movies: the prestige

Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called The Pledge; The magician shows you something ordinary, but of course... it probably isn't.

The second act is called The Turn; The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary.

Now if you're looking for the secret... you won't find it, that's why there's a third act called, The Prestige; this is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before.

That's the dialogue that opens The Prestige... and I have to say, it pretty much sums up the whole movie... and, interestingly enough, the speech is, in itself, a "Pledge"...

I'd heard bits and pieces about this movie... and when I first heard that it had Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians, I was very much up for it... then I found out that it was going to be about turn of the century stage magicians rather than, you know, Harry Potter type magic, I wasn't sure about it... then I saw something else that made me think it was a little of both, so I was back in again... I'm a complex little Muppet really...

But I have to say, I'm so very glad that we ended up going to see it... it was definitely worth it.

It is a little confusing in spots... not greatly, it's more that there's a lot of jumping around between the "present", the "recent past" and the "past leading up to the recent past"... but after a while it all starts to make sense (there was only actually one spot where I thought we were in one time period and it turned out we were further back) and you get into the rhythm of it. And because some of the stuff you're being shown is "The Pledge" (although some of it isn't), it does seem a little slow in a couple of spots... not so much that it drags, but more, I think, because you're eager to get onto the next part of the adventure.

And I can't honestly think of another movie that I've seen for a long, long while where everything doesn't seem to be completely tied up in a neat little bow with all the t's crossed and all the i's dotted at the end... you're still left wondering "So how did that bit work?" about one of the plot points... or at least, Ma and I were... although I think we kind of nutted it out (whether correctly or not I don't know) in the Post Movie Roundup in the car on the way back to my place.

I'm kind of hoping that the director doesn't go and spell it out at any point on the DVD... since this is definitely a movie for the collection...

yani's rating: 4 Transported Men out of 5