Shadowing Practice: The Odyssey : the only Christopher Nolan interview you need to watch - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Hello Christopher Nolan, how are you?
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I'm good, how are you doing?
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Very good, thank you so much for taking the time today.
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We sat in this very room, that was three years ago for Oppenheimer, we had a talk about all those topics covered there.
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You're back now with The Odyssey, which is absolutely breathtaking in every way, one of the best, honestly, experience I've had in a theatre in a long time.
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So I've got so many questions for you today, with no spoilers of course, but quite a I have a few questions about that movie and how it was made in every way.
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So for me, however long I work on the film
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and however much we develop the cut and we test screen it and look at it, do this, do that, the film is not finished to me until the audience sees it.
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And the audience sort of reflects back and tells me what the film is.
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And so for me, the experience isn't finished until the release.
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So it's a very exciting time because you spend all this time, everybody working on the film and putting this thing together for the audience.
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But it's also a very nervous time.
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Especially because what I understand is that you've done your part of the job, but then the whole question is how they will react.
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I mean, you can't do much once it's released.
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No, it becomes the audience, the audience owns it.
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They tell you what it is.
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and that sort of completes the experience really.
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It's sort of like if you were directing a stage player or if you were an actor, you have your first night, you have the audience and then the audiences come.
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For me, cinema is an audience medium.
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It's about getting people together in cinemas to watch the film.
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And that first release that we really tailor the film for is about what do movie audiences think.
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The Odyssey is nearly like 3,000 years old, I think 2,000, something like this.
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How do you explain that the story of Odysseus still speaks to us today?
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What does that say also about humanity and us as a humankind?
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Well, it says that there are eternal truths.
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I mean, things about human beings and human civilization that don't change.
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And I think what's interesting about going back to this oldest of texts,
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I mean, it's really one of the oldest texts in sort of Western literature.
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It's a foundational text.
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It kind of informs everything that's come since.
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And it's fascinated generation after generation for almost 3,000 years because it expresses and taps into universal truths.
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It's a love story.
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It's also a war story.
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It's a coming-of-age story.
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It's about love and death and the aftermath of war
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and coming home and this genre really of homecoming story that the Greeks perfected, they call it nostos.
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It's this idea of being away for a long time, a hero coming home, changed, re-experiencing home in a different way.
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That's really a timeless genre.
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And what I found in adapting the poem is I found a lot of the other films that I'd made,
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a lot of the other stories that I thought were very original at the time that actually really come from the Odyssey.
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I mean, obviously something like Interstellar is very clearly drawn from the Odyssey, but even things like the Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception, there are real commonalities.
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I think the eternal appeal of Homer is these universal truths that it expresses.
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You shot this movie in real life, no green screen, in so many difficult situations.
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lots of scenes in the sea with the weather we can imagine, all those difficulties.
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What would you say was the biggest challenge you faced shooting this movie in nature like this?
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I mean, there were many different challenges of many different types and it changed week to week, location to location, which was great.
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Probably the single hardest from a practical point of view you know
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if i were talking to another filmmaker
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and saying what what not to do uh shooting on the
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sea is very difficult um we had an excellent marine coordinator neil andrea who i did dunkirk with
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and on dunkirk we learned an enormous amount about you know how to get particular shots
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and how to get a whole crew and cast safely out on the water
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and achieve these shots uh hoiter van hoiter my director of photography
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and myself did that film together and so we brought all that to the boats
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but still shooting on an ancient sailing vessel in rough waters yeah it was a huge challenge for everybody
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and then doing all that on IMAX actually weirdly one of the biggest challenges on the film
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was shooting the whole film on IMAX
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and not the action scenes the boat scenes things like that
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because we'd done that before in other films
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but what I'd never been able to do is the dialogue scenes the quiet intimate scenes
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and imax had built this blimping system for us essentially um a high-tech box
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that the camera goes into and it silences the camera
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and then we could shoot you know conversations and the most dramatic moments
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but we had to figure out how to take this
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you know 300 pound camera and move it like any camera
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and get all of those shots and
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that actually turned out to be one of the most challenging things on on the film because Because the problem, I guess it's heavy, it's noisy, I understood too.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so how do you, the noise, for example, is a good example.
