New Delhi, July 19 -- What ruined cinema was equality. Making a film was once expensive, hence scarce. Only a few people born in the right homes or the handful who got lucky, as though nature wanted to fool people into believing anyone can succeed, could make films.

Also, cinema was all that people had. Now there is the chaos of social progress. Anyone can make a motion picture. And it is not all that people have to while away their time or be moved.

But there is a kind of cinema that endures because it is unattainable for most people. And it is for the same reason that Christopher Nolan is famous; it is because he has become an inequality-preserving institution.

The kind of stature he has today is usually not granted by the world, but...