Magic movie

Rating: 9/10 (14 November 2006)

Christopher Nolan is a director who seems preoccupied by the human mind and psychological troubles. Each of his dark, thriller type movies has focused on one such a thing, fear, insomnia, memory, stalking. As befits the subject matter, The Prestige is a slippery kind of film, full of disguise (the array of false beards used by the two central magicians is quite dazzling) twists and turns and revelations. Like his breakthrough masterpiece Memento, Nolan uses a non-linear time scheme to great effect in disguising where the plot is going and where it has come from. As in Memento, the time of the scene is shown through the character's physical scarrings (Leonard Shelby's facial scars here become Robert Angier's limp) that suggest an earlier mental scarring not yet revealed in the film. Drawing an obvious parallel with his own profession, performance is also a central theme of the film for Nolan. Hugh Jackman's Robert Angier (AKA The Great Danton) is a consummate performer, a showman who is able to pull in huge theatre crowds while rival Alfred Borden shies from the limelight and from dressing up his tricks and thus often finds himself playing to small rooms of people. Angier is driven by performance so much that even "Robert Angier" is as much of a persona as "The Great Danton". He needs the acclaim of his audience, this is what defines him as a character. Jackman's charisma as a leading man has never been in doubt since he strapped on the claws and sideburns of Wolverine and this charisma is perfectly used for his stage performances as Danton, expertly selling the tricks. Meanwhile, as the obsessive Angier, Jackman brings a great range from the pain and anger after the death of his wife to the dangerous obsession and desire to discover the secret to his rival's trick. Even despite the cruel and slightly mentally disturbed things that Angier does, Jackman maintains the audience's sympathy for the most part and this is to his great credit. In his second feature with Nolan, after the superb Batman Begins, Christian Bale delivers an equally impressive performance as Borden, an intense, brooding but brilliant man who is able to spot the secret to Angier's and others' tricks with ease while they cannot see his. Borden has a similarly obsessive dedication but it is to creating the perfect trick, he lives his life purely for this and not for the audience acclaim like Angier. This sets up an interesting dichotomy in the motivations of the character that is reflected in their later actions. Bale and Nolan do bring some lighter moments for the serious Borden in his happy relationship with his wife and child. Seeing Borden as a happy family man brings the sympathy back round to him. With such attention on the leads, the supporting cast have less to do. Scarlett Johansson's role does not extend far beyond looking amazing in the saucy magician's assistant costumes. Meanwhile, the presence of David Bowie as enigmatic electricity manipulator Tesla is more of a distraction than a strong piece of casting, despite Bowie's obvious cool factor. However, the venerable Michael Caine gives a great weight to the character of Cutter, Angier's mentor who creates the mechanics of his tricks and tries to persuade him from the path of obsession. Caine is the heart and soul of the film, its moral compass and it is another superb performance of warmth, dignity and regret that suggest the great man is only getting better with age. No film is quite perfect and one minor flaw comes with the fact that with performances this good, the script doesn't need to say some of the things that it does. Writing with his brother Jonathon again, as in Memento, Nolan here has a slight tendency to overuse voice-over through the device of the magicians reading each other's diaries. The diaries may be a strong literary device in the source novel but are less cinematic. With Jackman conveying so much emotion wordlessly simply in his below stage bows when he wishes to be above, in front of the audience, there is no need to have his diary tell us this is how he felt. However, in general, the Nolans construct a strong script that provides a good balance between the lead characters and has a great momentum towards its strange climax. The twist in this film is not one that completely pulls the rug out from under you, that nobody will see coming, as this is often quite a lazy way of ending a movie with no relation to what has come before. Instead, Nolan threads the film with subtle references to what is really happening so that the film rewards paying close attention. Like the best magic tricks, it is not the outcome that amazes, it is the execution of it and even if you guess what the outcome is to be, there are still a couple of surprises waiting for you. Visually, Nolan brings up a number of stylish, arresting images of duplication, repetition and duality and objects that seemed just visually interesting earlier in the film gain in significance as the film progresses. The opening shots of a huge number of top hats in a forest or the cages full of pairs of canaries are prime examples of this. They are at first just a nice image, later the objects gain a significance and finally, the symbolism of the image has implications for the themes of the movie. The Prestige is, simply, a true prestige picture. An expert piece of film-making on virtually every level. What is more, five films in, it confirms Brit Nolan's place as one of the finest directors of his generation.