Determining the one true turning point in film history has, and always will be, one of the most discussed and divisive topics among filmmakers and historians alike. For some, it s D.W. Griffith s refining of the art of cinema with Birth of a Nation in 1915.
For others, it’s Orson Wells 1941 Citizen Kane, the greatest film in history that broke all cinematic conventions. For most film students and critics though, there s no more significant point in modern film history than the emergence of Les cahiers du cinema, the most fêted and influential film journal that changed how people regarded films from 1952 till this very day.
Critics, and future filmmakers, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and their peers, started to examine films with a different, deeper approach.
Classic Hollywood films that were rendered to be sheer entertainment pieces for established American critics like Pauline Kael, began through the writings of the French mavericks, to be perceived as an erudite and thorough record of America and an indirect projection of the filmmakers ideas, personalities and psyche.
The one filmmaker the new wave helped to boost image and propel to greatness is Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock was always considered back then to be the grandmaster of suspense and entertainment. Many critics accused his films of lack of substance. He was too successful to respond to his detractors and he even claimed, much to the dismay of his opponents, that his films are a tool for his showmanship.
This, in part, is true indeed but the larger-than-life figure of the British filmmaker was cemented in film heavens through his obtrusive themes of desire, voyeurism, misogyny, and his fixation on the idealistic model of women he created in every film.
Through the Les cahiers du cinema, the world realized that great entertainments, like Hitchcock s, could contain imposing views that might not appear on the surface but are, in fact, the main concealed reason why these films are great indeed.
Christopher Nolan, the rightful heir to Hitchcock, is marching towards a career as successful and stimulating as that of the great master.
Since his impressive debut with Following, one of the best Noir films of the last 20 years, in 1998, Nolan proved that he s not interested in producing traditional filmmaking; he clearly wanted to create a new breed of thoughtful entertainments that resemble nothing in the often tedious modern film world.
Two years later, he took a fiction narration blue-print of a little known Harold Pinter play called Betrayal, mastered it and released Memento, one of the most revolutionary films of the decade.
The psychological nightmare of Insomnia followed in 2002 and the 36-year-old British director suddenly became a young legend-in-the-making with the mammoth success of 2005 s Batman Begins.
His latest film, The Prestige, is another step for Nolan in creating a distinguished, unparallel body of work.
Nolan re-teams with Batman s Christian Bale and Michael Caine along with Hugh Jackman, Scarlett Johansson and David Bowie to tell a story about the incessant rivalry between two magicians in Victorian-era England where these magicians were seen as the rock stars of their age.
We gradually learn that the two men started off their careers as distant friends, trying to decipher the mysteries of their idols tricks. Angier (Jackman) is the showman, the entertainer who possesses the charisma and repertoire to attract a huge crowd.
Borden, on the other hand, is the brooding, serious and better magician who s dedicated to his craft to a frightening extent, and doesn t own any of the crowd-pleasing senses his adversary abundantly enjoys.
The two have their fallout after the death of Angier s wife caused by, as he believes, Borden s recklessness and vanity.
The two men engage in a constant struggle to survive the numerous shots each one take at sabotaging the acts, and career, of the other while always trying to maintain a level of superiority, regardless of the cost.
Like Nolan s previous works, The Prestige doesn t follow the classic linear narrative method. It starts from the end of the story, goes to a part in the middle, arrives back at the beginning and juggles the convoluted timing frame for the rest of the story.
The narrative formula is an essential part of the story and the order of events is placed so carefully to present a breathtaking visual puzzle akin to Following or Memento.
Although it s set at a turn-of-the-century London, the film never feels like a period drama. Nolan used mostly handheld cameras to shoot the dressed L.A. set, allowing the actors to move freely and spawning a picture that spontaneous and fluid with a dark atmosphere and a unique look unbound to a certain age.
Each one of the young filmmaker s previous films contained ideas and themes, like Hitchcock, embedded inside the twisted drama and tension of the story. Underneath all the darkness of Following lies a story about the search of intimacy and meaning.
While Memento was, essentially, mediation on the subjectivity and ruse of the human memory, Insomnia was about moral ambiguity and guilt.
Batman was a grand allegory of grief, revenge and the thin line between good and evil in a disintegrating world.
As for The Prestige, the film tells a story about obsession, deceit, and the corrupting effect of celebrity and the fascination with the basic concept of illusion.
The two protagonists of the film are unsympathetic and, by the end of the film, any compassion we ve held towards one of the two will easily peter out. Nevertheless, the fundamental concept of obsession includes no positive connotation.
For the two, the obsession with their craft becomes an addiction that makes them lose grasp of reality, trapping them inside their own anomalous bubble.
The magic show is, after all, is no different from a film and it s us, the viewers, who represent the real cause for the rottenness of the leading characters.
Nolan tries to explain the plight of his characters; to inject them with some soft human traits to make us identify with them. But we re rarely interested; it s all about the show for us, the amusement and rush we receive from such a spectacle.
The Prestige is the most original film since 2004 s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It s engrossing, gothic with a big twist ending you ll never anticipate; and just like the best of the Hitchcock films, it s a great entertainment with hidden themes that are unfolded and enhanced with multiple viewings.
