05/03/10 - The Prestige

The Prestige (2006, 130 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/

My roommate really likes this film and for some reason it kept coming back to me as something on the IMDb Top 250 that I somewhat wanted to see. It didn't really fit my theme of "film noir May" or whatever but I wanted to see it anyway.

The film follows two rivaling magicians throughout their lives: Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman). Serving as a friend and craftsman for the equipment used in their tricks (and character the audience can most associate with) is Cutter, played by Michael Caine. David Bowie cameos as Tesla the real life crazy scientist.

The point of this movie is to create two well crafted characters who square off against each other while the film builds to a grand conclusion. I don't know if the point was to follow the procedure of a magic trick or not but it kind of does this. Anyway, these are the important parts of the story: Borden's character, Angier's character, and the conclusion. Thus, I'll address each in kind and then have some final comments.

First, Christian Bale as Alfred Borden. Bale does a really good job. This was his second time working with Nolan and they seem to go well together. Bale comes off as the more skilled magician who is great at making the trick succeed but not so great at presenting the trick itself to the audience. Overall, this set of skills makes me like him more so I viewed him as the "main character" though I think they are both meant to be viewed equally. Though the "plot part" of these characters is somewhat lacking (more on this below), I felt like Borden went through his life trying to be a magician as opposed to Angier who went through life seeking revenge on Borden.

Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier is a somewhat strange casting at first but it ends up working. Jackman does a good "dignified gentleman" from this period so he ends up being a good pick. Angier's character is meant to be the opposite of Borden: he can't come up with new tricks for anything but he can present what he does have magnificently. This serves to put the characters at odds in a cool way so I liked this. However, his biggest flaw is that he goes through the whole movie wanting to kill Borden or ruin his life. The point here is that Borden ruined Angier's life when he "killed" Angier's wife. Really though, Borden and Angier's wife were content with Borden doing what he did (tie a different knot than usual, but one which she had claimed she could still handle for the trick). So on the whole I felt like Borden didn't purposefully kill Angier's wife or anything and even felt upset about the whole thing. Angier, though, couldn't let it go and it becomes the focal point of his anger for the whole film. It ended up making him a flawed character for all the wrong reasons. I really just wanted him to fail at the end. But more on that later. So in summary, I liked how Borden and Angier balance off of each other from a character skill standpoint, but the major flaw here is on the plot level.

The finale of this movie is the important point and one that is to be remembered. Like in Memento, Nolan pulls a complete surprise here. Throughout the movie, Tesla had been working on some crazy transportation and duplication device. In the end, we learn that this is the device that Angier has been using for his tricks and in the process killing his double that is created. We also learn that Borden's assistant was really his twin all along and that's how he was able to create a similar trick. So we have this balance of real magic and stage magic. It ends up just completely making the ending fall apart. Up until this point the film has flirted with real life magic but it hasn't expressly said that it exists - everything is possible on the "illusion level" if that makes sense. However, once Tesla comes up with this machine the movie handles this like absolute fact. I'm not saying this is bad (in fact, I think the film does a good job at throwing it out there and not explaining how it works) it's just that it throws everything off tilt with the inclusion of real magic and thus weakens the entire plot to the point of absurdity. I found myself drawing a comparison between this film and The Usual Suspects. Both have stunning endings that I complained about. In The Usual Suspects, I never really thought that the ending was hinted at for the audience to guess it. Here though the ending is just bizarre enough that there's no reason anyone would suspect it. It falters for a similar yet also completely different reason. At least the ending could be seen to make sense in The Usual Suspects but here it's just stupid. During these final scenes I found myself just not caring anymore about the characters the film had built up for two hours.

Finally, some other comments. One thing I noticed that Nolan does way too much is his focus on shadows. I think this began in Batman Begins where there was blackness everywhere. That's not needed here. We don't need to not see so much. Next, I liked how Cutter was used as a narrator. Caine has the perfect voice for this sort of thing. It wasn't perhaps used enough though. On the whole, The Prestige is a well done film though. The too dark thing is a minor quibble but the cinematography as well as the sets and that stuff are all really excellent.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. The Prestige looks great (most of the time) but it has some major flaws on its three main points, especially the pathetic conclusion.