ab cab dad

the prestige is a lot like steve miller band's abracadabra. unexepected, engaging and, at it's heart, a good effort. also like the 80's hit, when looked at closely, it's a godawful mess.

first the good.

there are inspired moments in the prestige. chief of these is angier's (hugh jackman) interaction with nikolai tesla (david bowie) and his assistant (andy serkis). this is the crux of the film, to be sure, when magic becomes magic. and damn if it doesn't get magical! the setting, the set-up, and the prestige of tesla's trick elevate the rest of the magic in the film and the film itself. the fact that tesla is real man, although one who is fictionalized here, makes my mind percolate with wonder. what is possible?

scarlett johansson's breasts also make my mind percolate with wonder.

the acting is mostly solid, particularly christian bale's tortured portrayal of borden, angier's nemesis. the story -- when it was on its run -- kept me fascinated. although there are similar pictures out there, the prestige did feel fresh, a particular achievement when most other pictures either are, or might as well be, hackneyed remakes.

on the down side, the prestige is sloppy. unfortunately it is sloppy in ways for which there is little excuse. good directing, a good cast, an original idea demand a thought out script. the prestige's script, co-written by nolan and his brother, is not well thought out. it is sloppy.

it is sloppy in ways that are disappointing because of how great the prestige could have been. in this way it reminds me of the film Stargate: a grand idea piddled away in sloppy execution.

for example, the premise of the prestige is that angier and borden feud because borden may or may not have caused the death of angier's wife (piper peraboo). on stage she is dunked into a tank from which she can normally escape, but because of the knot borden tied, she does not. michael caine slams away at the tank with an ax to no avail. by the time he shatters the glass she has drowned.

silly really, since it's a TRICK TANK with a FAKE LOCK that pops off and the top of the tank OPENS and since they do that trick every night you think they might have known.

this gaff is indicative of the problems with the script, but hardly the worst offence. i will not dissect the picture, but would like to talk about the ending, which is as muddled and unsatisfying a third act as anything i've seen short of Matrix Revolutions.

we are told throughout the film that this near-deadly competition between angier and borden is because of the death of angier's wife. then, at the end, after angier obtains tesla's magical cloning machine and kills himself every night for a hundred days solely to frame borden for his murder -- he dies telling borden "you never understood why we did this: it was to see the amazement on the audience's faces" (sic). if that's the case, that means borden isn't the only one confused.

who would kill themselves a hundred times to see amazement? who would doom his rival to death by hanging for applause? angier's raison de etre is thrown away just when he needs it most. he is no longer a tragic demonized man, he is a pathetic scene eater.

and for a film called the prestige -- prestige meaning "the reveal at the end of the trick that amazes the audience" -- the prestige of the prestige sucks. i am amazed by tesla's cloning machine, but that's act II. in act III we learn, again amazed, that borden's magic was possible because he too had a clone -- a twin brother with whom he split his life, no one ever knowing. an astounding piece of artistry and devotion and genuinely amazing. but the prestige of the prestige when the surviving avenging borden twin learns that angier cloned and drowned himself every night is painfully anti-climactic. it is handled sloppily and it is lost. we are not impressed by the magic of it, since the magic was revealed in act II. if borden is impressed by the magic of it, he displays no inkling. we are not impressed by angier's sacrifice or devotion, because like a moron he gave some shitty death speech about doing it for the audience. we are not impressed by the horror of it because the death of one borden twin was more horrific -- being unnecessary and pointless. we are not even impressed graphically, because nolan's reveal -- his prestige -- of the gathered drowned corpses of angier is easily missed: there is no reaction shot of borden. there is no dramatic denouement. the film just ends.

abracadabra. i want to reach out and grab you. is that magic? how can a film about the power of the reveal blow its reveal so soundly?

maybe that's the magic.