“Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge; the magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, or a bird, or a man. He shows you this object, and pledges to you its utter normality. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed real, unaltered, normal, but of course, it probably isn’t. The second act is called the Turn; the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because, of course, you're not really looking. You don’t really want to know: you want to be fooled.”
These, if you have followed my admonition, you will certainly recognize as the movie's opening lines, as delivered by Michael Caine. And, of course, they double as the film's equally-memorable closing lines (delivered by same). We all love it when the end of an essay, book, or movie returns to its starting point because this gives us a sense both of closure, as things seem tied up ever so neatly, and of infinity, as an ending that loops back around to the beginning creates a cyclical looping.
“But you wouldn’t clap yet, because making something disappear isn’t enough: you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call the Prestige.”
Similarly, a clever dénouement coupled with a recitation of the opening soliloquy is not enough to bring a movie-going audience to its collective feet, not even enough to elicit half-grateful applause. What a good movie needs (and what I think The Prestige delivers), the "hardest part," as it were, is for that long stretch between between the opening and closing monologues to be compelling, captivating, original.
I was no fan of the Brothers Nolan's other movie, Memento, which I thought relied too heavily on the conceit of running both forward and backward from opposite ends of the plot's chronology to engender in the audience the disorienting effects of anterograde amnesia, the disorder from which the main character suffers. It was a cute effect, but if the story itself, when told in normal chronology, is not particularly interesting.* Actually, after hearing that The Prestige was written and directed by the same people who made Memento, I was very reluctant to watch it, but rave reviews from several of my new friends in CYF (most notably Brandon and Yolanda) helped change my mind—and rightfully so!
As in Memento, time frame shifts are heavily employed in The Prestige; unlike the former film, however, The Prestige doesn't feel unnaturally bound to a gimmicky sort of time-hopping for purpose or meaning. True, the three time periods among which The Prestige's plot jumps do roughly correspond to the Pledge, the Turn, and the Prestige of a traditional magic trick, but the effect is considerably more subtle, and therefore more easily appreciated. (Crème brûlée, even when masterfully prepared, just doesn't taste as good when rammed down your throat by the quart.) Granted, the skipping around is not always easy on the viewer: Pam, with whom I watched the movie for the first time, was a little confused by the film's "time travel," and had to view it again the next day; Jean Oppenheimer (professional movie critic), who reviewed the film for KPCC's FilmWeek [scroll down to the very bottom of the page], was so totally perplexed that she confessed on air, "I never [figured out what the film was about], even at the end, unfortunately. From the minute it started to the minute it ended. Fortunately, I ran into Andy Klein [a fellow professional critic] after the film and he explained it to me."† Yet despite this minor difficulty, the film more than rewards the viewer for investing the requisite attention, which it deserves! [Honestly, if a film can be understood while simultaneously talking to a friend, planning out your week's schedule and balancing your checkbook, there's a good chance it's too simple to be enjoyed.]
After leaving the theater, I was most struck by a (possibly unintended) form of misdirection. I was so focused on figuring out how Alfred Borden accomplishes the "Original Transported Man" (and coincidentally why he sometimes loves Sarah, and sometimes does not), that I utterly overlooked a part of the movie intended to be rather straightforward: Tesla's machine. I thought the multiple top haps had all been purchased by Tesla and his assistant, in order to run more tests on the hats that the machine was somehow ruining. When Tesla tells Angier, "they're all yours" (referencing to whom all the top hats belong), I mistook his meaning as, "they all belong to you. Since you paid me such a hefty sum, you can have them all." I also thought there are two ordinary black cats on the hill, not realizing one is a transported clone. I only figured out how the machine operates when Algier first tries it, and his clone is incarnated a few feet from him. Misdirection at its best! (Or just my being stupid...) Anyway, I was amused by the way the film's mirrored a magic act in this respect.
It was Eddie who pointed out to me that in repeating the opening monologue at the end, the film "brings it back," much like the Prestige of a traditional act of prestidigitation. I must also credit him with the observation that the two characters switch personalities in the film: early on, Algier is reluctant "getting his hands dirty," while Borden has no qualms about the daily sacrifice of canaries to the gods of magic. In the end, however, it is Algier who murders his clone (himself!) every night simply to prove he is the superior magician. (There is also the interesting way the rivalry between Edison and Tesla mirrors that between The Professor and The Great Danton, but I needn't get into that in this burgeoning piece.)
Matt Johnston, of the Chicago Maroon, does an excellent job summing the movie up:
This third act is the Professor’s specialty. He is a superior magician and pulls off tricks so well that the audience sometimes does not clap, too shocked to see how perfect the illusion has been. (Or was it an illusion?) Danton is the lesser magician but the greater showman by far. His megaphone charm wins the day. With this movie, the Nolans join the Danton school: They have an inferior trick, but they sure do know how to sell it. The Prestige has a great pledge and an even better turn, but, ironically, no prestige.
For a fellow blogspotter's review (not as well written as Johnston's, but still maybe worth a read), check out Ben Witherington.
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*N.B. By way of comparison, I absolutely love Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, a two-person musical detailing Jamie and Cathy's meeting, courtship, marriage and divorce all within (you guessed it) a five year span. The show opens with Cathy in the midst of, or just after, her divorce from Jamie; each song of hers thereafter relates an incident temporally before the one that precedes it. Between each of Cathy's numbers, Jamie tells his side of the story in traditional, forward chronology, starting from the couple's first date. The musical's only duet occurs in the middle, when both of their storylines intersect for their engagement and wedding. What's so fantastic about The Last Five Years is that it deals with a major logistical constraint (small budget = a cast of only two) by parlaying it into a strength: creative use of those two characters, especially by placing each character on a different temporal trajectory. While the story itself isn't anything new, seeing the dissolution of a marriage from the forward and reverse directions is simultaneously unsettling and fascinating. [Okay, I realize this sort of sounds like a big, fat contradiction since what I didn't like about Memento was its typical plot and its dependence on chronological trickery. In my defense: 1) I feel like the forward/backward effect was simply better employed and less jarring than in Memento; 2) I have a predilection for musical theater over film as a storytelling medium (and, of course, the song-and-dance numbers in Memento were pretty sparse); 3) while Brown's story is no more original than that of the Nolans', I simply found the former more engaging.] As always though, what matters most in a musical is its music, and both Brown's lyrics and his score are superb.
For more info, check out (what I suspect is) Jason Robert Brown's website, Goodbye Until Tomorrow, or Musical Theatre Audition.
†I'm not sure, however that Ms. Oppenheimer should be a film critic, professional or otherwise, since later in her review she admits, "I'd never heard of a man named Tesla in history, and apparently that's quite important. I can't believe I'm the only ignorant person who's going to sit in that movie house [laughs, half embarrassed]." Yes, believe it, Jean. Did you even take history? If not, then you should have at least heard of Tesla in a science class. Public education fails another student.
"I could not understand a lot of what Christian Bale said because of his cockney accent. So the film didn't work for me because I couldn't understand a lot of what was going on, and when I did, I thought that they said it in the most confusing way." First of all, Mr. Bale's accent comes from his native Wales, not cockney. Shouldn't a film critic be more informed about things like linguistics? It seems a little unfair to a movie to say in effect,"It didn't work for me because I'm dumb as rocks, can't follow a plot that's anything other than linear, and remember nothing from either history or physics." Be honest: blame yourself, not the film.
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