The Prestige

I haven't really followed Christopher Nolan's career.  As I write, he is currently acclaimed for Oppenheimer, alleged by no less than Paul Schrader to be the best film made post-2000.  Some critics speak highly of The Prestige, a labyrinthine 2006 movie chronicling a rivalry between two magicians.  The movie is impressively cast:  Christian Bale (Borden) and Hugh Jackman (Angier) play the two rivals and Michael Caine, Andy Serkis, and Scarlett Johansson are along for the ride.  I thought the picture was over-elaborate and, somehow, managed to leach the drama out of a series of events that should have been highly engrossing.  Parts of the film felt perfunctory to me and the movie is spoiled, I think, by fantastic elements that detract from picture's effect.  Some of The Prestige is about magician's effects, the psychology of indirection, and aspects of the subculture of prestidigitation -- this material is interesting but, somehow, lacks conviction and the writing is lackluster; the material, except for its ludicrous sci-fi elements, would seem to be within the terrain explored by David Mamet, but, of course, the playwright's dialogue is much much effective and pointed.  

To describe The Prestige's plot is to spoil the movie and so readers should beware of what follows.  None of the twists and turns are particularly ingenious although, sometimes, the movie is intentionally hard to follow.  The picture's story involves not one but three sets of doubles.  This oddity arises from the central feature of the plot:  Angier's attempt to discover how Borden performs a trick called "The Transported Man" -- this is a stunt where the magician enters a cabinet on one side of the stage and immediately, without lapse of time, appears from another cabinet forty feet away.  Everyone in the film thinks this stunt is marvelous, but, for some reason, the trick isn't involving at all -- just a guy going into one door and exiting another.  (In fact, one of Borden's assistants, the beautiful Olivia played by Scarlett Johannson remarks that the trick is strangely uninteresting and she suggests ways to ramp up the suspense.)  Obviously, the trick requires a double -- someone who looks the same as the guy who enters the first cabinet to come out of the other box.  As it turns out, Borden has a twin brother who performs with him.  (A gag that should have been obvious to everyone.)  The twin brother shares a maimed hand (missing two fingers) with Borden.  The film has a spurious motif about magicians having to suffer for their art and, as we learn, Borden chopped off the fingers of his twin to make the trick more impressive -- this was the unwitting result of Olivia's suggestion to make the effect more spectacular.  Note -- it's not Borden suffering for his art, but, rather, his hapless twin brother, something that makes hash out of this highly dubious conceit.  When Angier tries to duplicate the "Transported Man", he has to hire a replica, a man who looks just like him and who can, therefore, simulate his appearance from the second box.  But the replica is a drunk out-of-work actor who blackmails Angier and has to be eliminated when he proposes to reveal the secret -- again, a secret that should be pretty obvious to everyone.  The third set of doubles implicates the science fiction aspect of the plot and is best left unrevealed.  

The narrative is elaborately framed by a scene in which Borden seems to murder Angier when he falls through a trapdoor and is confined in a watery jug locked and sealed at the top.  Borden is accused of murder and imprisoned.  After a trial, he is condemned to death and the story unfolds as a series of flashbacks between Borden's conviction and his hanging at the end of the movie. (Witnesses to the alleged murder are few and far between -- all of Angier's stagehands are blind.)  Borden has a young daughter and he is importuned to sell his tricks to a certain Lord Caldwell (actually Angier in disguise).  Borden has written a diary, seized by Angier who pores over it to figure out how his rival contrived the illusion of "The Transported Man".  Thus, there are many scenes involving Angier trying to decipher Borden's diary written in cipher.  The hatred between Borden and Angier derives from a ghastly accident.  Borden apparently tied the wrong kind of knot on the wrists of Angier's wife and stage assistant -- this error resulting in her drowning in the vat of water used for an escape trick.  Angier lurks around Borden for the first (and better) half of the movie, intervening in his various tricks to cause him embarrassment and severe injury -- for instance, when Borden tries a "bullet catch" trick, Angier tampers with the gun and shoots off two of Borden's fingers.  Angier's ongoing vendetta against Borden seems petulant -- we don't really see much affection between Angier and his wife (he kisses her knee once) and both of these magicians are more concerned with thwarting one another than romance as poor Olivia discovers.  Furthermore, it's obvious that Borden's implication in the death of Angier's wife is based on a pure accident -- indeed, Borden can't even recall what kind of knot he tied before the woman's death.  Certainly, Angier has a right to feel bad about his wife's demise, but, the movie makes his protracted revenge seem unmotivated -- are you entitled to ruin someone's life and have him falsely accused of murder (and hanged) because of a bad mistake?  As with much in this movie, Angier's vengeance, which motivates two-thirds of the film, seems to be an arbitrary plot device.