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How do you manage this?
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Does the box help in a way?
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The box will silence it, but the problem with the box is it's massive.
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It's in on, it's like a fridge.
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And so when you're shooting people talking, they're trying to make eye contact.
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You have this huge box in between them.
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It's looking through a box, basically.
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Well, what we did is, I did something that I've always been kind of interested in trying, and I challenged Hoytas crew to come up with a mirror system where,
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you know, you have the lens of the camera, we put a half silver mirror across it, and then another mirror on an arm that arms out, so the actor can be further away
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and they could see each other right next to lens
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and they're making eye contact and they could perform together
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and i tried to explain it to the actors
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and it didn't it didn't really make any sense it was like just trust me try it
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and you'll see uh and it worked very well they were very happy with that
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but coupled with the other thing about these cameras is they only can shoot just under three minutes of film
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so with a long dramatic scene
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and there are some very long dramatic scenes towards the end
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of the film particularly uh you know whether it was tom holland
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and hathaway acting or matt damon
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and an you know you'd have these scenes where halfway through the scene you have to stop
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pull the camera out of the box reload the camera how much time does it take to change the
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well keith our first ac he managed to do it well
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i'll put it this way the first time i shot imax on the dark night imax
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that imax text told us it took 25 minutes to reload the camera
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and we're like well that's not going to work
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so we need our hollywood crew to get better
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and better at it we now have it to about a minute
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and a half uh but for an actor to stop in the middle
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in that emotional state and stay in that state
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but the crew did an incredible job of everybody stayed silent
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keith would take reload the camera as quietly as possible go back in
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and we'll just start again and in a strange way i mean
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if the actors had told me they couldn't do it it none of it would have worked
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because what's important is that they'd be able to give their performance
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but i think in a strange way it created such intense focus on the scene
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which can be hard to achieve on a huge set with hundreds of people
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and you know lighting
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and all the different things going on all the different distractions
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you actually can be quite hard to get everybody to focus on the moment
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and shooting a crazy format like you know imax film really helps with
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that when that camera is running everybody every single person on
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that set is paying attention interesting oh super interesting it's happy
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it makes me think of like a you know pit stop
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and like for the one they've got to change it very
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fast you like that's actually tom holland talked about formula he talked about a pit crew a lot
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and hoiser van hoismer very big fan of formula one
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so i think maybe that's Maybe he had his crew watching Formula One races because they were on it.
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They were incredible.
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Super effective.
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We all can hear about the technical difficulties or challenges with the fact of filming in IMAX 70 millimeters.
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That's the first film shot entirely in IMAX.
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What does that change for people who maybe don't know all those technical questions?
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As a person who's going to watch this film, what does it change to film in IMAX?
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Well, what it lets you do, I mean, simply put, IMAX is the best, highest quality imaging format that was ever invented.
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It was invented the year before I was born.
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It's been around a long time, but it's a huge film negative.
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And film sees the world very much the way the eye does.
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It sees color the way we see color.
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With that larger negative, you don't get grain and the image is incredibly sharp.
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And so what it lets us do is take that image
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and format it all the different ways in which it will be projected.
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There's at least one place in France that will show 70mm IMAX projection for the first time.
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Yeah, first time on this film, very excited.
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And like here in Paris at the Grand Rex, they have a 70mm film print, which is made directly from that same negative.
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And then all of the digital screens, we make that very, very carefully from the same negative.
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And so we have that crispness and that clarity.
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so what it allows you as a filmmaker it lets you take the audience
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and kind of immerse them in the world of the film
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it lets us transport the audience you know to these locations
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and to these situations and we'll talk about those because they're
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so so interesting to see that's also a question i had
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because the odyssey you know some people study as cool some
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people have seen movies some people it's of course a story
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that's quite famous how do you manage to um first of all make
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that story your own in a way like find the right balance between oh some things you feel are
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so valuable you have to put it in
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but also some things you have to bring it your way how do you find
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that balance it's something i i really learned um working on
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batman films they're doing the dark knight trilogy we were dealing with a character beloved around the world uh
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that had been written about and using that character for about 75 years a lot of different writers and artists.
