The Prestige (6/10)
by Tony Medley
The second guy generally has
to be better than the first guy…a lot better. Unfortunately for “The
Prestige,” it’s not better than “The Illusionist,” which got there
firstest with the mostest.
Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman)
is a magician who is ticked off with Alfred Borden (Christian Bale)
because Alfred was probably culpable in the death of Robert’s wife,
Julia McCullough (Piper Perabo). He wants to destroy Alfred and, in the
process, steal his best trick. Alfred feels pretty much the same way
about Robert and they go at each other throughout the movie.
The movie is intended to be a
metaphor for a magician’s trick, which is apparently divided into three
parts: The Pledge, where he shows you something he’s going to do; The
Turn, where he does it; and The Prestige where you see something
shocking, something you’ve never seen before.
Alfred has a wife, Sarah
Borden (Rebecca Hall), whose complaint is that sometimes he tells her he
loves her and she believes him and sometimes he tells her he loves her
and she doesn’t believe him. Pay attention to everything you see in this
film because just about everything that happens is meaningful to the
dénouement.
Along the way for the ride is
Cutter (Michael Caine), Robert’s ingeneur, the one who designs the
illusions behind the scenes. The movie never did grab me with its
mystery. Even so, it’s a nice story about the rivalry. And Scarlett
Johansson is pretty and does an accomplished job as Olivia Wenscombe,
the girl in between Robert and Alfred.
Thrown into the dispute
between the two is Nikola Tesla (singer-songwriter David Bowie), a real
figure from history. Although Thomas Edison is generally given credit
for making electricity available to the masses, it was actually Tesla
who discovered the form of electricity that we use today. Edison felt
that direct current (DC) was the wave of the future. Tesla discovered
alternating current (AC), which is what is in use today in all major
electric systems delivering electricity to the public. It seems the
filmmakers want to draw a parallel between the dispute between Edison
and Tesla and the relationship between Robert and Alfred.
Unfortunately, I thought that
“The Prestige” in the film was not credible and rendered the entire
movie meaningless.
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