Philosophy of Watching Movies

The movie has multiple takeaways - a more obvious one is a warning about the danger of obsessing about status.

But for me the deepest aspect of the movie is the relationship between the twin brothers (Christian Bale’s part). I’ll call the more mellow twin TA and the more hardcore twin TB.

TB and Danton (Jackman) are for all intents and purposes the same person. Even though the film depicts the relationship between the twins as completely unified, this end scene shows the resentment and disgust TA has for TB via his dialogue with Danton..

As Danton reveals in the end, TB and Danton are obsessed with pursuing the transcendent (that which brings awe and wonder to the crowd).

“You still don’t understand why we do all of this.”
-> It’s somewhat horrifying to realize how much TA is willing to sacrifice — even after his wife suicides and his daughter’s world crushed, he continues to follow TB. There is a reality to this.

In this way, the film is a cautionary tale against the idea of ever doing away with the religious in place of a universal rationalism that many anti-religious types fantasize about.

The relationship between the twin brothers in The Prestige mirrors the relationship between the narrator and Tyler Durden in Fight Club. TA and the narrator are analogous.

Fight Club can be seen as a cautionary tale of unconsciously following (the narrator desiring to remedy his insomnia and fall asleep) TB and the danger /potential for destruction in TB. It’s a reminder that when you follow TB, you must stay awake and not lose
touch with right and wrong.

However, in the Prestige it’s like TA (narrator) picking up after the ending of Fight Club and continuing to follow TB (Durden), even though TA doesn’t fully buy in to what is driving TB and despite the wake of destruction.

The question is why does the mellow twin, who would have been fine with a normal life with his wife and daughter, decide to risk it all and follow his twin unless he is convinced about something deeply true that he cannot articulate or even understand very well?

The relationship between the leader and follower within the twins is the same relationship between the leader and follower within the self in Fight Club which is the same relationship between the religious leader and religious followers in society.

Plan A:

Plan A was one of two contingencies developed by Professor Brand and NASA to guarantee human continuity.
The plan had several parts:
• Send the Endurance through the wormhole to find humanity a new home
• Construct massive space stations on the ground capable of holding most or all of Earth's current population
• Use Professor Brand's solution for gravity to launch the stations off the Earth
• Relocate humanity onto a new habitable planet

Solving the equation to launch space stations represents modern science.
Cooper creating settlements in a transcendent paradise and returning for humanity represents modern Christianity.

Both of the stories, and plan A in general, were always doomed to failure.

Currently we (humanity) are Murph both working steadfast on the equation while at the same time waiting for the Messiah to return. We are in the middle of the movie.

Except in the status quo, in humanity’s story, Dr. Brand doesn’t confess on his deathbed.

The story that Interstellar tells, where Dr. Brand dies and confesses, is a parallel but unlikely timeline.

Murph (representing humanity) has to choose that timeline voluntarily and consciously.

As the movie shows, to choose that story is to choose betrayal.

The cure is in the poison (betrayal).

I like to compare it to Groundhog Day, Edge of Tomorrow, and McConaughey’s character in True Detective season 1. I see all of those movies wrestling with the problem of when someone realizes that linear time has become a circle.

This realization freaks the rational part of us out and we react in various ways such as becoming fatalistic (TD), anti-social and destructive (Groundhog Day), etc to try to escape it or rebel against it.

To resolve the issue, Donnie blinds himself from the rational in order to enter into the subjective, opening himself to the irrationally meaningful, which is another way of saying falling in love. Once this connection is made, like in Groundhog Day and Edge of Tomorrow, the main character is now capable of letting go of the past and descending down toward death in order to begin building their new world from the foundations.

That pattern is how the three man characters get unstuck in those three movies. True Detective doesn’t complete the pattern, but it ends with the main character beginning to open up to the subjective and irrational.

In Groundhog Day, after he falls in love, Murray’s character leaves the love interest and starts going around the town and fixing all the problems.

In Edge of Tomorrow, after the woman tells him her middle name, the next scene Cruise goes to meet her the following day, but then he pauses and leaves her. The implication is that he accepts that he has to let he go and start all the way over from the beginning in order to save her.

Another way of thinking about it is letting go to of the known world in order to save that which we love.

Transcending determinism is another way to frame it.

Determinism is true until we subjectively decide it is not.

We re-connect with the rational when we descend. The people who get lost in the irrational fail to descend. They become attached to the remnants or memories of the irrationally meaningful (eg: Cobb with Mal from Inception).

I mean rational truth. Cobb has a rationalized story about why he can’t return to his kids, but it’s not truthful since he hasn’t let go and descended.

That’s the pattern. The rational operates in the known, so it won’t lead us into chaos. Blindness from the rational and openness to the irrational are prerequisites in order to descend into chaos. But momentum, in the form of irrational meaning (love), has to be gained vertically (ascension) first in order to reverse it and descend. We have survival mechanisms resisting the descension, so we develop the ‘will’ and the aim (love) in the ascension first.

Involves the same pattern:
Orderly, rational accountant wading into the irrational, falls in love. Then, his conscience (Dustin Hoffman) tells him he has to die and accept the tragedy of the story.

By accepting death and the tragic story, he redeems the author (symbolizing God) which allows the author to rewrite the story as a comeback story. It’s man redeeming the creator instead of vice versa.

The movie wrestles with the question of how the man should react to death. The queen female character represents his desire to conquer and oppose death. The modern female character represents accepting death.

She asks him to finish the story, but he is stuck. It’s only when he puts the two together simultaneously that he gets unstuck, and then immediately says “I am going to die”. Then “We will live forever.”

It’s an incredible scene.