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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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