August 2, 2007

The Prestige

Christian Bale in The PrestigeThe Prestige had some success when it came out, although I think it ran into a little trouble from sounding a lot like The Illusionist which came out at the same time. Regardless, I decided I'd give it a shot since it looked a little interesting. And turns out that it was pretty good. The story revolves around the rivalry of two magicians during the 19th century (looks like to me) who each wants to be the better magician, but whose rivalry is obsessive and dirty after the wife of one dies during a stage accident.

The entire movie works as a magic trick itself, described in the film as three stages: the pledge where the ordinary is shown, the turn where the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the prestige when the everything is shown to be all right. During the course of the film, you are presented with that same problem. Things are happening which don't really make sense, yet without any explaination for how. Then the how is slowly revealed, and at the very end what you thought happened is shown to not have happened. At least superficially, because just like with a magic trick getting to the last part is where all the real magic is.

This film stars some excellent actors. I've always like Michael Caine, and I think he does an excellent job here as well. Hugh Jackman also does a good job, but I like Christian Bale's performance more. Bale has been acting longer and from a younger age, so perhaps that's not so surprising. I'm also sure a lot of people are happy to see Scarlett Johansson, but I think she's much better in some other films.

Posted by josuah at August 2, 2007 7:00 AM UTC+00:00

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.wesman.net/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1224

Comments

Post a comment

July 2013
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
  1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30 31      

Search