The movie goes off the rails with its science fiction subplot involving Nikolai Tesla.  Borden goes to see Tesla in Colorado Springs, departing London where the movie is mostly set.  (The narrow-gage Durango to Silverton train with its old steaming locomotive gets yet another work-out in this picture.)  Tesla is transmitting energy from giant coils blasting out artificial lightning from his mountain-top eyrie and has powered up the whole frontier village of Colorado Springs with electric lights.  Tesla's domain is defended by the eerily jolly Andy Serkis behind an electric fence and the great scientist is played by no less than David Bowie in a severely underwritten role.  We aren't shown what Borden learns from Tesla, although it's implied that the scientist's coils are somehow involved in the "Transported Man" trick -- that is, Borden is really shot from place to place by Tesla's manmade lightning.  (This is, to use the language of magic, a misdirection.)  Later, Angier follows in Borden's footsteps and, ultimately, acquires a machine of some kind from the scientist.  Portentously, everyone whispers to Angier that he must destroy this wicked device.  (This motif seems potentially related to the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer, Nolan's current film.)  Tesla vanishes from the movie when Edison's thugs burn down his laboratory, a typical mad scientist's lair.  Famously, Edison and his former employee Tesla clashed over whether AC (Tesla's method of delivering energy) was better than Edison's direct current transmission.  Angier returns to London and agrees to perform the "Transported Man" one-hundred times to high-paying audiences. This sets up the climax of the movie in which Borden seems to escape from jail -- it's really either him or his twin-brother (by this time we no longer care); Borden or his brother confronts Angier and kills him before learning the horrible truth about Angier's version of the "Transported Man."  (Parts of the second half of the movie seem to be channeling David Cronenberg's The Fly which involves a similar device.)  The Sci-Fi aspects of the plot are ridiculous with the result that you can't take the movie seriously and I concur with most critics remarking upon the film when it was first released -- it's a mess, very impressively designed and produced, but, nonetheless, a failure.  For some reason, the film is very hard to follow -- this is an aspect of Nolan's film practice that I find a little disconcerting; he complicates things to the point that you don't know what is happening, generally, to disguise the paucity of his materials; this tendency was already evident in his breakthrough movie, Memento and is very obvious in the way that he complicates (successfully, I thought) the plot (or lack of plot) in Dunkirk.  I liked Dunkirk but didn't love it.  I'm interested to see Oppenheimer.   

(Tesla was in Colorado Springs from 1898 to 1900.  He built a huge coil and was a nuisance to his neighbors, producing huge discharges of artificial lightning.  Butterflies were electrocuted by manmade St. Elmo's fire and water from nearby taps shot out sparks like roman candles.  The movie shows Tesla's coil powering light bulbs 15 miles away from his laboratory -- in fact, he was only able to power bulbs about sixty feet from his lab.  Edison didn't burn down the lab.  Tesla didn't pay his bills, had to flee debtors in Colorado, and his machinery was auctioned-off to his creditors.  Some of Tesla's artificial lightning bolts were sent into the universe to communicate with aliens and, supposedly, the aliens flashed messages back to Tesla on Earth.)