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So there was a sort of huge expectation
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and everybody saw it a little bit differently and had a different way they would want to do it.
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And what I learned on those films is you have to put
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that to one side and trust that if you make as sincere
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and committed an interpretation of what you really want to see and what you really believe it should be, people will respect that even if it's not what they would do.
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They understand that You're showing respect for the character and for the story in your own way.
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And hopefully they can enjoy that.
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So coming to Homer, I tried, I certainly wrote out a list of my expectations for the
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Odyssey before I went back to the poem in detail and looked at it.
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What are the things that to me really define it in the popular imagination, or at least my understanding of that?
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It was things like the cyclops and the sirens and things.
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And then you come to the text of the poem and, you know, it's 24 books the poem's divided into.
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And of that 24, only about four, really, are the journey itself, the bits that people remember.
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The rest of it is this incredible tale of what's going on back in Ithaca.
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So you have Telemachus, who's played by Tom Holland in our film, and his relationship with his mother, Penelope, played by Anne Hathaway.
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And what's going on there is extremely important to the story.
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Odysseus has been gone for 20 years.
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The palace is beset by suitors.
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So there's a lot of tension there and a lot of mystery around what's happened to Odysseus and everything.
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That's the jumping off point.
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It's also where you return to in the third act.
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So, yeah, there's a lot to discover in the detail of the poem, some of which I was very surprised by and did not remember from when I studied it in school or whatever.
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But I always tried to bear in mind, as I say, the version of the Odyssey that percolates in the popular imagination in children's adaptations and things like that,
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because I wanted to be sure that this film included those elements, and emphasized those elements as well.
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That's also a question I had because, of course, our audience on YouTube is mainly young people, people who spend time, of course, on their phones and everything, can also go to theatres,
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but sometimes also watch films in other ways.
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Yeah.
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What would you say to convince them to experience the Odyssey in a theatre?
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Well, for me, it's one of the great adventure stories.
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And part of the appeal, part of the thing we've tried to do with the film is by shooting on IMAX cameras, by going to real locations,
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we've really tried to give an immersive sense for an audience on a big screen, you know, of being transported,
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of being on the deck of a deceased ship with him in a storm, or going into the Cyclops' cave.
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So you have the story, and the story carries anywhere.
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The story carries when you watch it on your phone.
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A good story will hook you however you're watching it.
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But the experience of almost physically feeling it, being there in that world, and enjoying that with an audience, and feeling those emotions and everything.
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If it's possible, that's the best way to see a film.
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But yeah, I started I started making films, I mean, I'm a child of the VHS era, videotapes at home and everything.
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And so most of the films I've seen in my life have been at home
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or on a TV or a computer or whatever.
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So it's not that, you know, an enormous number of people are gonna see the film that way.
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And we take a lot of care about transferring the film and making all those versions as good as they can be.
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But I think for any film, particularly for The Odyssey, really, you know, it's about trying to have an experience.
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And the best way to have that experience is to try and find a movie theater and go and enjoy it.
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You carried this dream of making such a film for quite a few years.
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A lot of people spend their whole lives putting off an ambitious project they care deeply about, like putting it to later.
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How do you know whether you're waiting for the right moments
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or whether you're sort of not daring to take the leap and sort of pushing it back.
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How do you feel that?
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Well, to be honest, the fact that film is an industrial process, and it's very expensive, and it involves thousands of people,
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that helps because it's not always your choice as to exactly when you do something.
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You don't sort of wake up in the morning and go, okay, let's go do this on Wednesday.
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So I think the industrial process, that has a way of helping you take your time and really decide when something's right.
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But I think really in broader terms, it's a fairly instinctive thing for me to sort of choose what I want to do next.
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But because I'm a writer-director, I have the great advantage of, I have that period of really wrestling with, in this case, the adaptation.
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You know, I've written original screenplays, I've written adaptations.
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I love adaptations.
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It's a great way to work.
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I really enjoy the challenge I did with Oppenheimer and I have with The Odyssey.
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So I get to sort of, what we would say, stress test the idea
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and whether it's really hooked me
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and whether I really think I want to spend years of my life on it at that script stage.
