Doubles and Dreams: Trauma in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and Inception
Like any other accomplished artist, Christopher Nolan has remained rather coy throughout his career in regards to interpretations and analyses of his films. Nolan’s oeuvre seems to indicate a clear set of interests and inclinations, and yet the director would never admit as such. Still, critics have accepted a few themes as essential to Nolan’s cinematic project. A casual viewer of Nolan’s films would likely observe the director’s interest in dualities. There's Leonard Shelby and Sammy Jankis in Memento. Bruce Wayne and Batman in his Batman films. And even more explicitly, the doubles in The Prestige (2006). It is also safe to say that Nolan remains interested in trauma, specifically how it seems to manifest itself, with a film like Inception (2010) offering an especially intriguing example of trauma manifesting in unique and unexpected ways. With The Prestige’s examination of doublesand Inception’s interest in dreams, we could easily craft a relationship between Nolan’s films and the work of neurologist Sigmund Freud. That is not to say that Nolan’s films take a Freudian approach to their subject matter, but that, like Freud, Nolan is interested in uncovering the origins of our unconscious trauma so as to better offer resolution to those in need. He operates primarily in the genre of science fiction to achieve this goal, and yet Nolan’s films must ultimately repress genre so as to allow unconscious trauma to be brought forward, out of repression, and reckoned with.
It can be easy to forget that Nolan’s films are of the sci-fi genre. They are, generally speaking, thrillers, but their relationship with science fiction cannot be ignored. The Prestige takes place in 19th-century London, and obviously focuses on magic. The film’s connection with sci-fi is likely most obvious via the character of Nikola Tesla, who has developed a machine that can create doubles of anyone and anything. Angier uses the machine for his Real Transported Man trick, in which he disappears and reappears (in the form of a double) across the auditorium. We as an audience understand this scientific explanation for Angier’s magic trick, but sci-fi here works as a sort of misdirection. With science already introduced as the logical explanation for the otherwise uncanny appearance of a double in the film, it is all the more shocking when Borden is revealed to also be participating in a set of doubles with an entirely different explanation. He has a twin brother, and they have both been operating as a singular Alfred Borden. Darko Suvin recognizes science fiction as providing “a point of view or look implying a new set of norms” (6). Suvin refers to this tendency as cognitive estrangement. Because science fiction looks to encourage new perspectives or new ideologies in its viewers, it uses estrangement to present the familiar as now unfamiliar. In some ways, Nolan seems to be participating in this tradition of science fiction. Audiences’ familiarity with Tesla as a historical figure is obviously challenged by his role in creating a machine that continues to seem impossible in our reality even today. But we may also consider how Nolan represses the science fiction genre here so as to more deeply explore the role doubles play in the film, and how they may relate to the reconciling of unconscious trauma. Consider the work of another literary theorist, Tzvetan Todorov, who, in discussing the fantastic, considers it “that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event” (25). Most science fiction seems to operate in this realm, and it is often from this hesitation that estrangement emerges. But Nolan actually looks to bypass any such hesitation. Nolan imagines a world in which the fantastic or the uncanny can be explained, and represses science fiction as we have come to know it as a result. Just as we tend to repress our own trauma, Nolan is repressing genre. But it is actually through such repression that Nolan is able to access the trauma relegated to our unconscious and more closely examine its origin and its cure.
Nolan’s repression of genre is best exemplified by how the doubles operate in The Prestige. It is worth first distinguishing, however, between the term “duality,” which I used earlier to introduce this discussion, and the “double.” Freud attributes the aesthetic establishment of the double to "unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism which dominates the mind" (235). This association between narcissism and the double makes sense, as a double allows us to imagine a version of ourselves that may further empower the way in which we view ourselves. But Freud's work on the double, when applied to Nolan's films, reshapes our notion of duality. Duality refers to two sides of a coin, two parts in contrast or opposition with each other. And while this is certainly a tradition that Nolan participates in, Freud's definition of the double casts new light on why Nolan may be so interested in doubling in his own films. The Borden twins operate strictly in pursuit of a narcissistic imagining of their selves. Only one brother is ever permitted to operate openly at a time, and in that moment, that half of the double is the successful, beloved magician. But what grounds this relationship in the concept of the double and not duality is the brothers' shared commitment to this operation. Even when one Borden is disguised as Fallon, they are both Alfred. We never even find out the name of Alfred's twin brother, because that is not important. Sure, there are differences we can pick up on in multiple viewings. One twin loves Sarah, for example, while the other loves Olivia. But the twins in The Prestige are not in opposition of each other. In fact, it seems one twin exists solely in support Alfred, which is permissible in that he is no longer an individual but a set of doubles. This example of the double in The Prestige is therefore in service of the individual. We are oriented towards viewing Alfred as one man throughout the film, and it is the revelation that he is two at the film's end that attempts to unravel the uncanny nature of everything that has come before it. The double therefore, at least in part, provides an explanation for the uncanny. That is not to suggest there are doubles like those in The Prestige responsible for the uncanny experiences or the trauma we endure in our everyday lives, but that an imagining of ourselves as doubles helps us identify why these experiences feel so extraordinary. In dealing with his patients, Freud