It's hard to watch — and Nolan takes pains to confuse our allegiances in ways that suggest a very British
class tension (Borden and ace engineer Cutter (Michael Caine) share a Cockney brogue while Angier, a Yank, is cut from different cloth), a
certain nationalism, and, in the figure of Nikolai Tesla (David Bowie) at play mad - scientist - like in a mythical Colorado Springs, a clearly delineated duel between magic and the notion that technology before its time is a kind of witchcraft.
As usual, there's a multitude of
tensions bubbling under the placid surface, along
class and racial lines as well as the requisite secrets from the past haunting
certain folks.