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So that's where I really wrestle with that and see if I am ready.
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Because I think when I look back at my career, and it's not something I was very conscious of in making the choices at the time,
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but I think you do find stories that speak to where you are in life and your age and experience.
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and also on a technical level what you're ready to do, what you feel you have the knowledge to do.
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And The Odyssey is a film that's required everything I've learned on all of my other films
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and then a lot of new things as well.
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And I guess also another challenge is maybe the fact that people, many people know the end of that story in a way.
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And so, of course, I guess that's a challenge.
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And I was hooked to that movie.
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I could have spent many more hours watching this.
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So that's also a question I had.
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How do you manage to do that?
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I guess the challenge is even bigger when people know the end of the story.
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It's weird to talk about spoilers with a 3,000-year-old text, but it's about how you get there.
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It's about how you do it.
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That's what can be very surprising and evolving to people.
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Working on Oppenheimer, for example, I'm like, well, that's a movie where everybody knows the end.
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Everyone knows what's going on.
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Everyone knows how World War II finished.
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You know what I mean?
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It was surprising to me, but a lot of fun to realize how much tension you
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could actually get out of something where people know what the end is.
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It's almost as if, I mean, Hitchcock would probably have some great theory on this, you know, whatever, but it's almost as if people knowing the end can make it more tense and more exciting,
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particularly when you're talking about what ultimately is a revenge story, story, homecoming story.
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You know, I was thinking about films like Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven or something, or films where there's this sort of inevitable confrontation that you know is going to happen,
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but you're waiting and almost dreading what that is actually going to be.
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I think there can be tremendous tension from that.
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Of course, you're all known for, I don't know if mixing is the right word, but like rearranging, of course, you know, the story and when things appear,
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does that help in a way too? sort of get to see all those things assembling through the movie and getting together.
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Definitely.
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And in this case, I mean, I've done that in my other films, but the structure of this film comes very much from the poem.
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That is the way Homer structured it.
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And that allows you to create tremendous tension.
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The fascinating thing for me is I've spent many years doing interviews like this,
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talking about my other films and talking about nonlinear structures and structural approaches as if I were doing something radical and different.
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And then you come to the Odyssey, which is the oldest text, and it's a completely radical structure.
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It's wonderful the way that it starts in Ithaca with this mystery about Odysseus
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and where he is and whether his wife and son can hold out without him.
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And that sort of sets this ticking clock over the whole thing.
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And then you go off and experience his journey.
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It's a really incredible structure.
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And that journey of course is amazing.
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We see Odysseus raving storms and adventures to get back home.
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Would you say he accepts his fate or that he's fighting against it?
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The film pretty clearly at different times has different aspects of that.
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There are times where He very specifically is fighting against his fate, and there are other times when he fully accepts it.
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I think that's part of the interesting balance about him as a character.
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He's not a simple character.
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He's not easily definable.
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The adjective that's most often applied to Odysseus in English is wily,
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which is not the word you would normally associate with a hero of a movie.
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One of the reasons I cast Matt Damon is he's an incredible actor, but he's also really a charismatic movie star who can sort
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of draw the audience in to his way of seeing the world and take them on the journey.
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And for me, with Odysseus, it was so important because Odysseus has all of these contradictions and complexities to him, particularly in his approach to things like the gods or fate, you know.
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and you see different aspects of that.
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And I didn't want to simplify that to bring him into the sort of hero's position.
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And Matt is really able to do that.
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He's able to play all of those contradictions and all those layers, but he doesn't lose you.
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In the film, you put a lot of emphasis on Zeus' law, the sacred duty to treat any stranger,
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any outsider with respect and hospitality.
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In The Odyssey, it's even kind of like the ultimate test in a way that we see.
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3,000 years later, why did you decide to insist so much on this law, Zeus's law?
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Well, for me, in starting the adaptation, it became a great point of contact with the theology of that time.
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Because that idea, we refer to it in the film as Zeus's law, as you say, it's the concept of xenia, they refer to it in the poem.
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It's about treating other people as you would be treated.
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And the theological underpinning of the time was because you might appear to be a humble beggar, but you could be a god in disguise, so I should treat you well.
