Magic, science, and illusion
Movies
That two movies about magicians at the turn of the 20th-century
should appear within months of each other seems most unusual; just the sort of
phenomenon that, as they say, could only happen in Hollywood. The appearance of The
Prestige so soon after The
Illusionist, however, does not imply the familiar copycat methods of the
film industry; it simply requires far too much money, labor, and time to make a
movie, even a plagiarized movie. Perhaps a shared backward glance at the turn
of the previous century turns up an interest in many manifestations of the
allegedly supernatural — mesmerism, spiritualism, seances, and a whole tent
full of religious revivals — that are entirely appropriate to our own
experience of the recent millennium.
In keeping with the tenor of its time, The Prestige employs the art of magic not only as a major subject,
but also as the background for the exploration of a number of characteristic
late 19th-century concepts. Many of its elements, large and small, display the
curious combinations of science, technology, and the supernatural that apparently
attracted the interest of a number of important thinkers and artists. Writers
as different as H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, and
James M. Barrie, for example, demonstrate the era’s peculiar fascination with
the occult and mysterious.
In The Prestige two magicians, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Burden (Christian Bale),
initially friends and colleagues, become mortal enemies when Burden carelessly
causes the death of Angier’s wife. Their art both divides them and provides
them with weapons, as they steal each other’s tricks and sabotage each other’s
performances. Burden’s most successful illusion, the Transported Man, so
intrigues Angier that his efforts to duplicate it ultimately lead him to
America to consult the famous inventor Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), whose own
brand of scientific magic leads to the solution to the movie’s complicated,
interlocking puzzles.
Multiple voice-over narrations accompany much of the action,
accomplishing the rare feat of emphasizing rather than simplifying the
complexity of the film’s structure. Michael Caine as the engineer who designs
and operates much of the magicians’ apparatus provides some of the explanation,
while the two antagonists read each other’s notes and journals on the
soundtrack, revealing the secrets of their separate methods and at the same
time tricking and taunting their counterparts.
Their art also underlines the contrasts between the two men
and suggests some of the significant duality that pervades both the historical
period and the movie itself. The tension between the possibility of belief in
the supernatural, the romantic, the magical, and the awareness of the real, the
rational, the scientific energizes a good deal of the literature of the time
— the Sherlock Holmes stories, the early science fiction novels, Dracula — and in The Prestige continually appears in the spoken desire to find or
create “real magic.” The different methods of performance, even with the same
tricks, and the obvious class distinctions (Angier is an aristocrat, while
Burden’s accent defines him as lower class) underline the contrasts between the
two men and paradoxically establish the astonishing final revelations, drawn
from the period’s persistent fascination with mirror images, doubles, and
duplicates.
The movie also suggests those dualities in some offhand
images, like the juxtaposition of a horse and carriage with an early automobile
and the night view of a Colorado
town illuminated, in an age of gaslight, by Tesla’s alternating current. The
ambiguous ending, the final resolution of its mysteries, equally combines the
magical and the technological, explaining its miracles while also displaying an
incredible effect of science that apparently results in something very like the
supernatural.
The dark lighting and general drabness of the sets, though
possibly appropriate to the period, tend to diminish a necessary sense of
wonder. The slow pace, the needless repetition of action and dialogue, and the
consistently uninspired acting also rob the film of energy, so that the
characters possess little inherent interest and their grand tricks lose much of
their potential to astonish. The successes of The Prestige, however, generally triumph over the flaws, even if
the director seems ignorant of the power of his subjects and themes.
The Prestige (PG-13), directed by Christopher Nolan, is now
playing at Culver Ridge 16, Pittsford, Henrietta 18, Webster 12, Tinseltown,
Greece Ridge 12, and Eastview 13.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2006.
