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.
I haven't seen this movie in awhile but your points make a whole lot of sense and I enjoyed the movie. While I disagree with you in that Hugh Jackman's character does have motivation (though a very weak one admittedly that even then I didn't think about how the memory of his wife gets thrown to the wayside), you're right that Christian Bale really doesn't have any reason other than the sabotage to really just dedicate his life to ruining Hugh Jackman.
By the way, to clarify something in regards to how Hugh Jackman could afford Tesla's magic machine, it's mentioned in passing I think that Hugh Jackman's character comes from money which is why he uses the stage name and I think that's the name he ends up using at the end when he visits Christian Bale in prison.
It was indeed a stupid movie.
This movie was based on a book that I ended up reading before I saw the movie, and not to sound like an ass or whatever, but the book was way better than the movie pretty much because it filled in all the gaps that make the movie so totally unbelievable. The novel is framed by a modern sequence featuring the decedents of the two illusionists meeting and discovering the family feud/legacy by way of published memoirs and private journals. The twins Bale plays write one diary together, so when the "Prestige" of their reveal hits you can go back and see all sorts of conflict within the chapters clearly written by one as opposed to the other, and Jackman's character motivation is a lot more petty but ultimately way more believable. Plus, there's no "we used to be great friends" or whatever contrivance to put them together at first and at odds later. Really, it all works out much better, and I'm super glad that I read the book before I saw the film.
All of this is not to say you should check out the book if you hated the movie as much as it is to say that there was a more believable, effective fantasy story within the premise and characters, but Nolan decided only to keep the "Whodunnit?" misdirection stuff and none of the character underpinnings in his adaptations, which is really a shame.
Huh. For some reason it never even occurred to me that this would be from a book, but it makes a TON of sense, doesn't it. I agree that even half of the whodunnit stuff would have been fine if I really believed in the characters. The whole magician-duplicator thing would probably be hard to buy still, but…
I mean, a good storyteller could make you buy ANYTHING, right? I love that I sound so arch, like I could teach Christopher Nolan a thing or too. I still cry during like HALF of The Neverending Story, so… But of course, I'm never led to believe any of that could be real. I really think that a GREAT magic trick should always be based in reality. By saying, "so Tesla invented the most amazing thing of all time and the trick works," you might as well say "and God came down and teleported Hugh Jackman into the balcony."
On the whole, though, I wouldn't say that I hated the movie, more than I was just disappointed in it. I'm definitely a layman, so if I can see this stuff, it MUST be obvious. And the more that I compare it to Dark Knight in my mind, the more both movies suffer. But that's for Part 2 of my PULSE-POUNDING post!
Well, I liked it. I agree that the teleportation/duplication thing is pretty farfetched, but I was okay with everything else, including believing in the motivation of the characters. The thing with the dead wife was what kicked off the rivalry, but as often happens with feuds, it soon spiraled into something much larger, to the point that the origins of the hatred are all but forgotten. And while so much of it was over-dramatic, I thought it worked with the characters, in the way that stagecraft is emphasized and exaggerated. And I loved the way it all tied in together: Michael Caine's explanation of the title in the beginning, in which he killed one bird and produced another to make it seem like it disappeared, was just the beginning when compared to the way the Bale twins switched around with each other, with one of them eventually dying, and Jackman killing doubles of himself on a nightly basis. It was a nice, gruesome symmetry. Not at all realistic, but very compelling, for me at least.
It actually seems like you (Dustin) might have diagnosed your own dislike right at the beginning when you say you like the tricks, but not seeing how they work. Unfortunately, that's what this movie is all about (except, I guess, Tesla's magic machine, which we're supposed to accept works through SCIENCE!): discovering the machinations behind seemingly impossible tricks. So maybe you were just predisposed to not like it anyway. And if the storytelling didn't work for you either, well, two failures add up to more than the sum of their parts, I guess.
I wonder: have you see The Illusionist, a similar movie that came out around the same time, with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti? I thought it wasn't nearly as good, although the magic tricks in that one weren't explained; we were just supposed to accept that they were really good tricks and not actual supernatural magic. It suffered from trying to be a Shyamalan-esque "twist" movie, with an ending reveal that was supposed to BLOW! YOUR! MIND!, but basically just amounted to "hey, he was a magician and did tricks, you know?" Anyway, I would be curious as to what you thought of that one in comparison. But I wouldn't really recommend rushing out to rent it if you haven't seen it already.
I think I half agree with you, Matthew. It is true that I'm TERRIBLE about deciding to hate a movie and then being unable to avoid it. I try to avoid reviews of movies I want to watch like the plague for just this reason.
