I just finished a Christopher Nolan movie in which a man accidentally becomes responsible for his wife's suicide. To deal with the grief and guilt he builds a world made of real, false and modified memories. He then progressively falls deeper into this absolution fantasy until he can no longer tell reality from his personal fiction. This movie is called Memento.
There's been some writing on how Inception is similar to The Prestige in that the main characters act out various functions in a trick or con that closely parallel the creation of a film. While this is true, Inception is not really a spiritual twin to The Prestige. Rather, it is a philosophical continuation to Memento. Both Inception and Memento are existential exercises in what makes a person's perceptions real, how real are they and does fact matter as much as how we comprehend it. In both of these films the main character creates their own reality which is built upon a foundation of meaning rather than fact. What's interesting is that in both cases this is revealed to us. Granted, in Inception it is done in a much more circumspect way but both movies clearly state at the end (and in the case of Memento the beginning as well) choosing to live within a falsehood may distance one from reality but it will ground one in their own drive to survive. The character of Teddy in Memento says that everyone lies to themselves to be happy. Nolan's repeated thesis is one step further; that some people lie to themselves to survive, even if it takes one away from happiness.
What's really interesting is after paring Nolan's existential perspective down to this concept we see it manifested more in Dark Knight than we do in The Prestige. At the end of Dark Knight the audience sees that Batman is faced with a dilemma. After Harvey Dent turns to murder and then dies, Batman has to choose how to present this to the people of Gotham City. He can give them the truth, that their near saint of a DA has turned to murder and tried to kill children, or present them with a lie, that Batman is a killer and Harvey Dent died in the pursuit of justice. The truth would devastate the community while the lie would strengthen their convictions about good people in power and therefore add stability to a shaky metropolis. As Leonard does in Memento and Cobb in Inception, Batman chooses to preserve the lie that gives purpose over the truth that would destroy.
Taking this concept back to The Prestige we see a bit of this peeking out, but only in shards. Hugh Jackman's character is never able to figure out what is the truth (whether it was a difficult knot that led to his wife's death or simply her inability to perform the trick) and without truth he can never face the existential crisis of purpose or truth. It seems that it is this situation that makes Jackman's character turn outwardly destructive. In the other three films the characters choose lies and turn it into purpose but also self destruction. Their choices to build their world on falsehood adds fuel to their fire, making them burn stronger rather than sputtering out but also burn faster. The obsession that comes out of not being able to choose in The Prestige leads to an outward feud, to a life of external destruction. Both of these situations lead to erosive lives but only when faced with a choice to deal with the truth and make a voluntary choice to live within a lie does the character find any fulfillment in their existence.
The situation I'd like to see Nolan tackle next is making a character face the choice between truth or purpose and choose truth. Purpose over truth shows a materialist pragmatism but what would people inside of a world created by Nolan do if they took the philosophically ideal path?
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