A brilliant take on obsession and misdirection

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2006)

We begin, of course, at the end.
And then, having seen just how bad things get, we rewind to the start and discover that they started off just as badly.
Assistants stride onto the stage, help out with a few tricks, and take their exits. Behind every trick is a technician, levering the mystery into place Meanwhile, our two central characters, both heroes of their own stories, wave their hands in misdirection, causing appearances, disappearances and reappearances, oblivious to the price that even stage magicians must pay.
And when we get back to the end, past all of the various detours, distractions, sound and fury, we discover that, well, magic is exactly what we've been told it is, sometimes death can kill you, and sometimes it can set you free.
=== It hardly seems worthwhile telling you that Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, David Bowie and a host of others give fantastic performances. Good enough that one of the people I was with didn't recognise David Bowie at all.
Or that the Nolan brothers manage to one-up their previous collaboration Memento by presenting a film which, if anything, jumps around in time more, while remaining perfectly comprehensible and remains a mystery simply because we're never quite looking at the clues right in front of us.
There wasn't, in fact, an instant, when I wasn't glued to the movie, trying to work out how it was done. But as one of the characters remarks in the film, if you tell people how a trick is done they aren't impressed - it's the misdirection that keeps them coming back for more.