Christopher Nolan Talks 'Inception'

Ending, Batman and "Chasing Reality"

in Princeton Grad Speech

Christopher Nolan Princeton University, Office of Communications, Denise Applewhite

"The most important thing about Bruce Wayne yes, he attended

Princeton, but he didn't graduate," he said to roaring applause. "So as
of tomorrow, you are all already better than Batman!"

Christopher Nolan shared some respectful, realistic graduation advice at Princeton's

commencement ceremony on Monday morning.

"In the great tradition of these speeches,
generally someone says something along the
lines of 'Chase your dreams,' but I don't want to
tell you that because I don't believe that," he
told the students at Class Day. "I want you to
chase your reality."
"I feel that over time, we started to view reality
as the poor cousin to our dreams, in a sense. ...
I want to make the case to you that our
dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions
that we enjoy and surround ourselves with
they are subsets of reality," he later reflected,
apologizing to anyone who hadn't seen
Inception. "The way the end of that film
worked, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb
he was off with his kids, he was in his own
subjective reality. He didn't really care
anymore, and that makes a statement:
perhaps, all levels of reality are valid. The
camera moves over the spinning top just before
it appears to be wobbling, it was cut to black."
"I skip out of the back of the theater before
people catch me, and there's a very, very
strong reaction from the audience: usually a bit
of a groan," he joked. "The point is, objectively,
it matters to the audience in absolute terms:
even though when I'm watching, it's fiction, a
sort of virtual reality. But the question of
whether that's a dream or whether it's real is
the question I've been asked most about any of
the films I've made. It matters to people
because that's the point about reality. Reality
matters."
The director of Interstellar and The Dark Knight
trilogy first noted that he met his wife on the
first day of college a remark met with
palpable audience sentiment and though
their graduation was bittersweet, they were
ready to get out there.
"We felt very much as if we had accumulated
this whole wheel of Brie of knowledge!" he
joked. "Of course, what I realize is, it's actually
Swiss cheese those gaps in there are the
point. They're the important part, because
you're going to get out there and fill those gaps
you didn't even know you had, and you're going
to fill them with experience. Some of it
marvelous, some of it terrible. And you're going
to learn that way.
"What you have achieved here will see you
through that. You haven't just learned a body
of knowledge; you've learned how to learn,
you've learned the value of learning," he
continued. "Most importantly, some of those
gaps will be filled with the most precious thing
of all: new thought, new ideas, things that are
going to change the world."
Nolan admitted that as a believer in Inception,
"the idea that you can plant the seed of an idea
that will grow into something more substantial
over time I do feel some responsibility to try
and say something to you that will carry
forward and might help you in some way." He
thought back to the world into which he
graduated: "Racism, income inequality, warfare
I could go on but you know this list, and the
reason you know it is because it's exactly the
same today. What have we been doing for the
last twenty years? If I'm gonna give you any
advice, I have to take a hard look at my
generation and what we've done."
"The truth is, I think we failed to address a lot
of the fundamentals possibly for a good
reason. I think we went out into the world
believing that if we could connect the world, if
we could allow the free exchange of ideas
across geographical boundaries, economic
boundaries, if we could all talk, these problems
would go away. Unfortunately, I think by now,
we have to acknowledge that we were wrong,
that's not the case. Communication is not
everything. So much of the resources
intellectual, financial of my generation have
gone into communications infrastructure and
achieved wonderful things, but perhaps not as
wonderful as we claim them to be."
"It's an insult to reality," said Nolan of being
stuck to screens, rather than looking out the
window of the cross-country airplane he took
to get there, for example. "I have to
acknowledge the irony that I am someone who
made a film, half of which is set in the cabin of
an airplane where people are dealing with
realities within realities, so I've certainly had
my part to play in this, perhaps. But when
you're flying in an airplane across this
incredible country, you're enjoying one of the
great modern marvels, you're getting a
perspective on America, on our landscape and
where we are that no one's ever had before."
"Look at fundamentals how can we change
things, move the ball on this and progress? I
don't have to tell you how to do it. I just have
to tell you it's your problem now," he
challenged them. "It's very important that
people are really affected by what you do. I
think you have limitless potential."
Nolan closed by clarifying the longstanding
debate of Batman's standing at Princeton,
thanks to a scene from Batman begins. "The
most important thing about Bruce Wayne
yes, he attended Princeton, but he didn't
graduate," he said to roaring applause. "So as
of tomorrow, you are all already better than
Batman!"