Two Face

Rating: 9/10 (21 November 2006)

"Batman Begins" 's sequel may not be the one you think it is. If the end of the last Christopher Nolan's picture introduces a new and laughing threat in Gotham City, which will indeed face the Jocker in 2008, it also announces complex narrative ideas, that "The Prestige" greatly develops.
Inspector James Gordon, portrayed in "Batman Begins" like a pessimistic crime philosopher, theorized evil as a mimetic spiral, saying that if justice uses masks, tricks and theatrical fear, like the Batman does, the villains he fights will do the same. The two faces will always imitate them-self, in a perfect symmetry that leads to more elaborated weapons and increase the level of violence. "The Prestige", even before this confrontation between the Batman and the Jocker, illustrates Gordon's statement, through the confrontation between two magicians (Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, for those who dreamed about a cinematographic crossover between Batman and Wolverine...) in the dark streets of London in the late XIX century (those who lived there or read "From Hell" know what I'm talking about). And of course,as the movie goes on, their fight becomes more and more dramatic, more and more epic, and more and more violent.
"The Prestige" already transcends Nolan's filmography and could be seen like the artistic apogee of his career (for now on), because it mixes the great storytelling style of "Batman Begins" and "Insomnia" with the experimental narration and style of "Fallowing" and "Memento". The film also develops thematics from the previous Nolan's movies, such as the dualism of the characters, which always are in the edge of madness, the obsession which leads to the lost of your humanity, the constant in and go in time, which loses the spectator into the tortured consciences of the characters (but you always understand everything because of the intelligence and the finesse of the construction), etc. This great storytelling, mixed with this accurate style defines what we can call "narrative realism". This means that all the realistic elements of the movies only goes to maintain the dramatic progression of the plot and to develops the themes of the movie. That gives the impression that the story and its progression is all that matters in the movie, but that it only works because of the complexity of the style that underlines it : multiplicity of the points of view, intermix of the time lines, suspensions of the revelations, etc. "Narrative realism", which can regroups cinematographer like Nolan, but also Shyamalan, creates a new form of modernity, in with the storyline is essential - whereas it isn't in post-modern cinema, as you can experience it with Lynch or Tarantino 's movies. You enjoy fallowing the plot of the movie, but you also take great pleasure in its complex structure, which is clever and modern.
In my opinion, such a fun redefinition of cinematographic modernity hasn't occur in American cinema since David Fincher's "Fight Club".