It’s becoming apparent that movies come in pairs these days. Two movies about bugs who talk, two movies about highlanders, two movies with volcanos, two movies with asteroids, two movies about Alexander,¹ two movies about Truman Capote. This year, we have the choice of two movies about turn-of-the-century magicians.² These genres are getting surprisingly specific.

The Prestige, as dear old Michael Caine explains to us early in the picture, is the final act of a magic trick — the impressive bit. The Prestige is impressive too, but not in the same way a magic trick is. Many tricks, including quite a few of the ones portrayed in this movie, rely in part on suspense; on the audience being terrified for the safety of an innocent, be it a cute little birdie or an even cuter Scarlett Johansson. By contrast, after half an hour with the feuding characters of The Prestige, you most probably won’t particularly care for the well-being of any of them.

But YM, as they say on the interweb, MV. Some people say they can’t watch a film without a sympathetic character; others focus on plot. If you need to be able to align yourself with the protagonist of a film, you may have trouble. The Prestige is a film about bitterness, jealousy, hatred, success, and obsession. You won’t come bouncing out of the cinema. There’s perhaps a similar tone to Christopher Nolan’s earlier work, Memento — but these characters do horrible things without needing to be tricked into them.³

The story, then. Hugh Jackman’s Robert Angier is a consummate showman, expert at wooing and manipulating a crowd, but maybe less good at the finer points of magic, and less concerned with originality and vision. Christian Bale’s Alfred Borden is almost his perfect inverse; dedicated to doing something original and wonderful, but not as good at making the audience appreciate it. This probably doesn’t sound enough for a good feud, and it isn’t — it takes a bit of tragedy to start them rolling. But once they do, their differences in character are more than enough to keep the fires burning.

On the other hand, the girls — Miss Johansson, Rebecca Hall and Piper Perabo — don’t have anything particularly interesting to do aside from being generally tragic, which is a shame, but I suppose it is true to the spirit of stage magic.⁴

The Prestige is a clever film, as you’d expect from Nolan.⁵ The screenplay is based on an equally well-plotted book, and doesn’t screw anything up.⁶ Some of the twists in the tale are a little over-signposted, but this is made up for by the sheer volume of them. The film isn’t just clever, it’s choc-full of story — and story which hangs together, at that — which is pretty special in this day and age.

There’s a lot to like about this film; there’s a cute splash of science fiction, a lot of romance, impressive tricks, flashbacks, and at one point, David Bowie and Gollum turn up. You might find the whole production leaves you cold, but if you can get past that, you might find an awesome, twisted little film exploring just how far people are willing to go for an obsession.

1. Well, not quite. One was probably enough anyway, Baz. ↩
2. The Illusionist, starring Ed Norton, isn’t quite out yet here. But by the law of pairs, it fast approaches. ↩
3. I think a novel has an easier time of forcing you to identify with unpleasant characters. Books get to play with ideas of subjectivity quite easily; the viewer of a film feels eminently qualified to judge any and all characters, because they saw what happened. ↩
4. In fact, there’s a “hell hath no fury” moment at one point, which I’m starting to develop a bit of an allergy to. ↩
5. That “microwave” stuff in Batman Begins notwithstanding. ↩
6. Well, I didn’t feel like it did. A quick look on Wikipedia reveals quite a few plot differences, in fact. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Tom Charman on Sunday, December 10th, 2006. It concerns such pressing issues as film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.