BUT I, like you, loved the Michael Caine part at the beginning–I maybe sound more dismissive of it than I intended. As a setup and explanation for the idea of "the prestige", it was great, and really seemed to indicate that the whole movie would be about misdirection and illusion.
But by the end–you're totally right on the multiple ending twist-a-thon, which I also think was the big failing of The Dark Knight's marathon half-hour epilogue(s)–there had been so many explanations that the movie seemed not at all about magic and more about explanations.
I need to write the other half of my little diatribe, which is the more constructive half. For instance, I think there were like TWO OR THREE great movies hiding in the whole Tesla story/device, but instead this amazing machine was just a sort of bizarre plot device. Not to mention the quantum implications of all this magician reproducing, which I enjoy thinking about too. Maybe I'll try to hit that badboy tonight.
My likings of you and your drawing power almost made my believe in your well pointed and expertly applied argumentation, but, but, BUT, I can't listen to it!
I like this movie it's good trash to me! So I will just hold my ears each time this article comes by and try to ignore it. Yes try.
"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."
He didn't drown himself, he cloned himself and killed the clone. I can't believe people are allowed to review a movie they watched or didn't pay attention to.
Oh and here is a good way to discredit yourself "it is important for me to make the point that I am not in any way educated, know next to nothing about film theory".
Point being, the author of this rubbish review knows nothing about film, and has incorrect information about this movie.
Good gravy! Well, as to your second point, yes absolutely I am uneducated. I'm a high school dropout with no background in film theory, be it through formal education or independent research. I'm not even sure I could call myself well-watched, or well-viewed, or whatever is closest to "well-read", for movies. I would disagree that this discounts my opinion entirely; although maybe if I were a film professor or a cinematographer I might be allowed more latitude in my opinions.
On the other hand, I am an auto-didact, in this case a self-taught cartoonist, and I enjoy thinking about narrative structure. I am planning out a long story in my head, and am on the lookout for the mistakes smarter people have made, so I can at least avoid those more obvious ones.
But I think you're wrong about the drowning/cloning relationship. The Hugh Jackman character would clone himself, yes–but the clone would POOF! appear on the other side of the theater, near the top of that staircase. Leaving Jackman to fall into the water and drown.
What's MORE interesting about this is that, from a sort of quasi-quantum direction ("quasi-quantum" would be Scrabble Armageddon, if it were a real word), the cloned Jackman has NO MEMORIES of drowning. He has all of the previous memories (I'm presuming; this is one of the few things not painstakingly explained via voiceover and flashbacks) UP TO the moment of cloning. Therefore he may lack real knowledge of the awful terrible death he is subjecting his former selves to.
But it's important to point out, not only narratively but from a character standpoint, that "real" Jackman is long dead–the clones are what lives on.
This reminds me–I need to write part 2 of this rubbish review.
What I found unnecessary about the cloning device was that Jackman's character already had a double, who he had the motivation to kill, and framing Bale into the bargain. The sci-fi cloning just adds a layer of misdirection that isn't needed, and actually cheapens the theme of illusion that runs through the rest of the movie.
The story is essentially about two smart, inventive performers trying to outwit each other. We are asked to eneter a world where method is admired above effect. The trump card, the final twist SHOULD have been one of the protagonists out-thinking the other in an unexpected but ultimately explicable way. For (a poor and obvious) example, Bale continuing to perform The Transported Man with a triplet. Unfortunately introducing David Bowie's magic machine takes the film away from the brilliance of Harry Houdini and dumps it in the special effects and fairy dust of Harry Potter.
Caine's narration nails it when he says that The Prestige should leave the audience wondering "how did they do that?" Which the cloning simply does not do.
I think Matt K came the closest to hitting on it and then ended up missing it. You only believe in the Tesla machine because you want to think it really works that way.
The film opens with all of the hats sitting in the field and Michael Caine telling you basically "Look here do you see it" and then gives his whole speech on how magic tricks work because you want to believe it is possible. I think it worked like this:
Bale's character was already at Tesla's show in London. I think he said, look Tesla I am going to send a real mark your way that will pay you any sum of money for a magic device he thinks exists and I used. He then gives Angier the diary through the assistant to send him off to Colorado in search of Tesla. Angier wanted to believe that the machine was possible which is why he could be duped by by all the fraud and mystery Tesla put out there with electric fences and powered cities. Who knows how the light bulbs and all that shit works…it's all magic distraction to make Angier think he can do magic through electricity.