attributes uncanny moments, in part, to "the subject's narcissistic overevaluation of his own mental processes" (240). Angier’s double has an especially interesting relationship with this idea. Whenever Angier conducts his trick, he drops himself into a water tank and drowns himself, so only the double can remain. He, of course, is grappling with the trauma left behind by the death of his wife, who similarly drowned in a water tank during a magic trick onstage. Angier is therefore killing himself night after night in service of reconciling his own trauma. Is this in service of a “narcissistic overevaluation” or is it actually the opposite? Angier’s use of a double acts as a form of self-punishment, diametrically opposed to the aforementioned idea of a double allowing us to imagine an empowered version of ourselves. For Angier, the double represents the opportunity to reprove those parts of himself that cause him anger, or remind him of the loss of his wife. Tesla’s machine provides Angier with the opportunity to realize these pursuits. With Tesla’s machine, Nolan has introduced a mechanism that was once cognitively estranged, in line with science fiction as a genre, but is now within his audience’s realm of understanding as it becomes the explanation for Angier’s trick. We have therefore established how a narrative focus on the double might relate to Freud’s explanation, rooted in notions of narcissism, but consider how Nolan also places a similar experience onto the viewer and saddles them with the responsibility of unraveling it.
As he does with so many of his films, Nolan begins The Prestige by tipping off the audience to one of the film's major twists. A large part of the experience of watching the film is therefore determining how this opening scene fits into the timeline of the rest of the film. This idea is further complicated by the fact that the film utilizes nonlinear narration, forcing viewers to restore linearity to that which they are experiencing. This task is difficult as is, with our understanding that each character is a single individual. But Nolan hints at the possibility of doubles throughout the film, complicating our objective further. Kwasu David Tembo refers to the canary scene as one example of a suggested double, and further illustrates how the double serves "to simultaneously hold and misdirect the viewer's gaze in order to maintain the illusion of the magical object's singularity by deferring or delaying the fact of its plurality" (203). This experience of working through information that we had actually been told from the outset maps rather cleanly onto the very experience of working through trauma. On one hand, we have been given the information necessary to work through the film’s misdirection. But do those opening images truly stay with us? Perhaps, like trauma, they remain repressed throughout our experience of watching the film, only to resurface once we are reminded of them. This operation of doubles, which in and of themselves double as dualities at times, pull viewers’ expectations in contrasting directions. On one hand, doubles serve to contextualize uncanny experiences in our own world. But detecting the presence of these doubles is hindered by the obscuring nature of how the doubles operate in films such as The Prestige. Trauma is therefore mapped onto the viewer, and perhaps it is only through multiple viewings, through retracing the trail of our trauma, that we can find reconciliation.
Trauma is made much more explicit in Inception. Nolan’s obsession with the dead wife as a source of such trauma remains, however, as Cobb’s wife, Mal, acts as his primary distraction throughout the film. Still, the film’s focus on dreams allows for a more explicit inspection of unconscious trauma. There is a clear difference between the representations of dreams seen in Nolan's Inception and those in surrealist films such as Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali's Un Chien Andalou. Bunuel and Dali's surrealist approach to dreams allows them to operate in terms of approximations. Their depictions of dreams could certainly be of dreams as they are, but we may more responsibly call them depictions of dreams as they are remembered. Elements of the fantastic and the uncanny work to make dreams in Un Chien Andalou immediately recognizable as such. The film never even explicitly identifies its content as related to dreams, and yet we as an audience can immediately understand the film's association with a sort of dream logic.
We likely could not afford Inception such a luxury. The film is explicitly about dreams, but the editing, and particularly the content of the dreams themselves, does not make this immediately apparent. Nolan's representations of dreams seem much more grounded in reality, bound by rules much like our own reality. There are obvious exceptions, such as the fact that the physics of these dream-worlds can be highly manipulated, but for the most part, people act like people and the environments look like our own. I would therefore argue that Nolan is attempting to unravel the absurdity that seems to dominate our prevailing conception of dreams. He is imagining a scenario in which we could truly access our dreams, seeing them as they really are, reconciling any unconscious trauma as a result.
We may best understand surrealist depictions of dreams as depictions not of the dreams themselves, but of the dream-work that we perform in interpreting them. In his explanation of dream-work, Freud clarifies that "it is not a word-for-word or a sign-for-sign translation; nor is it a selection made according to fixed rules" (213). This description of dream-work lends itself nicely to how dreams are depicted in Bunuel's films, but almost certainly lacks a connection to Nolan's understanding of dreams. Nolan seems to be intent on bypassing dream-work and entering into the dreams themselves. We can easily connect this perspective on dreams with Nolan’s perspective on sci-fi as a genre. His approach here may be even more extreme than it is in The Prestige. Despite introducing elements of science fiction as specifically responsible for how the film’s characters move in and out of dreams, Nolan injects Inception with very little elements of sci-fi, at least as it relates to Darko Suvin’s ideas. In engaging with dreams so directly and explicitly, Inception forgoes cognitive estrangement of any kind. Nolan establishes a sci-fi world, but immediately represses sci-fi so as to welcome us into a world where the source and the experience of our unconscious trauma can be freely accessed.
