쉐도잉 연습: Christopher Nolan talks narrative decisions, film critics and whether he Christianised The Odyssey - 영상으로 영어 말하기 배우기

All right.

Hello, Mr. Nolan.

Hello.

Nice to meet you.

Well, filmmakers are bards of the modern age, just like the Greeks know of Odysseus,

Achilles, Agamemnon because of Homer's narratives.

We know of the Batman, the Joker and Oppenheimer because of your narratives.

And Homer tells stories of distant past.

U2.

The Trojan War happened between 12th to 11th century BC, but Homer lived in the 8th century BC, so that's a long time ago.

But Homer's time was a time of rise.

It was a time of civilizational rise.

The Greeks were prospering as a culture.

The economy, the books, the thinking, everything is on the rise for a couple of hundred years,

really until the 5th century BC.

So Homer's tone was celebratory.

It was victorious.

He celebrates the victory of the war.

And your tone is emphatically not.

So I guess my first question is, does that say something about our age?

Are you a bard for a civilization at dusk?

I think there's a really interesting point, a really interesting question.

I mean, underlying the main point is this 400 year or

so gap between the events that Homer is describing when Homer's story was written down or first received by readers and audiences,

that's a pretty interesting gap.

And for me, I don't think I'm completely at odds with the way Homer's telling the story

when you look at it from a sort of historical perspective.

And the reason is, and what I got interested in as I adapted it, is that Homer's writing about an era before his.

He's writing about an era hundreds of years before that his audience viewed as being more advanced than theirs.

So they were a civilization on the rise, but they were trying to get back to where they'd been 400 years before.

So that idea of a cycle, that idea of, as you say, a civilization at dusk, I think it's there in the poem.

It's subtle.

But when you look at the history as well, and you look at the idea that, you know, when they would unearth these walls of old palaces that were crumbled.

They called them Cyclopean walls because they thought only a giant could have built such grand walls.

They had this idea of the greatness of this past civilization.

And so I became interested by that collapse, what they call the catastrophe,

the Bronze Age collapse, what happens between the events of the Trojan War and Homer.

And so, yeah, I think it's something that from a modern perspective is frightening and interesting and intriguing.

And I think for me, it partly comes out of having worked on Alpenheimer before this, which is very much a film about the end of the world,

about the end of all collapse of civilization, ultimately.

So I think, yeah, I definitely carried that sensibility into this adaptation of the Odyssey.

I mean, one thing that captured me was that the concept of atonement doesn't exist in Greek culture.

It doesn't exist in the Greek language.

It doesn't exist in Homer's Odyssey.

it exists in your odyssey

so I guess a natural question that I had when watching the film was did you Christianize the odyssey

do you think

that atonement why did atonement become important for the coming of

catastrophe I think it's a really good question I wasn't too

conscious in how I was approaching it philosophically other than I really honed in on the idea of of what's termed Xenia.

In the film, we call it Zeus's law, for simplicity.

But it's that idea of mutual respect, that I treat you the way I want to be treated.

And in their theology, it's because you might be a god in disguise.

So I really drilled down on that, and I started to realize that,

for me, a lot of what's interesting about the interaction of history and mythology is this idea of the sea peoples,

is the idea of the people from the sea who were thought to have precipitated the Bronze Age collapse.

It's one of the great mysteries of history, like who were they?

But the idea that really a violation of Xenia, a violation of Zeus' law, which is what the suit is doing in the palace,

that that really, it's that break of Zeus' law that is causing this difficulty and this damage.

I think the idea of atonement, in a way, is what we bring as viewers to the story.

I don't know whether there really is atonement in the film, or whether we just feel that that's the catharsis,

or that's the process we're seeing in the final meeting that we've waited for between Odysseus and Penelope.

But I think in a way, we may be bringing our more modern sensibility to that.

But I think it's a very interesting question.

And insofar as it's there, it's not a deliberate attempt to, for example, Christianize it, but it's an outgrowth

or it's a natural conclusion of borrowing in on this philosophical idea of what happens when you break Zeus's law.

I guess from what you're saying, the connection between atonement, which is the perspective of a Christian world, and xenia, which is the perspective inherent in the Greek world,

what connects them is the fact of war.

What is the response to war?

And you still want to say that the presentation is inherent in the Greek mythology,

mythological worldview, that war happened when hospitality or Xenia is broken.

I think so.

And I think that it's sometimes difficult to draw a line.

I think academics often maybe are too dogmatic in drawing a line between different philosophies and as they evolve historically, because I think I was more interested in commonalities.

Because one of the things I found is that once you ignore the theological underpinning of Xenia, what you realize is that it is what we,

in modern terms, call the golden rule.

You know, this idea of treat others as you would be treated has never really changed over time.

The reasons that we try to hold people to that might have changed.

But the idea itself hasn't changed.

And what I came to think is

that what the poem to me is saying

or inspiring me is the idea of civilization depends on this rule and possibly is even defined by it.

