BEFORE: It's funny how rival movie studios sometimes release similar films at roughly the same time - one year they released "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak", another year it was "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon". "Antz" and "A Bug's Life", "Finding Nemo" and "A Shark's Tale", even "Turner and Hooch" and "K-9". Either movie studios are stealing each other's secrets, or the fix is in. 2006 saw the release of two movies about turn-of-the-century magicians - so I'm curious to find out just how different the two movies are.
THE PLOT: The rivalry between two magicians is exacerbated when one of them performs the ultimate illusion.
AFTER: When I was 5 or 6 years old, I asked my grandmother if the fairy tales that she had been telling me were real. She told me point-blank that they were not, and I appreciated her honesty - you could say it was the start of adulthood, the loss of childhood innocence, or maybe I just needed to wrap my brain around the concept that there is a real world, and a separate imaginary state of stories and fantasy. The first time you see a magic trick, like sawing a woman in half, your childlike innocence might think that what you see is real - but when the woman emerges safely after being "put back together", your notion of the trick is challenged - since you know a woman cannot be split in two and then re-assembled, something else must have taken place, but what? Then, if you figure out or learn how the trick was done, you might find it hard to believe that you were ever so naive as to have been fooled in the first place.
But once you learn that magic tricks are tricks, or that stories are just stories, you're one step removed from them. Now you can appreciate the artistry of that illusion, or that book, or that movie. You can analyze it, pull it apart, change it around, and (try to) put it back together again. The one thing you can NOT do at that point, is return to your original state, the state of non-knowing, of innocence - you've been changed somehow, just by being entertained and intrigued.
I think this is the point taken to the extreme in this film - which features two rival magicians, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). (NOTE: I'm going to try very hard not to reveal major plot-points here, as I think I will recommend this one to friends and family, and the twists are just too good to spoil...)
They are constantly intrigued by each other's tricks, each trying to unravel the other's secrets by attending each other's shows in disguise, and performing various acts of sabotage when possible.
This leads to dire consequences over the years - various injuries that they inflict on each other, both physical and mental - and both men are so obsessed with gaining revenge on and outperforming the other that they make outrageous sacrifices, at great personal cost. There are tricks within tricks, and schemes within schemes...
The rivalry centers around a trick called "The Transformed Man" - you've probably seen a variation on it in every magic show - where a man walks into one cabinet, or through a door, or even into a trunk, and then somehow appears in another cabinet, or in the back of the house, in an impossibly quick period of time. Forget what you see, think outside the (magic) box, and you can probably think of at least 2 or 3 valid explanations for how this is done - trap-doors, trick locks, or even a look-alike appearing in the balcony while the real magician is still in the box.
But each man here is obsessed with finding out how the other one pulls off his version of the trick - which forces them to resort to extravagant means of deception. Whether their methods are too outrageous is up to the viewer, I suppose. One goes so far as to contact Nikolai Tesla to work electricity into the act - and Tesla was known for his rivalry with Thomas Edison, one that neatly mirrors the rivalry between the two illusionists. (and for that matter, the rivalry between this film and last night's film...)
However, I had problems with the structure of the story, which attempts to follow three timelines at once. In the "present", Borden gets a copy of Angier's diary, which leads us into flashback sequences. But in some of those past sequences, Angier has obtained a copy of Borden's journal - so as a result, the viewer is bounced around in a non-linear story of the two men exploring each other's story (I think...). The director of this film, Christopher Nolan, also directed "Memento", which succeeded in telling a story in reverse order - but here it's just confusing to show the scenes in essentially random order, and expect the viewer to piece it all together. In the same way that a magician uses mis-direction and distraction, I'm forced to assume that a non-linear timeline may have been used as a cover-up for a story that wasn't as strong, or didn't make sense, when told in the proper order.
It is interesting to note that Christopher Nolan also directed the two most recent Batman films, which also starred Christian Bale and Michael Caine - so this was a bit like watching the stars of "Batman Begins", with the actor who plays Wolverine added to the mix. It's a common question in the geek world - who would win in a fight, Batman or Wolverine?
Another similarity to last night's film - the ending (in a magic trick, the big reveal is called "The Prestige"...) may send you back to the beginning or middle of the film, to see if you can spot the tells...last night I mentioned Penn & Teller, and I think this film is the equivalent of their take on the "cups and balls" trick, which is performed with see-through cups. Their formula is to do a trick, explain how it's done, and then take it to another level. This movie does the same, by revealing secrets of the lesser tricks, but saving the best twists for later. I'm not completely sold on the ending, but if nothing else, it's one of the cleverest I've seen.
Also starring Scarlett Johansson (last seen in "The Spirit"), Andy Serkis (last seen in "Inkheart"), Piper Perabo, Roger Rees, and David Bowie (as Nikolai Tesla, cool!) with a cameo from magician/actor Ricky Jay.
RATING: 8 out of 10 top hats (I reserve the right to alter this, based on a reading of the source novel, or a second viewing of the film...)
A fantastic movie. If you'd given it less than 8 whatevers, we would have had _words,_ you and I.
ReplyDeleteIt's a demonstration about how the best movies are usually just window-dressing for eternal stories about basic human nature. Writers are taught a fundamental lesson about creating characters and developing a story: you need to know "what does this character want?" and "how far is he or she willing to go in order to get it?"
In "The Prestige" the answer is the same for both characters. "He wants to prove that he's the superior man" and "no sacrifice is too great and no action is too extreme." And the filmmakers had the courage not to split these two magicians into "the good guy" and "the bad guy."
It's a brilliant war between two angry and hugely irresponsible men. I also wonder if the characters didn't rub off on Bale and Jackman a little...because damn, man, were they playing off of each other incredibly well, here.
Eventually, you _do_ learn the secrets that these men have been keeping. I do enjoy films where they take these things so seriously that you can watch the whole film again from the beginning and then wonder why the hell you didn't see it all coming; it was all right in front of you the whole time. Just like a _real_ magic trick.