By Mike D'Angelo
No formula exists to determine the greatest living American filmmaker. The populist approach, which asks which directors have succeeded in turning themselves into brand names, yields two candidates: Scorsese and Spielberg. For achievement in eclectic expressionism: the Coens, David Lynch, P. T. Anderson, or Gus Van Sant. Sheer volume: Woody Allen or Spike Lee. Hell, just hand the ballot to M. Night Shyamalan and he'll supply a conclusive answer: Me.
My own criterion is simple: Whose next film is most likely to be a flat-out, make-my-head-hurt masterpiece? Or, more to the point, who is working at such a rarefied level that he just might fashion something unprecedented from the latest Batman?
The thing about Christopher Nolan (who's as much British as American -- but sue me, so was Hitchcock) is that he doesn't clonk you over the head with his genius. While he's become more visually sophisticated over the course of his short career, he still has no use for the look-at-me camera moves. Nor does he seem to care whether people notice that his clever, gimmicky narratives conceal deep and unsettling questions about human nature. Nolan's films are casually profound -- like watching somebody bunt the ball out of the park.
You'll find folks who dismiss Memento as "the backwards movie," but the device, however superficially arresting, is anything but cute or glib. Not only does it place us in the same position as the perpetually disoriented protagonist (Guy Pearce), who has no short-term memory, it also reveals the disturbing extent to which we're prepared to rationalize phony explanations for our own unconscious decisions and desires. Memento is an existential mystery-thriller about a guy who has no idea why he's doing anything he's doing, but who keeps doggedly doing it anyway. Possibly you can relate.
The Prestige, likewise, tackles the subject of self-delusion, although Nolan's thesis is so discomfiting that he uses sleight of hand to blunt its impact. The first time I saw the film, I was thrown when David Bowie turned up as inventor Nikola Tesla, providing Hugh Jackman's conjurer with a sci-fi gizmo that would replicate rival Christian Bale's sensational illusion, "The Transported Man." Only upon a second viewing did I realize that I was witnessing an allegorical battle between science and religion, with the former managing a TKO, but the latter a key moral victory.
It's probably nuts to expect greatness from The Dark Knight (July 18), since Nolan's Batman Begins, while superb by the standards of the superhero franchise, didn't exactly burrow its way into anyone's soul. And yet, I can't help feeling that the Joker's carved grimace and prankster sadism could mesh nightmarishly well with Nolan's bizarre flair for grim entertainment. The question is whether people will be able to look past the creepy poignance of Heath Ledger's posthumous performance to see the stealthy, oddly underappreciated virtuoso at the helm. Probably not.
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