Nolan discusses importance of reality in Class Day address

Dreams are virtual realities distracting us from confronting the true power of changing our reality, film director Christopher Nolan said in his Class Day keynote address to graduating seniors.

Describing the widely disputed final scene in his 2010 film“Inception,” Nolan said that viewers kept asking if it had been real or if it had been a dream. The question pointed to a deeper concern with the importance of recognizing realities in order to move forward and create an impact.

“The point is, objectively, that it matters to the audience in absolute terms — even though we’re watching it as a picture, which is its own virtual reality. But the question, whether it was a dream or whether it was real, is the one I’ve been asked most out of any of the films I’ve made. It matters to people,” Nolan said. “Reality matters.”

Nolan then offered some unconventional advice for seniors.

“In these graduation speeches, generally, you have the speaker say something along the lines of, ‘You need to chase your dreams,’ ” Nolan said. “But I’m not going to say that because I don’t believe it. I don’t want you to chase your dreams. I want you to chase your realities. And I want to say: Don’t chase your realities at the expense of your dreams, but as the foundation of your dreams.”

Nolan warned seniors that they might experience a melancholy sense of lacking knowledge, as he did upon graduating 20 years ago. He said he realized he did not know everything there was to know after four years in college. However, a college education supplies the capacity to learn from various life experiences, Nolan said.

“Those gaps in there are the point,” Nolan said. “You’re going to get out there and fill those gaps that you don’t even realize are gaps of knowledge. You’re going to fill them with experiences — some of them wrong, some of them terrible. You’re going to realize that what you have achieved here will see you through that point … You have learned how to learn. And I can say that, in all honesty, 20 years on, I’m a much better student now than I was when I was in college.”

Nolan also noted that those in his generation once looked to advanced forms of communication as the antidote to social issues.

“[They believed] that if we could connect the world, if we could allow for a free exchange of ideas across geographic boundaries, economic boundaries, if we could all talk,then these problems would go away,” Nolan said.“And unfortunately, I think by now we acknowledge that we were wrong. That’s not the case.”

After all, racism, income inequality and warfare still persist today, Nolan noted. While new resources and goods had achieved wonderful things, global communication was not the ultimate solution, as people had once imagined.

Nolan said he believed the key was to respect reality. Rather than discounting reality as a “poor cousin” to our dreams, people should look more closely, examine more carefully and uncover the fundamentals of issues in order to change them, he said.

“I want for you to be suspicious of things,” Nolan said. “I want for you to look at the fundamentals, look — really look — at the change you can effect, how you can actually move forward and progress in this way.”

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Nolan further challenged seniors to use their University experience to improve the realities around them.

“It’s very important that you take the elevated position that you have achieved over these four years —you acknowledge that this fantastic education is furthering you — and do everything you can do with it to improve the world, to improve reality, in whatever field you go into,” Nolan said.

Looking out across a sea of Batman-masked faces, Nolan finally settled the question of Bruce Wayne’s University connection. He acknowledged that members of the Class of 2015 had one thing Wayne did not have.

“There’s been a certain amount of talk about Batman,” he said. “Yes, he attended Princeton but didn’t graduate. He didn’t graduate, but aftertomorrow, you are already better than Batman.”