Cast , Christian Bale, Michael Caine & Scarlett Johansson,

The Prestige informs us right off the bat of what it is going to do. Michael Caine’s cockney Cutter (a man who designs the equipment to pull off the illusions) tells us that every magic trick consists of three acts: the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige. The Pledge is where the magician shows you the ordinary with a promise to make it extraordinary. The Turn is when he actually pulls off the extraordinary. And that’s when you might be prompted to ponder how the trick is done. That’s where Cutter says the third act comes in: “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.” The film then sets itself up to pull off a cinematic magic trick with similar elements. But the promise of something extraordinary is always difficult to pull off, especially when you’ve challenged the audience to watch attentively because you’re about to trick them.

But what The Prestige and filmmaker Christopher Nolan seem to have forgotten about magic and illusion is the very important element of misdirection. Without misdirection, an audience is bound to discover the trick and not be impressed. As a filmmaker, Nolan has been pretty good about misdirection. In his first film The Following, a character starts to stalk another character only to discover that he is actually the one being stalked. For Memento, Nolan used the narrative gimmick of telling the story in reverse to hook the audience but the device proved to be less important than the tantalizing themes he served up about the lengths to which we go to deceive ourselves. Both films led us to believe we were getting one thing and ended up surprising us with something else. As Nolan has moved to bigger budgets and more mainstream projects, his style and approach have become more direct. Insomnia and Batman Begins have little misdirection, they deliver—with differing degrees of success—what they promise.

The problem with The Prestige is that it so clearly lays out its plan to present its tale like the magic trick explained in the opening scene that we start to look immediately for what the Turn will be and what the Prestige will be. We are looking for the gimmick, and we can find it fairly early on. The press materials implore critics not to spoil the film by revealing the “deceptions at the heart of the film.” But less than halfway through the film many viewers will experience that “a-ha” moment when all is clear. It’s a moment of smug satisfaction that you have figured out the magician’s secret coupled with the sad disappointment that you have not been fooled and now have to sit through the rest of the show with no surprises.

The Prestige has some promising elements and a fine cast of actors (in addition to Caine are Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie and Hugh Jackman). But the film lacks the elegance and showmanship needed to pull off a true cinematic magic trick. One of the problems is that aside from the central illusion that the two magicians are fighting over, there is no real story. At the end, Nolan tries to invest the characters with complexity and conflicts but this comes too late and as an afterthought. We needed that richness of character earlier on to make us care about these people, not at the end when the film is wrapping up.

For comparison, think about this cinematic sleight of hand. When Neil Jordan made The Crying Game, the audience, like the main character played by Forest Whitaker, was fooled into thinking that the character of Dil (played by Jaye Davidson) was a woman. We were shocked to discover half way through the film that Dil was a man. But the characters were so richly drawn and we were so involved in their fates that this twist only further hooked us in the story. The discovery of the deception made the film better and made viewers want to see it again to consider how they could have been so duped. In The Prestige, discovery of the deception brings a sigh of disappointment rather than a sense of satisfaction or admiration. The disappointment comes from not having been better fooled by Nolan. Being fooled by a trick or an illusion can produce a wonderful sense of delight and make you ponder for a moment that maybe real magic does exist. You want to know the secret, yet you don’t because you know that the moment you know the truth, that sense of awe will evaporate and you’ll be reminded of the rules that govern reality. The Prestige sets a hefty task for itself to pull off and it simply doesn’t have the skill to accomplish real cinematic magic. There’s an interesting tale lurking inside this film, but Nolan doesn’t extract it.

The Prestige (rated PG-13) serves up an enticing Pledge, teases us with a bit of a Turn but fails to deliver on the final act. It insulates itself from specific criticism because to do so would reveal too many of its secrets and wouldn’t allow viewers to try the film for themselves without having it spoiled. So go with the expectation of being amazed but be prepared to be disappointed.



http://wwws.warnerbros.co.uk/theprestige/landing.html