The Prestige: Movie, DVD, Blu-ray disc Review (2006)

9/09/2007 Posted by Admin

What you don't see

(Originally published 2006)

If movies are among our greatest, most enduring vehicles for illusion, deceiving us on nearly every level to generate a manufactured form of reality, then a movie about dueling illusionists should, in theory, offer that same sleight of hand--only amplified.

Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige" is just that sort of movie, and in spite of arriving so soon on the heels of the similar "The Illusionist," it pulls through with panache.

The film, which Nolan ("Insomnia," "Batman Begins") co-wrote with his brother, Jonathan, is among the year's more compelling and baffling movies, a beautifully photographed, nicely acted period thriller in which two popular illusionists working the crowds in 19th-century London are divided by an obsession that's far from magical.

It is, in fact, murderous.

Since the movie follows Nolan's "Memento" in that much of its success depends on revealing as little of its fractured plot as possible, we'll brush only the edges.

The film stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, respectively, two competing magicians who begin the movie on a disastrous note when Angier's wife (Piper Perabo) drowns in a trick gone awry.

Since it was Borden who tied together her wrists for the trick, employing a knot from which she might not be able to escape when she was dropped into the tank of water (she didn't think it would be a problem), Angier blames Borden for her death and their bitter, all-consuming rivalry is born.

What Nolan mounts from this is a controlled spectacle of rage, jealousy and hubris, with a marvelously cast Michael Caine cutting through the dense plot as Cutter, who devises for Angier the fussy machinery necessary to compose his illusions. Also helping Angier in that regard is real-life inventor Nikola Tesla, played here by David Bowie, who has a way with electricity that might just allow Angier to possess the sort of magic trick that even the gifted Borden couldn't fathom.

Dividing the two men is Olivia, Angier's magician's assistant, who is played by Scarlett Johansson with precisely the sort of slutty zest she should have brought to her failed performance in the recent "Black Dahlia," which wasted her. Nolan, on the other hand, uses her to great effect, and what we have in Johansson's performance further ripens a movie that isn't afraid to wallow in the occasional pool of melodrama.

Since the very title of the movie refers to slang for the third act of a magic trick--the payoff, as it were, in which the crowd is wowed--one will do well to listen to Angier and Borden when they ask those close to them and their audience whether they are paying attention. Essentially, they're speaking for Nolan, who is busy priming his audience for his own prestige. When it comes, does it add up? Is it satisfying? For the most part, yes, though as with any magic trick whose devices have been revealed, learning the trick evaporates any possibility for real magic, which is something of a downer.

Since Nolan won't allow for that, he closes his film with a controversial final shot that, at my screening, sent the sort of ripple through the crowd that any magician--or filmmaker, for that matter--would crave.

Grade: B+

(Also available on Blu-ray disc)