And that to me was a really interesting thing to realize

that this ancient text to me speaks directly to the modern world

because I think we live in a world where the concept of xenia, the concept of mutual respect is more challenged I think than it's ever been in more obvious ways than it's ever been.

And I think we see the negative effects of that in terms of what defines civilization, what binds us together.

Right.

Here's another Greek concept that is challenged in our world, hubris.

There's another, you've already started to complain about academics, and I feel like the next question will expose me even more.

There's another great book written by another great man, Susythides' Peloponnesian War, also has a central theme on the hubris of the Athenians.

He blamed the fall of the greatest civilization in the world, Athenian democracy, on the hubris of the Athenians.

Your film centralizes on the hubris of one man, the human pride of one specific man.

My question is, should Odysseus repent for his human pride, maybe pride appropriate for a great man?

I mean, I suppose the question could be asked, what difference would it make if he repented?

You know, that's the interesting thing about these philosophical approaches is that his repentance would be purely internal.

It would purely be for his own spiritual self.

It wouldn't necessarily affect anything outside it because the damage is done.

Xenia is broken, maybe for all time.

I mean, that's the interesting thing.

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I think, you know, that is the thing about hubris.

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That is the thing about, you know, it's tragic because it's irreversible, essentially.

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And that's where Christian theology looks at it in a different way, but in a practical sense doesn't necessarily change what's happened.

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And therefore, in storytelling terms, is it necessarily relevant?

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You know, that's when I say we bring our understanding to it.

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So we feel that there's catharsis because there's confession, because there's honesty and intimacy between Odysseus and Penelope.

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And that was very important to me.

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And I'm very invested in that emotionally.

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But if it has no practical effect and the collapse is coming anyway, the catastrophe is coming, you know, what difference does it make if he repents?

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You know, that's the interesting thing.

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Are we concerned with his spiritual well-being, or are we concerned with the world that he lives in, and the world that in some sense he feels he's damaged?

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We live in an age that demands apology from greatness.

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Great storytellers, when they portray greatness, and Homer celebrates it, we circle around it, we dance around it, we turn greatness into privileges, and we demand apologies for it.

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That's a fact of Hollywood.

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I'm just wondering if, as one of the greatest storytellers of our age, how do you approach greatness?

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Is it still a story of apology that demands repentance and reflection and self-criticism?

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Well, I think that when you're talking about storytelling, you're always in conversation with the expectations of the audience.

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So it really is an energy that's brought from the audience as well as an energy that's put forward from the

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story itself.

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So when you're characterizing somebody, and the trite version of this, or the criticism is often leveled at movies in general is,

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oh, the character has to be made sympathetic so the character is manipulated in different ways or changed in different ways.

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And that's a fundamental flaw of film criticism in a way

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or storytelling criticism because to be able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism.

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And that's a real problem in criticism today because people have this idea

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that because I can understand why the story affects me the way it is, therefore it didn't work.

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That's not how storytelling works.

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So when we create a heroic figure in a story, as storytellers, we have to be mindful of the energy

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that the audience brings to that story and the interaction between our intention and the way the audience receives that.

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And the fact that that mechanism is identifiable to people doesn't invalidate it.

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Part of that mechanism is saying, are we going to treat greatness as an absolute or coming from a democratic,

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coming from a more idealized philosophical state that we live in in today's world where we want to view people as equal?

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Do we have to apologize for that greatness?

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And the answer is, yes, we do.

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Or the audience rejects the greatness.

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And that is part of the mechanism.

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Once again, the fact that the mechanism is identifiable doesn't mean that it's invalid or shouldn't be used.

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And so for me, as we talk about it, none of these things are things that I try to be conscious of when I'm writing or self-conscious of.

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But as we talk about it, we will, of course, realize that my attempt to do

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that is to retain it within the philosophical surrounding of the breaking of Xenia that I have found interesting in the story.

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So I'm trying to be true to the thematics of the story as I create a character

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that the audience can invest in and can feel satisfied by.

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As you were speaking, first of all, I like how you dragged film critics down the water as well as academics.

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But I just realized filmmakers in a way have it much harder than poets

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because poems can only be read in the language that is the culture in which it is written.

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You can't read Shakespeare really, not in English or Goethe, not in German, but filmmakers have to speak to audiences outside of his polis,

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people who don't speak their language.

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you come to a place with people of different normals and different customs and you don't put them into consideration.

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No, but the interesting thing about film, and this is, you know, when I was talking about film criticism, I was talking more about amateur film criticism than professional film criticism,

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because professional film criticism tends to understand the necessity for the mechanisms.

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So you're looking at a lingua franca of storytelling created by Hollywood for the last hundred years that is very effectively universal.

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And so it is its own language.

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And that language is understood by people all over the world, which is what's incredible about it.

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And it is a very, very accessible modern language of storytelling.

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And it has certain rules.

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It has conventions.

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You can break those conventions.

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You can bend them.

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You can move them.

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But you have to be aware of them the whole time.

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And as I say, I'm thinking more of amateur criticism

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when I say that people who because they feel they've identified the mechanism they feel that it invalidates it.

