Movie Magic

Rating: 9/10 (13 December 2007)

I went into this with somewhat low expectations since I really didn't care much for Nolan and Bale's collaboration on "Batman Begins" and I haven't seen anything else by Nolan. I guess I heard some good things about it, plus it was about magicians and my girlfriend will watch anything with David Bowie. Well, I was pretty much floored because it's one of the most enjoyable and intriguing films I've seen in the last few years. With the exception of Johansson who doesn't seem to know what to do with her role, every performance was memorable. Bale finally convinced me that he's a leading man, Jackman was for once as good as his talent would make you think he should be, and it was especially refreshing to see Bowie and Michael Caine in a movie that's actually good for a change. The direction is very stylish but at the same time always appropriate. The twin diary narrative really serves the film well. I always love that moment when the story catches up to the narrator and you never really know if the narrator has all the clues up to that point. When the movie reaches the point where the narration began (in this case, the trip to Colorado to find Tesla), a whole new set of possibilities is opened up and it's almost like you can start the movie all over again.
I have to give it some more time to set in but I'm excited about watching it again because there are so many lines and even whole scenes that take on a different meaning once the conclusion is known. Some of the things that felt pretty weak the first time around (i.e. "I loved you yesterday") could become either poignant or at least ironic. Some things that felt strong already (i.e. "nobody cares about the man in the box") become disturbingly resonant.
I love movies that are able to entertain with a narrative and at the same time suggest themes about film itself or entertainment in general that mirror the story. This is really one of the better recent examples of this type of writing  the whole film fulfills the model of the magician and the 3 moments in a magic trick. The film presents us with some situations that seem mundane (the relationship with wife and mistress, Angiers' obsession with the Transported Man trick), then it "turns" and makes these mundane relationships feel bizarre and twisted (and possibly unreal) only to deliver a superb "prestige" in the end which makes us realize that there IS emotional truth in these characters despite the more bizarre aspects of their character development. Perhaps the only serious flaw in the film is that the process takes so long to unravel that the audience has already decided long before the end that they don't like either of these characters  you can only sit in the darkened theater afterwards to ponder whether perhaps one of these two brothers wasn't quite as bad as the other.
"Are you watching closely?"  in terms of meaning, it could just as easily have been a command: "Watch closely." But I think that would describe a different, and less polemical, movie. I think it was written as a question because this movie really seeks to engage the audience, not just to blow us away with effects, acting, story revelations, but to make us think about what we're seeing, to be constantly questioning what the film seems to expect us to believe. The magic trick won't even work without the audience's willing participation in the larger scheme of mystery and revelation. So I'm slightly surprised that so many posters here as well as intelligent film critics like Roger Ebert seem to consider the steampunkish sci-fi elements associated with the Tesla character to be out of place or even a betrayal of the audience's faith. I felt from the very first moments of the film that there were really no rules about where the story could take us. And frankly, it's a cool idea and it adds a lot of wonder and amazement to the story's conclusion. Sure, the film may not qualify as "high fantasy" or even perhaps as science fiction (since there's no likely explanation in sight as to why the device should work other than Tesla's reputation and the mystique he was given by the director and writers), but I think there's no real reason why a fantasy element can't be introduced late in the story and that the entire framework should adequately prepare the viewer to accept the possibility of Tesla's device working since the Tesla element is one of the first explored at least initially in the narrative despite taking place later in the sequence of events. Bowie and Serkis are fantastic as a pair of modern-day wizards, and the whole idea of using Edison's men as villains is priceless and will striek anyone who knows early cinema history as very true. People in general might not know about how brutal Edison's goons were when they enforced his patents and crushed his competitors; Edison's own self-aggrandizing behavior still skews our picture of him to this day. This movie is a great bit of overdue payback on behalf of Tesla from Hollywood, a town founded by people escaping Edison's goons but who later helped to create his myth through film.