Before I begin, it is important for me to make the point that I am not in any way educated, know next to nothing about film theory, and am utterly in awe of anyone who can wrestle a film crew and 3 months of often incredibly boring sweat into ANYthing, regardless of the relative quality of the product. But this movie provoked so many different streams of thought in me I thought it would be ridiculous not to think harder about them, and I'm too vain not to share. Please presume that my intentions are mainly self-educative, and only very slightly in trying to make myself look more clever.
OKAY! With that out of the way:
The Prestige has some good qualities, for sure, but they are largely drowned out by the indefatigable mediocrity of the movie in general. I was especially surprised at the overpowering so-so-ness of it, mainly because I'd heard so much good stuff about it. Probably the best part of the movie for me was Christian Bale, who I think I've liked in everything I've seen him in, although I don't think I've ever seen him in a really GREAT movie. Where most actors do "brooding and pensive" by just sort of squinting at things more, Bale has a real intensity on film that pulls the story around him a little bit, whether he's the good guy or the bad guy.
I'm not here to smear the movie. It's not necessarily BAD, although anything that costs millions of dollars to make should always be GREAT, right? Right? And even if it's not, if you're going to poo-poo one movie, there are probably a few thousand worse ones that you need to get to first. But my problems with The Prestige are more focused than normal, and in most cases relate to what--even to a total amateur like myself--seem like egregious and needless mistakes in storytelling.
TOTAL SPOILERS BELOW.
The main problem with the story, and the uber-problem that it's smaller problems orbit around, is patent unbelievability. The plot hinges on the idea of a magic trick as both a metaphor and a very real plot device--but fails on both counts to deliver anything like its promise.
First the metaphor, the idea of "the prestige", the part of a trick where the effect of the illusion is produced, and even the most cynical skeptic is forced to wonder at the skill of the illusionist. At the beginning of the movie, when Michael Caine is pretty much just straight up telling us what the movie is all about in one of many many convenient expositional voice-overs, I was kind of excited. I love this sort of thing, and am the sort of person who LOVES to be surprised, and is not at all interested in knowing how a trick is performed. I like the magic, y'know?
But the great failing of The Prestige is that EVERY trick is explained. From the lowest where-did-that-bird-go trick to the big trick(s) at the end, and everything in between. And so, in a movie that ostensibly is about magic, and more specifically about how that magic drives everyone in the movie completely nutty, you're left with no feeling for the magic itself. I can't think of a single thing I walked away from that movie wondering about--isn't a movie a sort of magic trick in itself? The Prestige lacks wonder.
Okay, now the non-metaphor, although it too is wrapped up in metaphor. One of the numerous "main" questions of the film's plot revolves around how the Christian Bale character is pulling off this nutty trick. The answer: there are two of him. If you haven't seen the movie, I may have just ruined it for you. Or if you're like me, you figured it out barely halfway through the movie, and then spent the second half dreading it--"could this really be the answer?" And again, I'm not the sort of person who is trying to guess endings and stuff. I like to relax and be stupid when I watch movies.
Even worse, when this big "prestige" is revealed, it is almost immediately trumped by the other "prestige"--you can see the diminishing returns at work here, I bet--which is so bizarre that it renders the first one completely forgotten. Oh yes--and this one is ALSO revealed much earlier in the movie, so the "reveal" itself is highly anticlimactic.
DOUBLE SECRET SPOILER WARNING!
Here's the thing: halfway throught the movie, the Hugh Jackman character convinces Nikola Tesla to create a big sciencey device for him, although he has no idea what it does, nor does he even ask. Check it:
You don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to figure this one out, y'know? Tesla builds a device (twice?) that can basically duplicate a thing completely, plus conveniently send that duplicate off a little ways so you don't see it right away. Organic matter? No problem. Thoughts, memories, the soul itself? No problem! The audience's suspension of disbelief? Well...
Because what does noted scientist Tesla do? As the terrible henchman of cruel Thomas Edison himself are about to burn his laboratory to the ground? He packs up this incredible device and gives it to this obsessed lunatic magician, and then trundles off in a stagecoach somewhere, possibly whistling "Lady Stardust."
For me, this was the end of the movie. The leaps of logic necessary to get to the next phase, where Hugh Jackman is setting up his big prestige using this fantastic Jules Verne device, were maybe too great for the spindly legs of my imagination. Which leads me to the other big problem I have with this movie: the lack of any motivation for ANY character.