Tesla had the machine fail with Angier's hat the first time and then escorts him out sans hat and tells him he should maybe come back later. When he returns they tell him they have been trying over and over again in his absence on his hat but with no success it just disappears. So now, all of the sudden with him there, they will change the trick and try with the cat. Here is where the magician's assistant comes in, he pretends to be so concerned for his "pet cat", yet tells Tesla that he is responsible for what happens and dumps the thing (which for some reason is lined up in a cage ready to go) onto the platform. Presto it fails and he walks away only to find a field full of the hats that were "duplicated" in his absence and two cats. All of the sudden he is a believer and is thrilled with the machine. In the mean time two ominous men who unnecessarily announce themselves to the inn keeper as "Edison's men" destroy the lab and give Tesla and his assistant their getaway with Angier's money a la "The Sting"(I think the author of this website comments to a plot flaw of where does he get all this money in the mean time as a magician…he is rich to begin with as Lord Whatever). While Angier is supposed to be broken by getting this stupid static electricty prop for a small fortune, he actually gets the formula for his greatest trick on Bale's character.
This is how I think the Real Transported Man actually works. Angier defines a term for how the show will run, just like Tesla said to come back in a few weeks. That way you only have to do the real trick once but the belief that it is being done in one's absence adds to the incredibleness of the final performance. The machine is a prop. It shoots lights and makes a blinding flash for the magician to make a getaway from the trap door, which is really there for Bale's benefit when he sees it the first time. Who is dropped into the tank of water the first 99 nights? No one. Just like Angier believes that in his absence this machine is working over and over to make hats, Bale's character believes it is making Angiers clone drop into a locked pool. The two blind stage hands cannot see what isn't happening those 99 nights, but Bale's character is also convinced that their blindness is so they don't know that they are rolling out a water tank with a corpse. They are just rolling out a covered up tank of water in broad daylight for Bale's benefit. So how does Angier get in the balcony? I presume this is why he employs Michael Caine's character again. Remember earlier in the film he hates the idea of crushing the bird and Caine rigs a machine to whisk the bird from one hand to another through his sleeves before the cage designed to crush it can kill it? Likewise I think he has rigged a device that whisks Jackman from the stage to the other side of the theater for the first 99 nights, or a device that pulls away Jackman from the trap door leaving his double to say "Good night to all." Remember how Bale finally shows up to try to kill it, just as he shows up to presumably study the new trick and find a new way to injure or kill Jackman? Why include that part otherwise? What does it add to the movie? All these people that moan about "How would he ever find 100 doubles" forget that he does not have to find 100 doubles because the only night we actually see someone die is the final night. We just see the tanks rolled out by some blind guys.
The final night of the show, just like the appointed day Angier showed up to Tesla, a different trick is tried. I think he knows he will show up because he gets his assistant to bait the bad twin into going by saying "meh meh, it's so awesome." That or he knows he will show up for the final show. This time, he does the unthinkable and actually kills the canary/pet cat (his double for the final night when Bale watches it happen), something he was never willing to do before.
I also think after he learned the hard way that Tesla's machine was a fake he finally realized that Bale not only had a super convincing double, but a twin (this would be apparent to Angier since Bale was so quick to perceive that the Chinese magician lived his entire life as a fake cripple just to affect one magic trick). He even comments in his diary on the Bale diary being written by two very different people. Angier finally understands how Bale could not know for sure what know was tied. He knew that he was hanging the one undomestic twin who overtied his wife and getting his revenge on that one. He proably even told Bale's wife about the twin situation to take away what Bale had taken from him. I think he wanted revenge from the undomesticated Bale. However, I think his final trick was in angering Michael Caine's character by revealing himself to him and making him realize that he had obviously killed a double in the final performance This leads Caine to send Bale's domestic twin to the warehouse for revenge. I think Caine tells Angier about the agony of drowning to make him realize how he tortured the double (not himself as a clone 99 times) Here it is like the hats and cats in a field the trick is in getting him here and see the tank with the body (dummy, double who knows but why would a days or weeks or months old corpse in a thing of water look intact and why keep them all in the warehouse other than for Bale to see them). I think his last trick is in really making Bale the domestic twin believe the machine works by telling him the bs about shooting his clone. I think the stuff from the beginning about being willing to really sacrifice to be a magician comes into play as Angier is willing to die at Bale's domestic twins hands in order to convince him that the cloning machine works.
The big loop in all of this that I can't figure though is why Caine's character go onto the judge about how it was real and about wanting to keep it out of the Lord cardlow's hands. Maybe because it included the safety device that he thought had failed to snatch Angier from dropping through the trap door that he thought was faulty? Anyway, short of that piece I can't reason through I think this is a better answer than it was a shitty movie that set it self up as "Look through the trick" and ended with a sparking cloning machine and a bunch of otherwise useless clues and hints throughout.
Nice post Dharbin
i can't seem to find the 2nd post on this anywhere.
When can we expect that, if you are still going to write it?
damn it nolan, why must everything be so complicated?