Christopher Nolan, trick director

Rating: 5/10 (23 October 2012)

I didn't remember who was the director of The Prestige when I finally decided to watch it. So this is not a matter of prejudice, but when the credits eventually rolled I was relieved both because I found it overlong and protracted and because I was now definitely able to put a word on why I don't like Christopher Nolan as a director.
Let me start at the beginning. I just start to watch The Prestige as an honest viewer. I am not that found of magic shows but this sounded like a nice story. Actually I remember it's IMDb ranking and the presence of Michael Caine who put the movie on my backlog of recent flicks I might enjoy. Early on the storyline fluctuates between various times: past, past-perfect, present. It's OK, but it really doesn't help the movie build up "emotional momentum". The story never trusts continuity so we are demanded to always switch our attention on episodes that explain the whole story one anecdote at a time.
PLOT OBSESSION Most viewers seem to like this very authoritative way of telling the story. They are told what to watch, what to understand little by little and it's all about the plot, the plot, the plot. Characters are mere props. In the Prestige I realised Hugh Jackman is only an average actor. I agree the part is not the greatest but he really doesn't shine. As for Christian Bale I already knew he was a big ham who thinks he's good, dead serious while trying too hard to display his actor's studio abilities. Both actors are boring at best in the course of this story, and Christian Bale as the most boring part of all.
Well it's a fact that the lead illusionists are mean and inhuman characters. The chopped up narration only makes it more about their sick minds than their wounded souls. Fortunately there are a few nice characters here. Michael Caine adds humanity and presence to a simple part, and the feminine characters also help the movie rises up from its plot obsession. The production values help too, when the nicest characters aren't there.
Christopher Nolan is only too happy to have his plot tick like a clockwork, but eventually he is only a trick director in the same way as Agatha Christie was a trick writer. Characters don't matter, they're here to do the trick. Memento was a one-trick movie. Batman begins and The Prestige are very similar with their trick-filled characters immobile while the whole movie revolves around them in a big spinning trick. And Inception is a trick in a trick in a trick. Characters start as tricksters and they soon vanish behind the tricks layer.
To me that is the opposite of cinema: the trick is the show while it should be the illusion that it creates. Weird since this is the main lesson, clearly enunciated, in The Prestige: "There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art." (R. L. Stevenson)