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That can be true of certain elements and film grammar, film language evolves with that.

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So when a trope becomes too familiar to an audience, you know, then it has to be changed.

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But we do as filmmakers avail ourselves of that common language.

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We build on that understanding.

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Our audience has seen many films and they understand that language.

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So you're playing with that language.

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It's the language of genre.

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It's the language of audience sympathy.

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It's the language of clarity and of narrative direction and how you guide people through a story.

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You're talking about a relationship to tradition and innovation because at some point the mechanism becomes trite or unusable.

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But without the mechanism, you can't really build.

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You have nothing to do.

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Exactly.

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You can't, yes, you can't completely have a tabula rasa.

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You can't throw everything away.

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You have to make your choices in terms of how am I orienting a story.

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So for example, one of my first films, Memento, was a story that I structured in reverse chronologically.

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But what I retained was a very, very clear and simple three-act structure.

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So the structure of the film as it's received by the audience is very, very conventional, but the chronology is unconventional.

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And so those are the choices you make.

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That's one example where you say, okay, I need this to be extremely familiar underneath so that I can change what's on the surface.

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And that's a continual mechanism that's evolving and that you're working with the whole time.

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I'm again thinking like a nerdy doctoral student who has to write a dissertation.

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I mean, writing on Plato or Aristotle is the most difficult thing to do.

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just like making a film on the Odyssey.

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It's been done for thousands of years.

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And making memento, you can make it whatever you want.

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Nobody knows if the character, they won't have a complaint about your adaptive choices.

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And I'm curious, you've said before, after Oppenheimer, with the success of Oppenheimer, you felt like you've had a kind of liberty to do whatever you want

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or actualize what you want to do and you chose the most difficult dissertation to write if you're getting a PhD.

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I mean, in some ways, but in other ways, there's something I do think your question is slightly missing,

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which is that what I'm trying to say is that when you make Memento, yes, it's a character I've created, and people won't criticize it on that,

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but it's in a tradition of noirish amnesia-based noir fiction, and people judge it by those terms.

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so even though on the surface of things nominally a film is a different

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or an original creation the audience

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and critics know they tend to judge it in relation to previous examples of the genre

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which is an advantage and a disadvantage and so you know yes

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when you adapt batman for example there are a lot of

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people who are going to say well hang on why is it this way why is it

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that way and everything else

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but even with an original story it's the same thing it's

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like well hang on why have you used the protagonist in this way?

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Why has this character done this?

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Why has it done that?

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And they're judging it relative to the overall cultural flow of the movement of cinema and the conventions of cinema.

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But as I say, it's not a complaint.

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It's because it's just something you have to be aware of as a filmmaker.

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It's an advantage and it's a disadvantage.

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Yeah, with The Odyssey, you've dragged the classicists to a hound behind your back.

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I guess final question for me, what are the gods?

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Are they figments of imagination or are they necessary noble lies?

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They are, to the characters in the story, they are reality.

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And what I found interesting about looking at the idea of gods and how to address it, the way I got interested in addressing this from the point of view of people who would have lived in that time,

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for whom in a pre-scientific era, evidence of divinity is everywhere.

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And so the existence of gods is not an article of faith.

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It's simple reality.

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So thunder and lightning is God speaking to them.

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The state of the ocean is moved by the gods.

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They have no other explanation for it.

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And so just as we accept things from science as absolute fact, you know, the earth is round and we travel around the sun, we can't know these things.

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We take them as faith because they're presented as facts.

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The same would be true of the theological structure that explains nature to people at that time.

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And so for me, the gods are real, but they are inside the people.

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They are being projected by the people.

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Oh, that's cool.

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Just like superheroes for we moderns.

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Yeah, in a way.

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Thank you very much, Mr. Nolan.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Very interesting conversation.

쉐도잉이란? 영어 실력을 빠르게 키우는 과학적 방법

쉐도잉(Shadowing)은 원래 전문 통역사 훈련을 위해 개발된 언어 학습 기법으로, 다언어 학자인 Dr. Alexander Arguelles에 의해 대중화된 방법입니다. 핵심 원리는 간단하지만 매우 강력합니다: 원어민의 영어를 들으면서 1~2초의 짧은 지연으로 즉시 소리 내어 따라 말하는 것——마치 '그림자(shadow)'처럼 화자를 따라가는 것입니다. 문법 공부나 수동적인 청취와 달리, 쉐도잉은 뇌와 입 근육이 동시에 실시간으로 영어를 처리하고 재현하도록 훈련합니다. 연구에 따르면 이 방법은 발음 정확도, 억양, 리듬, 연음, 청취력, 말하기 유창성을 크게 향상시킵니다. IELTS 스피킹 준비와 자연스러운 영어 소통을 원하는 분들에게 특히 효과적입니다.

쉐도잉 연습: Christopher Nolan talks narrative decisions, film critics and whether he Christianised The Odyssey - 영상으로 영어 말하기 배우기

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