Christopher Nolan learned the hard way that criticism of one of his films can come from anywhere.
While delivering his acceptance speech for Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards on Wednesday, the Oppenheimer helmer opened up about his "complex emotional relationship" with critics, as reported by Variety. The 53-year-old filmmaker went on to reveal that he once attended a virtual Peloton class where the instructor obliterated his film.
"I was on my Peloton. I'm dying. And the instructor started talking about one of my films and said, 'Did anyone see this? That's a couple hours of my life I'll never get back again,'" Nolan said. "When [film critic] Rex Reed takes a shit on your film he doesn't ask you to work out!"
Unsurprisingly, internet sleuths were not only able to track down the Peloton instructor who trashed his film, but a clip has already surfaced.
"This song is from the soundtrack of a movie called Tenet. Anybody see this shit? Did anybody see this besides me? 'Cause I need a manual. Somebody's gotta explain this," instructor Jenn Sherman said as Travis Scott's "The Plan" played. "Yeah, I'm not kidding. What the fuck was going on in that movie? Do you understand? Seriously, you need to be a neuroscientist to understand, and that's two and a half hours of my life that I want back. I want it back."
In Sherman's defense, if you were to look up the "temporal pincer movement" from Tenet, you will find a lot of confused people looking for answers.
Nolan continued, "In today’s world, where opinions are everywhere, there is a sort of idea that film criticism is being democratized, but I for one think the critical appreciation of films shouldn’t be an instinct, but it should be a profession."
"What we have here tonight is a group of professionals who attempt objectivity," the prolific director said of the critics in attendance. "Obviously writing about cinema objectively is a paradox, but the aspirations of objectivity is what makes criticism vital and timeless and useful to filmmakers and the filmmaking community."
