Nolan takes tenth for making narrative structure part of the spectacle. Start with Inception (2010), a heist built around entering dreams, then try Memento (2000) for a more compact puzzle. Ask what you know at each point, not simply what the final explanation means.
His invitation to reconstruct a story earns a place. Wilder stays above him because we favour effortless tonal movement over visible machinery. Put intricate plotting and large-scale ambition first, and Nolan can climb; our ranking rewards more than the complexity of a timeline.
Source: BFI.
Photo: PhilipRomano · CC BY-SA 4.0. Resized and recompressed; original status retained.
