In this month's issue of the Journal of
American Studies of Turkey, I have a published piece on Christopher Nolan
and his very problematic adaptation of the genre of film noir. Because it is
published, I am not allowed to put the entire thing on this blog. However, I
can provide a brief excerpt. Please visit the
journal's website in order to read the entire thing, though I'm not sure
its online yet. Enjoy:
The apex of Nolan’s career, his $200m dollar sci-fi spectacle
Inception, certainly shows his most self-conscious attempts to bring out
noir motifs. It is no coincidence that the heist genre has been
celebrated in works like John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and
Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1958), both of which feature a one
last job, as the protagonist Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) has here. Nolan
certainly shows a craft is subverting some of the main tropes—Cobb’s job is not
stealing something but instead putting something inside a vault. Additionally,
the significant portion of the narrative takes place inside the psychological
plane, where existential fears can manifest themselves into physical threats
(the basis of film noir). The central threat, and perhaps the most unique
character Nolan has put on screen, is Mal, the dead wife of Cobb (Marion
Cotillard). Cobb is overwhelmed by guilt of leading his wife to suicide,
one that he feels responsible for enough that she becomes a dangerous and
malicious figure whenever he enters the dreamscape. She literally becomes
the femme fatale, a dangerous female that is the manifestation of the
anxiety of the protagonist. As Mark Fisher notes, she “represents a
psychoanalytic Real—a trauma that disrupts any attempt to maintain a stable
sense of reality, that which the subject cannot help bringing with him wherever
he goes” (42).
And
while Cobb will admit to what he’s done by the end of the film, he, like all
other Nolan protagonists, chooses a subjective reality, in which he remains a
hero rather than face the truth of his existence. That final shot of Inception
is not about whether the totem falls but the fact Cobb chooses to ignore it—he
has decided, like Leonard choosing his to change his reality, or Wayne lying to
Gotham, to be a hero in his own subjective world where he remains the good
father and the genius con artist than one where he is the bad husband and
trapped in his own nightmares. Nolan presents this ending to us in a
hopeful, sunlit drenched palette, never allowing his audience to question
whether Cobb has indeed “paid” for his sins, only whether his new reality is
indeed reality.
It is curious
then, of all places, that his most non-noir film is the one where he seriously
considers the themes and significance of his reconstruction of film noir.
The Prestige is Nolan’s only film that tonally confronts the frightening
existential questions at the center of such a tradition.
The film follows two rival magicians, Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Borden
(Christian Bale), who spend the entire narrative of the film attempting to
discover each other’s secrets. The Prestige’s structure is the
most curious of all in how Nolan deals with the idea of an unreliable narrator
in film noir. The original novel by Christopher Priest was written in a
series of diary entries. Nolan takes that idea and shows both Angier and
Borden stealing and then reading each other’s diaries at parts of the
narrative, leading us into long elaborate flashbacks. However, at the end
of each of these, the writer reveals to the reader that he has been
purposefully given the diary and tricked into reading it. This means the
entirety of the narrative is not only subjective, but also delivered by a
narrator with the intention to trick.
But what complicates The Prestige
beyond its search its doubles and search for truth is its tonal and moral
approach to the final implications of its narrative. While we root for
Cobb, Leonard, and Bruce Wayne, we remain ambivalent and truly fearful of these
two magicians. When it’s finally revealed—Angier has preserved his
illusion by murdering himself every night, and Borden has lived his entire life
as twins switching places to even his wife and daughter, and this is a secret
he’s willing to preserve it to his death—it doesn’t have the astonishing effect
that most magic tricks do. It’s instead unsettling and almost horrific to
think about. These magicians lie to themselves and their public about
their method in order to preserve the spectacle, to remain heroes. Kim
Newman posits: “Their characters are monsters whose sole redemption comes in
the revelation that each is willing to inflict grievous harm upon himself to
achieve the illusion he needs for his act” (19).
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