Samsara17 wrote:RIFA wrote:
Well anyone can find a lot of themes in any movie, but with a movie like The Prestige, those themes play crucial roles in the entirety of the film. They were themes implemented into the story intentionally with a purpose, where as with your common bs film, you can find a dozen themes yet they don't play much a part in the story, and weren't written with the focus that they have a specific meaning.
You're giving the "everybody has a different view so there could be many themes in a film" argument which is a
disturbing and false thing.
A theme must represent and cover the whole plot of the movie (or at least half of it.
Now some movies might have two parallel themes but no more than that because it would be impossible for the story to develop correctly.
Now these themes might have sub-themes but even those sub-themes are not nearly as interpretable as you may think.
For example:
-hatred isn't a theme in the prestige. it's just a feeling that is explored like in any other movie.
-fidelity isn't a theme in the prestige. fidelity alone is barely a theme in any movie.
-loss isn't a theme in the prestige. it's a fact of life that is explored in any movie including Memento, TDK, BB or Following.
-guilt isn't a theme in the prestige. it's again just a feeling that is explored again in TDK, Memento, BB or Insomnia.
-narcissism is hard to be a theme for any movie because on narcissism alone you barely can develop any strong story.
I agree that obsession is the theme in The Prestige. Does The Prestige have a parallel theme to that? Probably "the passionate commitment" or the venture of "ego and intellectual greed"... These are themes.
I asked how many themes does anyone see in TDK because
The Prestige is built on one theme and one theme only. Everything else are just ingredients and if you wanna go there, sub-themes.
However, for the Dark Knights, is hard to identify that
ONE theme. Surely most people will say "chaos and everything that surrounds it" and they will be right. But TDK could very well have a parallel theme because TDK offers
parallel stories and
parallel themes. Another parallel theme is "responsibility and the power to assume it"... Everything else, love, violence, guilt, loss, hatred, madness are just
tools to keep these themes on the right track from a storytelling point of view.
Don't confuse themes with simple feelings, actions, facts or issues between two sides in a film.
A theme refers to something general, to the whole big picture not to details like a common "loss".