Complex Plot with Twists upon Twists and a Horrific and Shocking Ending

Rating: 10/10 (19 December 2006)

I went to this movie with my brother and his girlfriend. Only about one in eight seats in the theater were taken, not that many. Most of the people in the audience seemed young.
The movie starts off ordinarily. The first half is a series of events. The movie jumps from one time period to another. Many scenes left me scratching my head. A magic trick consists of three stages: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. Like a magic trick the movie started out ordinary. Borden and Angier are two magicians in deep rivalry. They go to great lengths to sabotage the other's work. It got to the point where every time they were performing a magic trick on stage I would anticipate something would go wrong. Many of these tricks involved guns and axes, so I was preparing myself for something very loud and shocking.
After about halfway through the rather ordinary story of rivalry turns interesting as the two magicians read their diaries. But still I felt disoriented and didn't fully grasp everything. Towards the end though, everything made sense, and the plot fell together. It is a very complex and very shocking story. It is not just the plot that was excellent. The film seemed to have a lot to say in terms of themes. I won't give away too much but at the end the little girl Jess watches the magic trick that involves the little bird disappearing. She's amazed by it. She may want to know how the trick is done but once you realize how it is done it's probably not a good idea to tell her. Essentially the world is simple, cold, cynical, and miserable, but these tricks give happiness because they suggest this is not so. This deception is not isolated to simple magic tricks. The vanishing bird trick is analogous to what happens to the magicians. Some people will go to great lengths for an art.
I enjoyed this film not just for its plot. I started to think that deception is just in the magic shows. They are not just in the characters and their lives. They are everywhere. It watched this movie six days before Christmas and in many ways Santa Clause is a magic trick, a deception. But it's more than that. I look at the football fans in stadiums and wonder whether they are just individuals proud of their teams or country or whether they are just totally deceived by marketers. In my life pretty much everything that gave me happiness turned out to be quite simple, quite pessimistic in reality, whether it's religion, family, or love. There is no magic, just science. There is no emotion, just biochemistry. No country, just politics. No morality, just power. Like the vanishing bird trick, you just don't want to know how it's done.
Now when I spoke to people after the movie most of them didn't mention these ideas to me. They were too busy asking me about the mechanics of the plot, who was who, why this happened, and so on. But I think if you plan to watch the movie you should focus on more than what happened on screen. Try to infer certain concepts from the film and relate these to what you already know from experience in your own life. You may be quite surprised.
The movie probably shouldn't be seen by small children. One reason is because of the on-screen deaths that occur.