In the world of Inception, Freud’s dream-work is unnecessary because we are capable of directly entering into dreams, almost as if they are physical spaces. There is a clear differentiation between the dream world and the real world, whereas surrealist films complicate the status of any onscreen events. But what exactly are the implications of accessing the unconscious and unraveling our dreams? Nolan's films have maintained a clear relationship with trauma and grief, and considering these themes in terms of dreams allows Nolan and his viewers to work through how these concepts may manifest themselves and affect us both consciously and unconsciously. The often fantastic nature of dreams, and depictions of them as such, may theoretically delve deeper into these experiences, but they also complicate them. Nolan's depictions of dreams may feel further away from our recalled experience of dreaming, but it ultimately allows for a more fully realized understanding of Cobb's trauma. Cobb's difficulties while dreaming disrupt what are otherwise highly structured representations of dreams. If anything, his trauma is the closest Inception comes to dealing with the surreal. Mark Fisher refers to Cobb's wife in the film as "trauma that disrupts any attempt to maintain a stable sense of reality" (42). Grief and trauma are therefore positioned as feelings of the absurd, whereas anything else projected in our dreams is reflective of a stable reality. We might then interpret Nolan's perspective on dreams to suggest that our continued wrestling with trauma is a product of our inability to truly access and understand our dreams, or more broadly our projections of such trauma. Fisher refers to a possible reading of Inception as a "staging of...superseding psychoanalysis" and Nolan would likely welcome this interpretation (45). Nolan imagines a world in which we can fully access these projections to ultimately suggest how this may better help us in overcoming our trauma.
Nolan, of course, makes his suggestions on how to overcome trauma via an introduction followed by a repression of the sci-fi genre. Still, it is safe to say we cannot access our unconscious like Cobb does in Inception and we cannot use any actual doubles like Borden and Angier do in The Prestige. So if Nolan suggests that we work through trauma via unraveling the more unbelievable components of our unconscious, then how can we actually do that? Is there any actual takeaway here, or is Nolan simply imagining a world still removed from our own, one perhaps still operating in the realm of science fiction and not the real at all? Nolan’s suggestion leads us to one of the more essential bonds between Inception and The Prestige. Both films, with their respective focus on dreams and magic, seem to celebrate cinema as a contemporary mechanism by which we may access the unconscious and work through trauma. For Nolan, the cinema is Tesla’s machine, and the cinema is the technology that moves us in and out of dreamscapes. The Prestige establishes a relationship between cinema and magic from the start, with the opening line: “are you watching closely?” The question here is oriented towards the audience, both a diegetic one that is hoping to follow the inner workings of a magic trick, but also the audience of the film itself. The line therefore draws a parallel between cinema and illusion, positioning them both as capable of directing viewers’ attention in working through trauma. Inception’s relationship with cinema is arguably even more obvious. The film’s central team operates much like a production team, with dreams acting as their cinematic creations. Nolan is therefore suggesting cinema as the proper tool for working through and overcoming trauma. However, Fisher offers a more pessimistic view on Inception’s relationship with film: “Inception is less a meta-meditation on the power of cinema than…a reflection of the way in which cinematic techniques have become imbricated into a banal spectacle which…enjoys an unprecedented dominion over our working lives and our dreaming minds” (42). This perspective strips cinema of its power to clearly visualize the source of our trauma, and instead charges such visualizations with being at least partly responsible for any trauma we might experience. Perhaps there is a danger in bringing one’s self so directly face-to-face with the forces responsible for one’s trauma, but Nolan remains committed to a perspective that prioritizes these kinds of opportunities. Both The Prestige and the Inception, with their shared repression of science fiction, seem to support Nolan’s perspective, although a proper next step for him might be to explore new forms and new sources of trauma, separate from his longstanding reliance upon the dead wife as a narrative trope.
Fisher, Mark. "The Lost Unconscious: Delusions and Dreams in Inception." FILM QUART 64, no. 3 (2011): 37-45.
Freud, Sigmund. "The Dream-Work." Translated by James Strachey. In Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. New York: Norton, 1989
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Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: on the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. Yale University Press, 1979.
Tembo, Kwasu David. "On the Work of the Double in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige" In The Cinema of Christopher Nolan : Imagining the Impossible, edited by Jacqueline Furby and Stuart Joy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Todorov, Tzvetan, and Gérard Genette. The fantastic: A structural approach to a literary genre. Cornell University Press, 1975.