I've already written about The Illusionist in a couple of comments. I'll paraphrase here. I enjoyed the movie, but it has three big problems. First, there's a casting problem. Second, the trick is never explained. Third, the twist is too easily guessed. What's interesting to me, is that The Prestige is guilty on the same three counts, but it's a far superior movie.
1. The problem of casting. To put it bluntly Paul Giamatti, as Inspector Uhl, and Hugh Jackman, as Robert Angier, are just too damn likable. Both characters are supposed to undergo transformations, one of redemption and one of corruption. Giamatti, who I like a lot in his crusty misfit mode in American Splendor and Sideways, never projects the menace or moral ambiguity that I thought the role required. You really needed to fear that the inspector wouldn't do the right thing, that he might act merely out of self interest. You didn't feel like he was the kind of man who'd made the selfish, questionable choices throughout his career, the kind that would have pushed him up through the ranks. He is just too nice. And matinee-idol Jackman, who we know is capable of straddling the line from his work as Wolverine, never convinces as the obsessed, jealous Angier. You see him lose the things that are precious to him, but you don't see the change in his eyes, the hatred awakening, the vengeance growing. Edge: Even (but Christopher Nolan's insistence on David Bowie as Nikola Tesla tilts it in The Prestige's favor).
2. The Illusionist's big trick, the one that has the whole town talking, is never satisfactorily explained. We're just supposed to accept that somewhere in his travels, Eisenheim (Norton) picked up some netherworld flim-flammery, poof, voila! Sorry, not buying it. The Prestige's big trick, on the other hand, while never completely disassembled and explained is at least shown to have originated somewhere, in this case, in Tesla's lab. Now this isn't an argument in favor of science over mysticism, just a request that at a minimum a filmmaker show me where Jack got his magic beans. And besides, the grisly price of The Transported Man sufficiently compensates our voluntary misdirection. Edge: The Prestige.
3. Now, I'm not the guy who sat down to watch The Sixth Sense and said "he's dead," before the title credits were over. I'm usually fashionably late to the big reveal. So the fact that I guessed the surprise twists of both of these movies says something about how straightforward they are. In the case of The Prestige, the twist is just been there-done that. We've all seen Sleeping Beauty, right? In the Illusionist it's given away by lots of false beards and double-edged dialogue that doesn't quite cut cleanly on the first stroke. But you've got to work for it. Edge: The Prestige.
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BELOW THAR BE SPOILERS, ARRRRRRGH!
Awesome blog Meekin. Here is what I think is going on in The Prestige. And here's where the spoilers come in.
Upon first viewing of The Prestige about half-way through I had my Sixth Sense moment where I said "Okay...Christian Bale is obviously Mr. Fallon (or whatever his name was...it's been a couple of months). And that's the twist. But I think this movie is much more clever than that. Consider this...
The very first image of the film is of the forest floor covered with top hats. I cannot remember the exact dialogue or who was giving it in voiceover (but I think it was Hugh Jackman), but the v.o., while panning over the many top hats said (roughly) "Are you watching closely?...What do you see?...What do you think you see?...The point is, that you really don't want to know." Something like that. Why have that v.o. on that particularly insignificant "throwaway" shot in the movie? Of all the top hats? The reason why is because that is "the turn...where the magician makes something ordinary do something extrordinary" shown early. Everything after that shot in the narrative up to that point is "the pledge", where the magician seemingly shows you how the trick is done. And the end is "the prestige". The Prestige being "the secret that none of us really want to know".
The whole movie is a magic trick on it's audience.
The real trick or brilliance on Nolan's part is convincing the audience that they have "figured out" the trick; by telegraphing so transparently that Fallon is in fact Borden in heavy make-up. That's a trick. That's making the audience (us) think that we've figured out the big trick; the equivalent of having Angeir (Bale) see the obvious trap door slide during Borden's (Jackman's) Transporting Man trick. Or having Angier accidently slip while doing his ball trick with the guard in prison, but it turns out to be a bit of misdirection while he pulls off the real trick of cuffing the guard to the table. Angier thinks he's figured out his post-Tesla magic trick, but he hasn't. And the real key lies with the "Chinese Magician".
Cutter (Caine) sends both magicians to see "Chung Ling Soo" do his fishbowl trick. After the show, they both watch him come out in the alley. Angier states "That's his real trick. Pretending he's feeble and infirmed. That's why he's so good. He's living the trick." Throughout the movie and their respective lives, Angier appears to be the "natural" magician and Borden/Danton appears to be the less talented magician; the one who has to work hard at what he does. That's him living the trick. That's him living the feebleness and infirmity; convincing Bale's character that he is inferior to him when he is in fact superior because he is "living the trick". And Bale's character thinks he has figured out Jackman's Transporting Man trick much in a similar way that he figured out the Chinese magician's trick; he watches a large, cloaked "tank" get hauled out onto a carriage in an alley handled by blind stagehands. When we cut into the theatre, we see many of these "cloaked tanks". Many have said that we see "tank upon tank full of dead Hugh Jackmans". We don't. What we see are rectangular structures covered in canvas and rope; all about the same size as the dunking tank. We only see one actual tank with a body in it that looks like Jackman. Much like we see only one top hat in Tesla's lab, but we see several copies of it outside of the lab. And Tesla's machine is shown only to duplicate identical black top hats and seemingly identical black cats. This is misdirection. You see a top hat/black cat in the machine indoors, you go outdoors and see the ground littered with both. "What do you see? Or what do you think you see?" You make the assumption that the machine has duplicated these items. But consider that identical top hats and black cats are not difficult to procure. That's why this key image was placed at the beginning of the film. In other words, Tesla's machine does not work. It's theatrics. It's misdirection.
