>Gotham National Bank Manager: Do you have any idea who you

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>Gotham National Bank Manager: Do you have any idea who you are, Stea Lingfrom? You and your friends are dead!

Is this one of the most underrated reveal in film history? Nolan's love for twist reveals isn't just a gimmick like Shyamalan's use of them, but it's deeply tied to his recurring thematic obsessions, the cerebral labyrinths, the intellectual games around the mysteries of one's Identity and Memories, and the concept of Time. Stea's amnesia is a continuation of Guy Pearce's character in Memento. His wearing a mask is highly symbolic: he doesn't remember that he and his friends were dead all along (this denial of one's death and the traumatic grief/memory glitches that follows can be seen in Insomnia and Inception to some extent), he "hides" his true self. However when the bank manager reminds him of this essential truth, he manages to find Himself, he can now achieve psychological inner peace and gets Reborn. Stea's journey culminates in him finally removing the mask (his visage is abnormally pale, as a sign of his undead state), but if you remember correctly, indeed all his friends remain dead (they never take off the "masks", which "blinds" them, if you will), as they have not been able to triumph over their former traumas (I assume they all died in a bus accident, hence the subconcious re-playing of the trauma at the end) in order to regain their lost identity/memory. Much more subtle and thematically deep that Bruce Willis' realization at the end of The Sixth Sense imo, and also brilliantly subverted by having the reveal at the BEGINNING instead of the end, which btw is classic Nolan. His subversion of narrative structure is also part of the brilliance of Memento and Inception. His films are psychological, intellectual labyrinths.