After making his debut in 1998 with the tiny indie Following, Nolan broke through and got the attention of Hollywood in 2001 with Memento. While he did land a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, he was perhaps too young and relatively unknown for a Best Director nod despite navigating the script’s time-twisting structure so effortlessly. The second big snub from the Academy was undoubtedly in 2008 when it passed over The Dark Knight for deserved Best Picture and Best Director nominations — while the film elevated the superhero genre to new levels of gravitas and sheer cinematic power, one could reason that the Academy simply wasn’t ready to give the genre any accolades (and it still really isn’t). Which brings us to Dunkirk. As an admittedly unreserved fan of Nolan’s work, I was not completely enthralled with his epic retelling of the incredible rescue by sea of 400,000 British soldiers from a French beach. But on the level of pure cinematic craftsmanship, Dunkirk is an absolutely immersive and astonishing achievement that also utilizes the IMAX film format to its best advantage (and it looks damn good on Blu-ray, even on a smaller screen). In scene after scene, Nolan puts the viewer right in the middle of the action, whether it’s in the sand with bombs dropping and exploding all around, in the hold of a sinking boat with water rushing in and bullets puncturing the hull or, most sensationally, in the cockpit of pilot Tom Hardy’s fighter as he engages in the aerial equivalent of hand-to-hand combat with his German counterparts. The movie takes place in three different timeframes, yet the story is told with clarity and brevity, Nolan even acknowledging the critics who say his scripts are too expository by scaling back on the film’s dialogue. The fact is that the directing achievement on Dunkirk surpasses that of the other nominees in many ways. Each of them — Jordan Peele for Get Out, Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird, Paul Thomas Anderson for Phantom Thread and Guillermo del Toro for The Shape of Water — have their considerable strengths, but not one of them can match the sheer command of technical and narrative filmmaking skills that are on display in Nolan’s picture. And yet the sad fact is that he will probably lose. That’s because 2018 may not be the year for a war epic like Dunkirk, unless a slightly more old-school segment of the Academy voting membership dominates the proceedings. Most of this year’s top contenders are largely about reflecting the massive social changes we’re currently going through. The Shape of Water upends the conventional wisdom that bureaucratic white men always know best, making its heroes a mute woman, a gay man, and a humanoid fish. Lady Bird is about empowerment and finding one’s agency as a woman, while Get Out goes directly after racial and political stereotypes. Even some of the Best Picture nominees that did not earn a berth in the Best Director category — Call Me by Your Name and The Post among them — address issues impacting us right now. But that’s okay too. I’d love to see Nolan win, not just for Dunkirk but in the larger sense for the ambition he’s brought to his entire filmography. And yet if he loses he may do so to another beloved filmmaker, Guillermo Del Toro, and it will be just as thrilling to see a person with such an unencumbered love of genre — a fan at heart to this day — achieve mainstream recognition. Or the award could go to Greta Gerwig, which would be deserving for entirely different reasons. Whatever happens, Nolan will be fine, and his track record will certainly allow him to keep making the kind of movies he wants to make. In the end, that’s all that matters.
