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Love and Spoiling The Prestige
First, love.
Moe gets home the other night, sticks his head in the door, and tells me to "Come, look at the moon."
The moon was HUGE. Low in the sky, barely hanging above the trees. Dark Orange, almost like a sunset over the ocean. The air was warm and still. It was close to 40 degrees, and we just stood in our yard, holding hands and watching the moon float around with the clouds.
Saw The Prestige on Monday. After being horrified by a trailer suggesting that a love affair between 98-year-old Peter O'Toole and some poor 15-year-old girl is a joyful, soul-reaffirming love story (ICK NO), I settled in to enjoy me some Christian Bale.
And so I shall SPOIL all there is to SPOIL about The Prestige.
Did you note the SPOILER warnings above? I'm not kidding about the spoilage.
Basic premise is Christian and Hugh are Victorian-era magicians. Christian accidentally, or maybe not-accidentally causes Hugh's wife to drown in a Trick Gone Wrong. LET THE REVENGE BEGIN. Cue many scenes of Hugh or Christian thwarting each other's preformances and causing grievous bodily harm. Hugh causes a gun to misfire, and it takes off some of Christian's fingers. Christian removes a sack of cotton, so Hugh's soft landing turns into a gimp leg. Hugh For Real buries one of Christian's assistants alive (or does he...) in order to gain the secret behind Christian's Teleporting Man trick.
Hugh goes to see Nikolaus Tesla, and Tesla invents for him a teleportation devise. Except it's not so perfect. It creates doubles. Lots of hats and cats during the working-out-the-kinks stage.
Except, those kinks never get worked out, and Hugh ends up killing his double* every night. And blames the murder of one of his doubles on Christian. Who goes to jail and ends up hanged for the crime. Except it turns out that Christian was a pair of twins living life as one person. AND HA! FUXXOR-HUGH WHO IS PRETENDING TO BE "LORD COLDPLAY" BECAUSE EVERYONE THINKS FUXXOR-HUGH IS DEAD, NOW I KILL YOU!
The movie in some parts is much more intelligent than I describe it. It handled slow burn very well. Hugh's heel turn was a slow, slow, slow burn, and then BAM! He says, "I don't care about my wife. I care about the secret to that trick!" Heel turn in one line. Excellent.
In other parts, sadly the main dramatic ones, it bellyflops. When I realized Hugh was killing his doubles, I wasn't like damn, I figured it out early, I thought it was the Holy Shit moment when I supposed to figure it out. Then the reveal dragged on for another twenty minutes, and I was like Hay. Speed this up, k? It took me thinking back on the story to realize that I figured it out early. And either way, a reveal that drags or watchers catching on too early aren't the makings of great cinema.
Also, I don't know how I feel about the Twin Reveal. It's a cool idea, and was handled well and some scenes got a heavy dose of meaning** when reflecting back on things Christian said or things other characters said and did to him (the assistant the Hugh buried alive was one of the Christians). But... it was almost like the two really cool stories - the revenge tale and twins-as-one gimmick crowded out each other. The Prestige did an excellent job dramatizing how revenge can make a revenge-driven one as wrong, evil, etc. as the original wrong-doer. When the Twin Reveal stuff came about, as good as it was, it sorta felt like the writers were in LET'S-TWIST-THIS-SOME-MORE!!L!L11! mode.
Other than (maybe) too much of a good thing, I really liked the writing. They talked a lot about the meta of magic... the kayfabe, maybe of magic, and how a trick is set up is a lot like how a story is crafted. And the way clues were dropped-- cleverly, sublety, yet right out there in the open-- made me re-think storytelling. The clues were handled a lot like they were in the Sixth Sense. They play on what an audience takes for granted. Like when Christian is wooing the girl who will become his wife, she doesn't invite him in; She leaves him in the hallway and goes into her apartment. There he is, waiting for her. And, of course everyone thinks he did a crafty trick. He's a magician character, and we wanted to see a trick. The trick was his twin doing a little B & E.***
I'm such an obsucurity wonk so to see bald-faced clues RIGHT THERE, IN THE OPEN was a fun, holy wow! writing lesson taught by the ever-tasty Mr. Bale. I'll probably pick up the book to see how it was handled in print. So much easier to spot clues when you know what to look for.
* I totally wouldn't kill Twin!Opera. OMG~ we would have a blast musing Taker/Matt
** Especially, the one where after Christian had rescued his buried alive other half, he had lunch with his wife, and says, "I almost lost something very dear to me today, and I can't tell you about it. Awwwww.
***Or, if you're Opera you were wanking about how Christian showing up inside that girl's apt when she had clearly told him "No." wasn't sweet. It was disrespectful at best, and mace-worthy in all other cases. She said NO, dude.
Moe gets home the other night, sticks his head in the door, and tells me to "Come, look at the moon."