I like characters. I like books where the author creates a character so vivid that you are forced almost against your will to love or hate them, or often both. You identify with a character; you can understand and often sympathize with their motivations, and it adds depth not only to that character, but in the world that they inhabit.
But in The Prestige, we are asked again and again to believe that each of the main characters will do extraordinary things for no reason. And each time we are asked this, it becomes harder and harder to suspend disbelief.
For instance: for part of the movie (or all of it?) Hugh Jackman is motivated by the accidental death of his wife by Christian Bale's hand in a trick-gone-wrong. Motivated so much that he blows off part of Bale's hand later, and the two immediately just start trying to kill/maim/ruin each other from then on. Bale never says, "hey bro that was a total accident I tried that rope and she winked at me to do it and then well you saw what happened anyway sorry." Instead they decide to spend the rest of their lives trying to ruin each other over it. I could buy it if this was the only big leap--in fact, if it was the big leap of faith in the movie, it might seem more possible. I certainly have done ridiculously petty things for almost no reason before.
But the lengths to which they go beggar the imagination, for such a slight. Not to mention that Hugh Jackman takes up with Scarlet Johannsen in short order, and mentions of the dead wife pretty much stop after that. Christian Bale chops his (secret) twin's finger off so they can switch places, and then spends the rest of that twin's life switching back and forth so he can appear to be teleporting onstage. Whaaaaaat?! Hugh Jackman, who somehow makes an incredible sum of money offscreen at some point, spends months in another country convincing the world's foremost scientist to invent 12 different brand new technologies so that he can really zing his great rival.
And apparently, Hugh Jackman will drown himself over and over and over again in order to make this work. So he's so driven that he will KILL HIMSELF nightly BY DROWNING in order to "win." Really? Because of some dead wife he's already forgotten? At the beginning of the movie these guys are little more than magician's apprentices, but we're supposed to believe that they're infused with some love of magic so great that they would bend time and space itself to have the best trick? I don't buy it.
In short, the "prestige" of The Prestige, the moment(s) around which the plot of the movie turned, were so dumb as to retroactively render the entire movie inert.
I have a lot more to say about this, but I will have to save it for Part 2. I still have drawing to do this morning.
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Before I begin, it is important for me to make the point that I am not in any way educated, know next to nothing about film theory, and am utterly in awe of anyone who can wrestle a film crew and 3 months of often incredibly boring sweat into ANYthing, regardless of the relative quality of the product. But this movie provoked so many different streams of thought in me I thought it would be ridiculous not to think harder about them, and I'm too vain not to share. Please presume that my intentions are mainly self-educative, and only very slightly in trying to make myself look more clever.
OKAY! With that out of the way:
The Prestige has some good qualities, for sure, but they are largely drowned out by the indefatigable mediocrity of the movie in general. I was especially surprised at the overpowering so-so-ness of it, mainly because I'd heard so much good stuff about it. Probably the best part of the movie for me was Christian Bale, who I think I've liked in everything I've seen him in, although I don't think I've ever seen him in a really GREAT movie. Where most actors do "brooding and pensive" by just sort of squinting at things more, Bale has a real intensity on film that pulls the story around him a little bit, whether he's the good guy or the bad guy.
I'm not here to smear the movie. It's not necessarily BAD, although anything that costs millions of dollars to make should always be GREAT, right? Right? And even if it's not, if you're going to poo-poo one movie, there are probably a few thousand worse ones that you need to get to first. But my problems with The Prestige are more focused than normal, and in most cases relate to what--even to a total amateur like myself--seem like egregious and needless mistakes in storytelling.
TOTAL SPOILERS BELOW.
The main problem with the story, and the uber-problem that it's smaller problems orbit around, is patent unbelievability. The plot hinges on the idea of a magic trick as both a metaphor and a very real plot device--but fails on both counts to deliver anything like its promise.
First the metaphor, the idea of "the prestige", the part of a trick where the effect of the illusion is produced, and even the most cynical skeptic is forced to wonder at the skill of the illusionist. At the beginning of the movie, when Michael Caine is pretty much just straight up telling us what the movie is all about in one of many many convenient expositional voice-overs, I was kind of excited. I love this sort of thing, and am the sort of person who LOVES to be surprised, and is not at all interested in knowing how a trick is performed. I like the magic, y'know?
