Rival magicians get seriously vicious in another twisted tale of identity, guilt & redemption from the Nolans, who brought you "Memento"

Rating: 8/10 (3 November 2006)

The Nolan Brothers sure know how to mess with a viewer's mind! In their time twister, "Memento," a lowlife cannot form new memories after a vicious blow to the head. There the Nolans - Christopher directing and collaborating with his brother Jonathan in writing the screenplay - turned the tables on time (moving backward from the present in overlapping segments), personal history and culpability, as the protagonist uses Polaroid photos and other aids as substitutes for recall in his desperate attempt to find the person that killed his wife and left him badly damaged. I had to see "Memento" twice to get the complex arc of the thing.
Now, in "The Prestige," a period film about magic and magicians, set in 1878 in London and Colorado Springs, the Nolans are at it again, messing with time, identity, guilt and me. Things are even more complicated in this maddening, fascinating movie that's part thriller, part melodrama, and part science fiction. And, so, once again, I had to squander precious time and effort, seeing this movie twice in order to get the fine points, often spoken in brief, toss off lines, or visually displayed in tiny fragments, glimpsed for an instant, then gone again.
Without entirely giving away the secrets of this film, which would be felonious, I can safely say this much. Two aspiring young magicians become bitter rivals, their increasingly vicious attitudes toward one another fueled by acts that inflict pain and loss for each. The impoverished Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), is an ingenious inventor of tricks but a poor showman. Rupert Angier (Hugh Jackman), comes from wealth; he's a slick showman but far less creative than Borden.
Borden produces a dazzling new stage trick, "The Transported Man," in which, within the span of just a few seconds, he disappears through a doorway on one side of the stage, then reappears through another doorway on the opposite side, in time to catch a rubber ball he had set bouncing across the stage before disappearing! The crowds are wowed, and Borden becomes the toast of the town. Angier tries to duplicate the trick, even sending his newest stage assistant, Olivia (a distractingly buxom Scarlett Johannson) to spy on Borden. Instead the sham in Angier's act is exposed by Borden.
Humiliated, Angier goes off to America to meet the controversial inventor of alternating current electricity, Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). Angier wants Tesla to create an electrical machine that will enhance his magic show. Angier stays on for more than a year, bankrolling Tesla's problem plagued efforts to produce the contraption Angier desires.
Ultimately Tesla's efforts pay off. Angier returns to London and launches a new stage production in which Tesla's imposing device, generating impressive electrical arcs, is able somehow to make Angier disappear from the stage and reappear in seconds high in the theater's balcony. Matters turn decidedly more grim from this point forward: people are killed, or seem to be. In the end justice prevails, or does it? Compared to the manipulation of time in "Prestige," "Memento" seems, well, almost straightforward. In "Prestige," we switch back and forth among three timeframes: the early careers of the rival magicians, leading up to their competing 'transported man' acts; the period of ferment and exile when Angier lives in Colorado, then returns to mount his extraordinary new show, employing Tesla's machine; and, finally, the morbid developments that follow, and their resolution.
Early on, we receive lessons on the structure of good magic tricks from a veteran London magic man, John Cutter (Michael Caine), who gave Angier and Borden their first jobs. To be successful, Cutter intones, a trick must follow a three step sequence: first, "The Pledge" (when the magician shows the audience something ordinary), next "The Turn" (in which the ordinary object is made to do something extraordinary), and, finally, "The Prestige" (when the audience is shown something shocking that they've never seen before).
I think the Nolans have used this formula to great advantage in creating the structure of their narrative: the early rivalry and love interests of the young magicians are ordinary stuff. Tesla's machine surely can transform the ordinary into something extraordinary. And events toward the end, concerning personal identity, guilt and redemption, show us shocking things we've never seen before. So, bravo to the Nolans for their ingenuity.
Bale and Jackman perform competently, each displaying impressive range. All three of the men's love interests, are well played (Piper Perabo as Julia, young Angier's wife; Rebecca Hall, as Borden's partner, Sarah; and Ms. Johannson, who manages to insinuate herself as mistress to both men).
But the scene stealers in this movie are Michael Caine and David Bowie. It is a treat to see Caine in top form as an understated, wise but world weary fellow who's done it all. His performance has depth and grace, and is achieved with seeming effortlessness. Bowie is a wonderful surprise. His Tesla - displaying a formal, almost stiff manner and cautious, circumspect speaking style, with a splendid east European accent Â– perfectly captures the reserve we would expect of a man who had become the object of international controversy and defamation.
"Memento" is daringly complex but its premise holds up well, in part because the Nolans modeled the protagonist's handicap on an actual neurosurgical patient. "Prestige" is based on a 1995 novel by Christopher Priest that I haven't read. There are continuity problems in the film (see the IMDb's "Goofs" observed in "Prestige"). Some of the disguises the two rivals wear to scope out or foil each other's work are way inadequate: if I can spot these dudes in a heartbeat, why can't they? More importantly, I think the movie is overly burdened, made unwieldy, by its complexity. It's surely not a great film, or a ground-breaking one in the sense that "Memento" was. But, like a well performed magic show, it's still darn good entertainment. My grades: 8/10 (B+) (Seen on 10/28/06)