[It's been a busy, event-packed weekend and there's much to update about, but I want to hurry and write this review while the movie's still fresh in my head, so this entry shall come first. Light story discussion to follow, no real spoilers. I will not be held accountable for spoilers chucked into the comments section, though. Read those at your own risk.]

The Prestige - in 50 words or less: Two petty Victorian magicians engage in alpha-male oneupmanship on a grand, homicidal, vaguely supernatural scale. David Bowie wears cringe-worthy mustache. Michael Cain narrates.

This is an astonishing movie, really. It's ambitious, thematically dense, and unafraid to make a real moral mess of things from the opening scene to the closing act. On the most basic narrative level The Prestige is a story about obsession - but not the pretty kind of obsession that arrives artfully posed, in black and white on a perfume ad. This story addresses a nonsensical-yet-disgustingly-believable sort of obsession that is so focused and nasty that all sense of perspective is lost by every participant. Nothing costs too much, and nothing is beyond sacrifice.

The first domino pushed in the deadly drama chain is the demise of Rupert Angier's wife, Julia ... an event which could quite probably be attributed to the hubris of Alfred Borden. Julia's death is a terrible and total accident, but it sparks a professional and personal rivalry that eventually outgrows mere heartbroken quest for vengeance and becomes an entity unto its own. Sad happenstance topples into spite, into deep-seated grudge, into maniacal competition, and downward into homicidal madness. Neither man is the hero because there are no heroes. They both willingly participate in this ridiculous tangle, well beyond the point where the original grudges have been completely abandoned in favor of their all-out determination to annihilate each other.

All in all, it's a gloriously believable character study in which all the protagonists are right bastards (for the most part), where nothing is sacred and everything is up for grabs. In short, this is not a happy flick. It's a vicious flick, one part subtle horror and one part moral-of-the-story irony truncheon.

There are a lot of undercurrent themes at work here beyond obsession, overlapping and interweaving from one chapter to the next, but most of them could probably be boiled down to the constant of dualism.* Two sides of one coin. Pairs In Opposition. Foils. Magic and science, belief and skepticism. Winning and losing - all of these things are tugged back and forth within a closed system that is played as a zero-sum game, whether or not it really is one. It doesn't matter. The protagonists have decided, via their unending slapfight-cum-dickswinging contest, that their private microcosm is a zero sum game; and since neither of these guys has got the good sense to walk away from the struggle, it's probably not going to be over until somebody's dead.

Of course, this movie is - in some respects - a fantasy, and any given aspect of any theme in play may (or may not be) assigned a relative value. By this I mean, for all the versus set-ups and for all the this-or-that insistence, the lines are likely to be blurred ... and it's likely to be interesting, if not tidy.


So too shall this review be untidy, because I need to pretty much abandon my critique there if I'm going to steer clear of significant spoilers. Now I'm going to digress to a couple of minor points which are in no way spoilery, but are probably not very deep or analytical or anything. All right? Here goes.

Thing One: It needs to be noted that this is only a loose interpretation of the Christopher Priest book by the same name. I read the book and really enjoyed it - but it differs drastically in a few of its core values. In my opinion, the movie was much more brutal and downright shocking than the book (in a good way), and the book was much more of a fantasy than the movie (also in a good way). Movie and Book are nice complements to one another, but it's tough to discuss them in tandem, so I'm going to spare myself the trouble.

Thing Two: I've been giving an unintendedly great amount of thought to how I felt about the casting. See, I'm as game for staring at hotness for a couple of hours as the next straight girl, but I have a really difficult time seeing Hugh Jackman as a violent badass in anything.** He may be tall and buff, but he's got the physiognomy of a friendly, jokey guy who's kind to children and animals. Massive forehead furrows of manly confusion aside, he's just too darned cute - so I was somewhat lukewarm to see him cast as Angiers. But in the end, I've got to admit - it worked. I left the theater convinced that this was basically a nice guy who'd just gone bugger-all off the deep end. Likewise, Christian Bale's portrayal of Bordon struck me as markedly less "stiff" than the guy I remember reading about ... but by the closing scene [:: mighty self-censorship to prevent spoilage ::] he'd made a believer out of me.

Cripes. How'd I get this far without mentioning David Bowie? matociquala, kindly take my temperature. I fear I might be coming down with something ...

So David Bowie appears - albeit too briefly for my taste*** - as the enigmatic (and vaguely sinister) Nikola Tesla. There's something benignly amoral about his involvement in the story, and I really liked his portrayal for all of its ambiguity. The mustache can go, though - and on its way out the door, it can take the prissy center-part with it. I know, I know. Historical accuracy. It's okay, really. Truth is, he could've been wearing a thin coat of dogfood and I'd still be happy to see him on the big screen.

Michael Cain is another high point deserving of mention - which is almost a superfluous thing to say, since Michael Cain is often a high point deserving of mention ... and this is a movie that's lean on low points. I'm tempted to suggest that he's the proper "hero" of the tale so far as heroes go in tales like these - but this would be up for debate, and I wouldn't want to insist upon it. His character (Cutter) seems to have the only functioning moral compass, even if he disregards it from time to time. At any rate, his character bookends the story beautifully: he opens and closes the movie with the same charming scene ... but when you rewatch the scene the second time - having now been privy to the events that led up to it - it'll make you queasy.


To sum up - go see this movie. But be aware that it's being marketed a little strangely (even "fluffily"), and that it will probably defy your expectations.

~w_w~

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* Which is why I'm prepared to forgive the alternating subtle/irony truncheon see-saw. It's nicely in keeping with the overarching theme, so I'll let it slide.
** Yes, including X-Men. He eventually won me over, but hey - this is NOT the short, hairy Canadian I ordered.
*** All-Bowie, all-the-time would probably be "too briefly for my taste," but this is neither here nor there.