impracticable magic

Rating: 9/10 (10 April 2014)

I watched The Prestige in class. The first time I watched it, it was really hard to understand, because the action jumped from the past then to the present too many times, so that made me confused. However, that jumping from past to present turned out to be a big adventure in this movie. The changes in time happened because the story frequently followed the events written about in a diary which was written by a magician. One of the main characters was a man named Borden, who had his hand injured during a dangerous magic act. He had a twin brother, but the two of them pretended to be only one person. Because of this, the second twin had to cut off two of his fingers in order to look exactly like his brother. Also, one of the twins always had to pretend to be someone else. They did this to fool people in their magic act. I asked myself lots of questions while watching The Prestige. If I were in the movie, I do not know if I could give up my fingers to be popular. A Chinese magician in the movie also lived a lie for by pretending to be old and weak just to make his magic work. He did impracticable magic that people were amazed by. I could never do that. I think this movie does not focus only on magic tricks. It shows us how humans are unreliable, greedy, delouse and full of tragic madness, all to create amazing magic.