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That's the theological underpinning, and
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that gave me a point of contact for how do I portray the gods and people's relationship with the gods.
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And the way I decided to do it was to show the power of nature, the power of the seas, the thunder, all of this.
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And then also this idea that the gods can walk amongst these people, walking amongst them.
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As I developed that and I borrowed in on it and really thought about, okay, how can this theme help the narrative?
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How can it involve us?
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You start to realize that nothing has changed in 3,000 years.
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And we are, our civilization is just as dependent.
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It doesn't have the same theological underpinning.
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It's the same essential component of civilization.
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In a way, it's a definition of civilization.
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So if you don't treat people with mutual respect, nothing can work.
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And that was such a strong point of connection with Homer's time.
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In the movie, we hear, I think it's Odysseus saying it, saying that you see things more clearly from below.
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That's not the right trend, how it's said in English, but you see things better from below in a way.
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Yes, it's the best view of a man is from below.
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Exactly, exactly.
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Christopher Nolan, of course, you've done so many movies.
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You're now a world-renowned director.
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How do you manage yourself to still get honest feedback, for example, when you're doing your job today?
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How do you manage to do this yourself?
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I think, well, part of what I do is I work with a lot of the same people for years.
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So we have a very open, honest relationship.
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In particular, my producer, my wife, Emma, who produced all my films,
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has no agenda, just has her view of things and what I'm trying to do and what I'm achieving.
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Similarly with my editorial staff and people like that.
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I also then expose the film continually as I'm editing to strangers.
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one or two at a time and all the rest, and just get feedback and conversation about it.
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And then we will put the film in front of audiences.
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Because, yeah, you have to take yourself and your position in the film out of the equation.
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You have to get, as you say, honest feedback.
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Because the audience, generally speaking, they don't really care who's directed the film.
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It's really about what's the story and is the story working.
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And the truth is, if you're good at your job as a director, where you get very good at listening to what's behind people's words.
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Because people, of course, are going to be polite.
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And it's nice to be polite, and it helps you emotionally.
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But you have to look behind that and really drill down on what are they understanding, not understanding, all the rest.
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As far as people like you or not like your film, well, that's, you know, art, films, everything's subjective.
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So you do the best you can in what you believe in.
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But for me, it's very important when I'm making a film
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to assess how clearly people are seeing the film the way I want them to see it, or whether there are ambiguities.
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Maybe there are things that I think are interesting ambiguities, but, you know, it's part of my job and has been for a long time.
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It's also something, so in the movie, we follow the children's halls.
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It has become a metaphor for so many things today.
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I've heard it used a lot recently about the whole question around AI
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as it being a sort of a gift or something that's extremely helpful, something that you welcome in your daily life,
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but that may end up being something else and something darker in a way.
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How do you view this?
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Do you see it?
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I think AI is a Trojan horse that everybody knows the Greeks are inside.
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Well, the funny thing with AI, and I think it's actually pretty fascinating to see how in
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the last few years it's sort of taken over the Wall Street and the world of business and investment.
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I've never seen a technology advancing so rapidly, so completely rejected by the public.
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You know, everybody's suspicion of it is so incident extreme, particularly young people.
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The reactions of AI videos online
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and people my children's age immediately calling it AI slop and calling it down and just putting it in a box,
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which I think is a very healthy skepticism because technology is always going to give us great gifts, as you say, but it has to be viewed with skepticism.
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You know, the motives of the people giving it also have to be people with skepticism.
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That's when we'll get the best out of a new technology, rather than just blind faith that everything's going to be great.
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And it's actually pretty encouraging to see young people in particular being so suspicious of it.
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That horse in the Odyssey, of course, is meant to be a surprise, but that simple fact that we're saying that AI is maybe a horse shows that.
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Completely.
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It's a transparent horse.
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It's made of glass.
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Everybody can see what's going on inside there.
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So there's probably a problem there too.
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The Odyssey has some tense, frightening moments in a way, truly amazing in that film too.
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Have you ever thought of working on a horror movie one day?
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I mean, at times I felt like I was with The Odyssey.
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When you look at that material, there are elements of horror in it.
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And as with so much in home, there's so many genres, so many stories that come from it.