The moon was HUGE. Low in the sky, barely hanging above the trees. Dark Orange, almost like a sunset over the ocean. The air was warm and still. It was close to 40 degrees, and we just stood in our yard, holding hands and watching the moon float around with the clouds.
Saw The Prestige on Monday. After being horrified by a trailer suggesting that a love affair between 98-year-old Peter O'Toole and some poor 15-year-old girl is a joyful, soul-reaffirming love story (ICK NO), I settled in to enjoy me some Christian Bale.
And so I shall SPOIL all there is to SPOIL about The Prestige.
Did you note the SPOILER warnings above? I'm not kidding about the spoilage.
Basic premise is Christian and Hugh are Victorian-era magicians. Christian accidentally, or maybe not-accidentally causes Hugh's wife to drown in a Trick Gone Wrong. LET THE REVENGE BEGIN. Cue many scenes of Hugh or Christian thwarting each other's preformances and causing grievous bodily harm. Hugh causes a gun to misfire, and it takes off some of Christian's fingers. Christian removes a sack of cotton, so Hugh's soft landing turns into a gimp leg. Hugh For Real buries one of Christian's assistants alive (or does he...) in order to gain the secret behind Christian's Teleporting Man trick.
Hugh goes to see Nikolaus Tesla, and Tesla invents for him a teleportation devise. Except it's not so perfect. It creates doubles. Lots of hats and cats during the working-out-the-kinks stage.
Except, those kinks never get worked out, and Hugh ends up killing his double* every night. And blames the murder of one of his doubles on Christian. Who goes to jail and ends up hanged for the crime. Except it turns out that Christian was a pair of twins living life as one person. AND HA! FUXXOR-HUGH WHO IS PRETENDING TO BE "LORD COLDPLAY" BECAUSE EVERYONE THINKS FUXXOR-HUGH IS DEAD, NOW I KILL YOU!
The movie in some parts is much more intelligent than I describe it. It handled slow burn very well. Hugh's heel turn was a slow, slow, slow burn, and then BAM! He says, "I don't care about my wife. I care about the secret to that trick!" Heel turn in one line. Excellent.
In other parts, sadly the main dramatic ones, it bellyflops. When I realized Hugh was killing his doubles, I wasn't like damn, I figured it out early, I thought it was the Holy Shit moment when I supposed to figure it out. Then the reveal dragged on for another twenty minutes, and I was like Hay. Speed this up, k? It took me thinking back on the story to realize that I figured it out early. And either way, a reveal that drags or watchers catching on too early aren't the makings of great cinema.
Also, I don't know how I feel about the Twin Reveal. It's a cool idea, and was handled well and some scenes got a heavy dose of meaning** when reflecting back on things Christian said or things other characters said and did to him (the assistant the Hugh buried alive was one of the Christians). But... it was almost like the two really cool stories - the revenge tale and twins-as-one gimmick crowded out each other. The Prestige did an excellent job dramatizing how revenge can make a revenge-driven one as wrong, evil, etc. as the original wrong-doer. When the Twin Reveal stuff came about, as good as it was, it sorta felt like the writers were in LET'S-TWIST-THIS-SOME-MORE!!L!L11! mode.
Other than (maybe) too much of a good thing, I really liked the writing. They talked a lot about the meta of magic... the kayfabe, maybe of magic, and how a trick is set up is a lot like how a story is crafted. And the way clues were dropped-- cleverly, sublety, yet right out there in the open-- made me re-think storytelling. The clues were handled a lot like they were in the Sixth Sense. They play on what an audience takes for granted. Like when Christian is wooing the girl who will become his wife, she doesn't invite him in; She leaves him in the hallway and goes into her apartment. There he is, waiting for her. And, of course everyone thinks he did a crafty trick. He's a magician character, and we wanted to see a trick. The trick was his twin doing a little B & E.***
I'm such an obsucurity wonk so to see bald-faced clues RIGHT THERE, IN THE OPEN was a fun, holy wow! writing lesson taught by the ever-tasty Mr. Bale. I'll probably pick up the book to see how it was handled in print. So much easier to spot clues when you know what to look for.
* I totally wouldn't kill Twin!Opera. OMG~ we would have a blast musing Taker/Matt
** Especially, the one where after Christian had rescued his buried alive other half, he had lunch with his wife, and says, "I almost lost something very dear to me today, and I can't tell you about it. Awwwww.
***Or, if you're Opera you were wanking about how Christian showing up inside that girl's apt when she had clearly told him "No." wasn't sweet. It was disrespectful at best, and mace-worthy in all other cases. She said NO, dude.
no subject
And all the smoke and mirrors and how the doubles drowning had been presaged by the canary killing and whoa boy did Hugh Jackman's character ever get over his problem of killing canaries. The thing I like most is you've got Micheal Caine's character's speech about the three parts of a magic trick and the film is made the same way.