Has "The Pledge" and "The Turn"...but where's "The Prestige"?

Rating: 7/10 (6 March 2010)

Michael Cain's character, Cutter, in Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige" says of magic...
"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"."
When one goes to see a great magic show....a premier show....a VEGAS show....it's the preceding reputation of the magician that draws the crowd. Scorsese is such a magician, in my personal esteem. Hell, let's say that, in this particular show, its a collaborative effort of TWO magicians....Scorsese and DiCaprio...which draws us in. I, like many of you, paid the price of admission because I've been thrilled before....been transfixed and then transported into that rarefied air...the sorcerer's aether that leaves one floating in a kind of post-hypnotic bliss long after the movie is over. So, once again, I sit down waiting to be intoxicated again. The lights dim...cell phones turn off...and the curtains lift...
The "pledge", as Cutter calls it, is the stage set for Scorsese's magic...a US marshal sent to investigate the disappearance of an inmate/inpatient of a whole island set aside for the treatment/detention of the criminally insane. Welcome to Shutter Island. And the set is a gorgeous one. Everything about it drips with the requisite Gothic, cloistered mystique required for this kind of story. Scorsese delivers here....in spades.
The "turn" is pulled off in a progressive, galloping crescendo of psychological tension as DiCaprio's character becomes embroiled in the ambient madness the cannot help but flourish in such a place. His outer circumstances are exquisitely reflected in his inner turmoil...those crystalline, fever-liveried dreams which are nothing short of pure Scorsese virtuosity. Without delving into the plot details, which has been done many times in previous reviews, magic happens throughout this transformational segment of the film. I'm well along for the ride, every step of the way...gut roiling...heart beating...feeling that delicious vertigo "as if I'm there".
This above is enough, I feel, to warrant going to see the film. It's a visual/emotional spectacle that will impact your state of awareness, without question. The real question is, however, "is this a masterpiece?" No...it isn't. It simply cannot be, perhaps by virtue of a certain code (if there is such a thing) amongst magicians (great film directors). The reason is clear, as in Cutter's final words of the above quote, "Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"." "The Prestige" of Shutter Island is in the final twist....bringing the magically transformed, careening plot back somehow to tie those wildly flailing loose ends up in a bow. It does this in a single scene...but, in doing so, makes one of the most egregious mistakes a magician can make in comporting the final elements of his big act: it steals the Prestige from another magician...from several, in fact....and this is inexcusable. Perhaps its unfair...but it is reality. Magic can be many, many things...but it can never be redundant. It must always be fresh...must always be arising and precipitating from the edge of impossibility and artful creativity.
The simple fact is, the final twist of Shutter Island has been done before. And once I acknowledged this fact, sitting there in the theater, I came thumping back down to earth...looked apologetically at my wife and asked her what she thought of the film. Her response says it all....
"It was o.k."