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And so we decided, and we warned the studio we were going to do this, we wanted to make the most intense version of it.
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I love horror movies, I have a lot of respect for it.
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I think it's the most visceral form of filmmaking, where you're really trying to get a very direct, almost physical reaction from the audience.
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And so where we had the opportunity to intensify the film in that way, we really tried to do it, really tried to say, okay, if you're going to believe in this world,
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if we're going to have you believe in the boats and the palaces and weapons and everything everybody's doing, then when you go into the cave with Cyclops,
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for example, or when you encounter Circe who can transform people into animals, if those things are real and they feel real, they would be horrifying.
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One last question, maybe.
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If the Odyssey and Odysseus embodies the longing to come home, the homecoming we were talking about after a long journey,
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what would you say is your Ithaca?
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you're the sort of anchor you always want to return to?
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Well, I mean, you know, my family is my anchor.
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I have four kids.
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All four of them worked on the film, which was really wonderful.
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My wife produces the film.
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It's the first time they all came to work on the film in different departments.
374
So I would see them, you know, every day, you know, off in the background doing some horribly difficult task
375
or carrying the camera around or whatever they were doing um
376
and so in a way i'm i'm very fortunate
377
that i'm able to uh i'm certainly on the odyssey in
378
a way i felt like i was home the whole time
379
um i think early on in my career actually i was working with al pacino
380
and he said this thing to me about he's he saw me on set
381
and he said oh you're home this is where you want to live this
382
and and when he said it i thought yeah it's That's true
383
because filming is difficult and it takes you away from your actual house.
384
But if you can do it with people you love, it does become its own kind of home, its sense of home.
385
And I'm very happy though.
386
That's great.
387
Thank you so much, Christopher and Leland for this time.
388
That was very, very interesting.
389
And congratulations again for The Odyssey.
390
It was an amazing experience and I'm sure people will really love it in the next few days.
391
That was amazing.
392
Thank you.
393
Thank you very much.
394
you
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Learn English with YouTube: Why This Christopher Nolan Interview Is Perfect for Speaking Practice
If you’re looking to boost your english speaking practice or prep for IELTS speaking practice, this video is a goldmine. The conversation flows naturally, with casual yet articulate speech—ideal for shadow speech (or "shadowspeak") exercises. Nolan’s calm tone and the interviewer’s conversational style make it easy to mimic rhythm, intonation, and everyday phrasing. Plus, the mix of personal anecdotes and deep thoughts on storytelling gives you exposure to both casual and formal language, perfect for real-world communication.
Break It Down: Natural Phrases to Master
Let’s look at 3 key lines that sound "real" and why they work:
- "So I’ve got so many questions for you today, with no spoilers of course, but quite a few about that movie and how it was made." The phrase "with no spoilers of course" is a conversational filler that softens the request, making it sound polite and natural. It’s a great example of how native speakers add context without being too direct.
- "The film is not finished to me until the audience sees it." The structure "is not finished to me" uses simple words but conveys a deep idea. This shows how short phrases can carry emotion—perfect for practicing intonation to emphasize meaning.
- "It’s a love story. It’s also a war story. It’s a coming-of-age story." Repetition of "It’s a" creates rhythm, making the list easy to follow. This pattern is common in storytelling and helps build fluency when explaining ideas.
Practice Routine: Shadowing the Dialogue
Try this shadowspeak exercise to master the clip: 1. Watch the video once to understand the context. 2. Play a 5-second segment, pause, and repeat it out loud—mimic the tone, speed, and pauses. 3. Record yourself, then compare it to the original. Notice if you’re matching the intonation (e.g., the rise in "it’s a very exciting time"). 4. Focus on tricky phrases like "the audience owns it"—say it slowly, then speed up. 5. Do this daily for 10 minutes, and you’ll start to sound more natural in no time!
Whether you’re learning English with YouTube or prepping for an exam, this interview is a fun, effective way to practice. Remember: the goal is to imitate first, then adapt—and soon, you’ll be speaking with confidence!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've had · has also launched · you've done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was made · is displayed · was ever invented |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Odyssey, which is · location, which was · people who maybe |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.