retire after his tenth and final film. Tarantino has said his last feature film will be “The Movie Critic,” set in 1970s Los Angeles. Tarantino has long said that he will stop after 10 films, meaning he will be in his early 60s by the time he wraps up his career. Meanwhile, Scorsese is about to release his latest film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” at age 80, and he has no plans to stop.
“The truth is, I understand both sides,” Nolan said of the filmmakers’ different approaches to aging and cinema. “Telling stories in cinema is addictive. It’s hard work, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s something you feel compelled to do, so it’s a little hard to imagine stopping voluntarily.”
Nolan said that Tarantino “is never specific about the movies he’s talking about or anything, but he’s looking at some of the work the filmmakers have done in the intervening years and feels that if it can’t live up to the heyday, it might be better if it didn’t exist. And I think it’s a very purist point of view. It’s the point of view of a cinephile who rewards the history of cinema”.
When initially asked about Tarantino’s retirement, Nolan replied to the podcasters, “Do you believe him?”
Regarding his career, Nolan added, “I’m not sure I would trust my sense of the absolute value of a work to know whether or not it should have been done. I’m a huge fan, as is Quentin, of movies that maybe don’t fully achieve what they’re trying to achieve, but there’s something in there that’s a performance, or a little structural thing, or a scene, you know, it’s wonderful. And so, yeah, I get it. I think (I) wanted to keep a sort of perfect reputation of something, but also not wanting to take anything off the table.
Tarantino has previously explained that he doesn’t want to slip in the quality of his feature films and hopes to end up with a great final film.
“It’s just time to get out. I like the idea of winning,” Tarantino said earlier this year. “I like the idea of giving it your all for 30 years and then saying, ‘OK, that’s enough.’ And I don’t like working with diminishing returns. And I mean, now’s a good time because I mean, what’s a movie anymore anyway? Is that just something they show at Apple? That would be diminishing returns.”
Instead, Scorsese has reflected on his own mortality and wishes to continue making films for as long as possible.
“I wish I could take an eight-week break and make a film at the same time,” the “Killers of the Flower Moon” director said at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival press conference. “The whole world opened up to me, but it’s too late. It’s too late. I am old. I’ve read things. I see things. I want to tell stories and there is no more time.
Scorsese added, “Kurosawa, when he got his Oscar, when George (Lucas) and Steven (Spielberg) gave it to him, he said, ‘I’m only now starting to see the possibility of what cinema could be, and it’s too much late.’ He was 83. At the time, I said, ‘What do you mean?’ Now I know what he means.