But the great failing of The Prestige is that EVERY trick is explained. From the lowest where-did-that-bird-go trick to the big trick(s) at the end, and everything in between. And so, in a movie that ostensibly is about magic, and more specifically about how that magic drives everyone in the movie completely nutty, you're left with no feeling for the magic itself. I can't think of a single thing I walked away from that movie wondering about--isn't a movie a sort of magic trick in itself? The Prestige lacks wonder.
Okay, now the non-metaphor, although it too is wrapped up in metaphor. One of the numerous "main" questions of the film's plot revolves around how the Christian Bale character is pulling off this nutty trick. The answer: there are two of him. If you haven't seen the movie, I may have just ruined it for you. Or if you're like me, you figured it out barely halfway through the movie, and then spent the second half dreading it--"could this really be the answer?" And again, I'm not the sort of person who is trying to guess endings and stuff. I like to relax and be stupid when I watch movies.
Even worse, when this big "prestige" is revealed, it is almost immediately trumped by the other "prestige"--you can see the diminishing returns at work here, I bet--which is so bizarre that it renders the first one completely forgotten. Oh yes--and this one is ALSO revealed much earlier in the movie, so the "reveal" itself is highly anticlimactic.
DOUBLE SECRET SPOILER WARNING!
Here's the thing: halfway throught the movie, the Hugh Jackman character convinces Nikola Tesla to create a big sciencey device for him, although he has no idea what it does, nor does he even ask. Check it:
You don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to figure this one out, y'know? Tesla builds a device (twice?) that can basically duplicate a thing completely, plus conveniently send that duplicate off a little ways so you don't see it right away. Organic matter? No problem. Thoughts, memories, the soul itself? No problem! The audience's suspension of disbelief? Well...
Because what does noted scientist Tesla do? As the terrible henchman of cruel Thomas Edison himself are about to burn his laboratory to the ground? He packs up this incredible device and gives it to this obsessed lunatic magician, and then trundles off in a stagecoach somewhere, possibly whistling "Lady Stardust."
For me, this was the end of the movie. The leaps of logic necessary to get to the next phase, where Hugh Jackman is setting up his big prestige using this fantastic Jules Verne device, were maybe too great for the spindly legs of my imagination. Which leads me to the other big problem I have with this movie: the lack of any motivation for ANY character.
I like characters. I like books where the author creates a character so vivid that you are forced almost against your will to love or hate them, or often both. You identify with a character; you can understand and often sympathize with their motivations, and it adds depth not only to that character, but in the world that they inhabit.
But in The Prestige, we are asked again and again to believe that each of the main characters will do extraordinary things for no reason. And each time we are asked this, it becomes harder and harder to suspend disbelief.
For instance: for part of the movie (or all of it?) Hugh Jackman is motivated by the accidental death of his wife by Christian Bale's hand in a trick-gone-wrong. Motivated so much that he blows off part of Bale's hand later, and the two immediately just start trying to kill/maim/ruin each other from then on. Bale never says, "hey bro that was a total accident I tried that rope and she winked at me to do it and then well you saw what happened anyway sorry." Instead they decide to spend the rest of their lives trying to ruin each other over it. I could buy it if this was the only big leap--in fact, if it was the big leap of faith in the movie, it might seem more possible. I certainly have done ridiculously petty things for almost no reason before.
But the lengths to which they go beggar the imagination, for such a slight. Not to mention that Hugh Jackman takes up with Scarlet Johannsen in short order, and mentions of the dead wife pretty much stop after that. Christian Bale chops his (secret) twin's finger off so they can switch places, and then spends the rest of that twin's life switching back and forth so he can appear to be teleporting onstage. Whaaaaaat?! Hugh Jackman, who somehow makes an incredible sum of money offscreen at some point, spends months in another country convincing the world's foremost scientist to invent 12 different brand new technologies so that he can really zing his great rival.
And apparently, Hugh Jackman will drown himself over and over and over again in order to make this work. So he's so driven that he will KILL HIMSELF nightly BY DROWNING in order to "win." Really? Because of some dead wife he's already forgotten? At the beginning of the movie these guys are little more than magician's apprentices, but we're supposed to believe that they're infused with some love of magic so great that they would bend time and space itself to have the best trick? I don't buy it.
In short, the "prestige" of The Prestige, the moment(s) around which the plot of the movie turned, were so dumb as to retroactively render the entire movie inert.
I have a lot more to say about this, but I will have to save it for Part 2. I still have drawing to do this morning.
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