Every single "confession" of how the tricks were done were given from the points-of-view of the magicians. Bale reveals his use of his double, "Fallon". Is that really how he did it? Maybe. Jackman tells us that the machine made a new copy of him every night and he killed a new copy every night. Is that really how he did it? Maybe. We never actually see him killing his doubles in real time. We only see it illustrated through Jackman's retelling. A magician never reveals his secrets. Why would these secrets come out so readily? And what better trick for a magician to pull than pulling a trick on his greatest rival? Did we ever see Jackman's first double (the drunk one) die? No we didn't. Could that account for the "body on the slab" that we see? Maybe. But then again, we only see that stuff from Michael Caine's point of view. He could be in on Jackman's trick or not. He even says in a court of law that he will not reveal the secret in a public court but will reveal it in private chambers. So there is no evidence.
I posit that Jackman's confession of how he did the trick is similar to Kevin Spacy's retelling of the events in The Usual Suspects. Is Kevin Spacey Kaiser Sozay? Is Kaiser Sozay a creation made out of whole cloth by Spacey's character Verbal Kint? Did Jackman really figure out a way to clone himself? Or did he just have his double in the tank/on the slab? We don't know what to believe by the end. That's the trick. And as stated in the beginning of the film "The point is...you don't really want to know." That's what makes it an amazing trick that "leaves other magicians scratching their heads." That's why the final shot is of what looks like a dead floating double in the tank. That's the kicker in the trick. That's the question mark of the trick for the people like me who have come up with this possible explanation for how the trick was done. There's a live Borden, there's one dead on the slab and there's this one in the tank. Did he figure out a way to duplicate himself?
I will take your slings and arrows accordingly.
Will
Phew, that’s quite a comment. Thanks for taking the time to really say something. I had to read it a couple of times to get everything, so I apologize for taking a couple of days to reply.
I like your thesis that the movie is itself is a magic trick, and Nolan says as much in the Director’s Notebook featurette, but I would point to different moments as the Pledge, Turn and Prestige, like a) the first time we see Borden’s Transported Man, b) Borden’s hanging and c) Borden’s “magical” appearance and explanation at Angiers theatre/warehouse.
See, while I enjoy your Kaiser Sozay argument, I think you’ve taken the notion that we’re being tricked a step too far, and it really is as simple as the Sixth Sense: Borden's a twin. I agree that all of the accounts are subjective, nobody can be trusted and what did ever happen to Angier/Danton’s double? But I think Tesla’s machine works (it does in the novel) and the shrouded tanks really do contain drowned doppelgangers. Here again, I’m relying on information from the DVD featurette. There’s a video clip of a camera crew shooting tank after tank of Jackmans, that for some reason didn’t appear in the movie. Maybe Nolan wanted to encourage conspiracy theorists like yourself. Or maybe you’re right after all, and I just “don’t want to know.”
I agree that the explanation about Borden is probably that simple; that he is a twin and Fallon is the twin in heavy make-up. But that is the part of the turn where the magician acts as if he's slipped and shown you how the trick is done. It's where he reveals to the audience, who figured out that particular trick halfway into the movie, a portion of the pledge. Then Angiers reveals how he did his trick. But if the film is a "trust" and we're to take everything at face value, then we already know how he does his trick. We saw it in Colorado. That's why The Prestige is that he has tricked Borden into thinking he's killed his clone every night of the week. He hasn't. He performed his trick using his double as well. His real trick was fooling Borden (and the audience)into thinking he killed his clone every night of the week. The real trick was convincing Borden and the audience that he was the inferior magician. He wasn't. He fooled all of us.
I wouldn't judge a movie by it's book. Nolan seems like the type of artist who would manipulate elements of a narrative to serve his purposes. Even so, I would be interested to read the book and see if there isn't some similar sleight of hand in the writer's reveal of how Tesla's machine worked.
I saw the film in the theatre so I'm not privy to any featurettes. But if my thesis is plausible, why would a director who plays a magic trick on an audience stop short at delivering the same trick on the DVD? ESPECIALLY on the DVD. Since that's where we get a peek into "the making of" and we hear commentaries. We think we're going to get to the bottom of the trick. But it's even more opportunities for misdirection. And the filming of "tank after tank of Hugh Jackmans" (there's a dream come true...)could have easily been footage used to illustrate Danton's "explanation" to Borden. Or it could have been to keep everybody "blind" to the trick. When they shot J.R. on Dallas, they filmed every single character shooting him so that the secret wouldn't get out.
Have you seen The Spanish Prisoner? I think the same thing is going on there. I won't toss out any spoilers in case you haven't seen it.
In a completely unrelated movie note, one of my friends just got an advanced copy of a movie called King of Kong. It's a documentary that's just premiering at the festivals right now. It is one of the most amazing dramas I've seen unfold in years. It's phenomenal. If you see it listed in the paper in a few months, don't wait for DVD. Go see it.
Will, the other one.
Well. That leaves us just two options. Détente, or bloodsport.
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