review by Andrew Dubber
The Prestige 2006
Watched Oct 15, 2011
Andrew Dubber’s review:
Actually, I only watched the first half an hour of it. I will return to it, but I was very tired. It's the Chris Nolan film I haven't seen yet and I was looking for something big and entertaining without being entirely vacuous. I think this would have done the trick, had I not been so wiped out. But I just wanted to test out letterboxd, so I thought I'd write something.
Crew
Haha! I love the unfinished tag. Nice idea.
Spoilers ahead:
This movie was generally very good, and really nicely shot and played, but suffers the same failure as Memento - all the promises made to you throughout the film are broken in the last act. Weak ending.
Hello Grant, care to elaborate on the "broken promises - weak ending" part?
I am also very interested regarding Memento.
Crew
Sure thing :-)
In The Prestige, there is a lot of groundwork that establishes that the true masters of the art of "magic" are really dedicated performance artists. Their "tricks" are a core part of their lives, and even their wives and family are excluded from the secret to their amazing abilities. The fact that every magic trick can be explained and therefore duplicated is reiterated constantly throughout the entire film.
Christian Bale's character turns out to have been twins, and even his wife didn't know. This is how magic - really good magic - is done in the real world. The kind of magic that leaves your mouth open in wonderment. It's desperately difficult, and the masters are true only to their art.
The world is *this* world. It's all real. There is no "magic". Just "magic tricks" and insane dedication.
In the last 30 minutes it turns out that Nikola Tesla is a fictional character with magic powers who can change the laws of physics if he wants to. This new world has nothing to do with the established premise of the film. It's the feeblest kind of Deus ex Machina, and was completely unnecessary. It made a stylish, profound and thought-provoking movie into a cheap, throw-away, it-all-turned-out-to-be-a-dream rip-off.
Memento fell victim to a similar mistake - the protagonist is consistently portrayed as a brilliant, faithful, independent and highly moral chap. The "twist" ending was less a twist, and more a "haha, we lied to you - he's a total dickhead who tricks himself into killing a dude out of spite". That's wholeheartedly out of character, and unravelled the film's entire premise. Very silly writing.
Crew
...furthermore, in Memento we're led to believe that the only person he can trust is himself. It turns out in the end that he can't even do that. Under those circumstances, his entire story is suspect. It leads us down to Descarte's "I think, therefore I am" premise, and leaves us uncertain about the "I think" part.
Basically, what I'm saying is that if the universe's axioms are shown to be false or inconsistent, then no conclusions can be drawn.
I'm not sure if that makes sense, but I sure felt disappointed with the ending of both of these films for the same reason.
ok dude, you could just say you din't like the films!!! i liked them. (full stop)
Crew
I loved both of these films until the last 30 mins. Then I felt a mild disappointment.
You are making some fair points Grant, I am definitely going to reply during the weekend. (Hey, could that be a new letterboxd feature? A comments aggregator for each user where all her comments can be found?)