Christopher Nolan defends Interstellar's sound, There have been complaints about how audible the dialogue is in Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. The man himself has responded.
Last week, we ran a piece on this site looking at the inaudibility of dialogue in modern movies, and Christopher Nolan's Interstellar was part and parcel of that. In fact, Nolan's last three features could all have the accusation of difficult to hear dialogue aimed at them, in spite of their many rich qualities.
To be fair, in the case of Interstellar, there's an argument that there are bits of dialogue you're perhaps not supposed to hear, that other parts of the audio mix are intended to be more prominent in places. One cinema in the US, the Cinemark Tinseltown - presumably following complaints - stuck a note on its box office windows saying "all of our sound equipment is functioning properly. Christopher Nolan mixed the soundtrack with an emphasis on the music. This is how it is intended to sound" to clarify matters.
And now the man himself has stepped in. Christopher Nolan defended his use of sound in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, arguing that "many of the filmmakers I’ve admired over the years have used sound in bold and adventurous ways. I don’t agree with the idea that you can only achieve clarity through dialogue. Clarity of story, clarity of emotions — I try to achieve that in a very layered way using all the different things at my disposal — picture and sound".
Furthermore, Nolan confirmed that he had visited six or seven cinemas since the film's release and that "the theatres I have been at have been doing a terrific job in terms of presenting the film in the way I intended".
"Broadly speaking, there is no question when you mix a film in an unconventional way as this, you’re bound to catch some people off guard, but hopefully people can appreciate the experience for what it’s intended to be", he said.
In short: in the case of Interstellar, certainly, the difficult to hear dialogue moments are clearly deliberate.
