Christopher Nolan on the Value of Film

“The medium of film as it existed in 1968 was vastly superior to what we have now. With analog film there’s an emotional involvement to the material, there’s a depth and there’s an openness to your relationship to the imagery and to the narrative. A lot of the information is thrown away when you digitize. In sound terms it’s overtones and subtones—things that you can’t consciously hear. An analog medium has all kinds of complicated cross-talk between the different frequencies of information that you’re getting, which have a particular character to them. We are finally waking up to the fact that our new systems are inadequate compared to the photo cameras. They do something different. [Digital] solved a lot of problems we had before with the wear and tear on prints, and it was a tremendous step forward in terms of consistency in presentation. But I call it the McDonald’s approach—and I’m a fan of McDonald’s. Everything is the same. It’s not Michelin-starred fine cuisine. You’re bringing everything down to a consistent level, but it’s well below what movies can be.” 

From “Cannes Interview: Christopher Nolan” conducted by Eric Hynes for Film Comment; Photo by Gavin Bond (@gavinbondphotography) 

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