The Prestige: A Movie About Magic and Stealing Someone’s Act
Right off the bat, I’d say go see the movie. Despite its out-of-sequence story telling, it’s a stylized movie about rivalry and deception. That the story happens to two renowned magicians of their time is a bonus for us lovers of magic.
Illusion builder Harry Cutter (Michael Caine) opens the movie by explaining the meaning of the magic parlance, the prestige, to a small girl.
Cutter says, “All great magic tricks are composed of three acts: The Pledge, where the magician shows the audience something ordinary, but is probably not; The Turn, where the magician makes the ordinary act extraordinary; and The Prestige, where there are twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.”
I had a hard time understanding the explanation, so I doubt if the girl even had an inkling what in the world it meant. But that definition launches the movie into a puzzling yet engaging narrative that skips forward and back in time like a skylarking teenage girl.
Bitter Rivalry
The story revolves around the vicious and deadly rivalry between magicians Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) in turn of 20th century Victorian era London. At the movie’s end, the rivalry completely ruins the life of one and liberates the other.
A movie about magic and magicians, The Prestige is itself like a magic trick. You have to watch it closely lest you miss something. A tall order I should say, since director and co-writer Christopher Nolan’s intricately complex storytelling has many things going on at once apart from its engaging plot. Take for example the film’s eye for period details, authentic looking costumes, and rich tapestry. All this can lure a viewer to other thoughts or sweep him off his feet.
Both Angier and Borden have tragic flaws that embroil them in a deadly feud. Angier lusts for the secret of Borden’s teleportation trick, while Borden keeps his secret so closely to himself that he opts to live a duplicitous life with his twin brother. Mix these flaws in a kettle and stir it with an accidental killing of Angier’s wife by Borden during a performance, and you get a rivalry so vicious that they actually sabotage each other’s shows at every opportune moments. In the end, the hatred between them leads to plotting each other’s death and even to murder.
Lessons to Take to Heart
The Prestige surprisingly appeals to the lay audiences as well. It landed on top of the blockbuster list on its first week of showing in the U.S. But what I find intriguing in the movie is that it actually provides lessons that we magicians can take to heart if we only spare a moment to savor the nuances of the story.
Lesson 1: Copying other magician’s act. Sound familiar? The problem is as current today as it was in Victorian era England.
Notice the difference (or similarity): Borden’s “The Transported Man Illusion” shows him bouncing a ball across the stage. He then disappears into a box and instantly steps out from another box across the stage and catches the ball before it bounces off the stage.
In Angier’s “The New Transported Man” version, he tosses his hat across the stage, disappears behind a door and reappears at the other end of the stage to catch the hat.
Angier’s act is patently a copy. He explains it away, though, as an “improvement” of an existing act, just like the way modern copycats justify copying by calling it “my own version”, “my own presentation”, “my own innovation”, “my own improvement”, and other unoriginal, even copied rationalizations. The bottom line, though, copying by any other name is still copying, as the movie so eruditely shows.
The only difference between the movie’s thievery and today’s stealing of material is that our modern magicians are a lot tamer than the characters of the movie. Today’s magicians merely turn red in the face with anger, complain bitterly, and spew obscenities when copied by imitators, but they never go to deadly ends and kill their rivals the way Angier and Borden do to each other in the movie.
Lesson 2: Keeping a Secret. With the advent of the Internet, this seems to be a dying discipline in the modern magic world. Not only digital media have made information dissemination a cinch but also a growing number of magicians seem to be in a rush to release their material for money and posterity.
In contrast, except for reason of family, Borden refuses to part with his secret. Not money, fame or the hangman’s noose can sway him to give up the secret of his trick. One of the lines he says which I find endearing is, “If you give the secret up, you are nothing to them (the audience).”
Lesson 3: Dedication to the Art.The movie teaches magicians, wannabe magicians and all manner of hacks what love of magic is really all about. Throughout the story, Angier and Borden show the moviegoers how they dedicate their lives to presenting magic illusions as best as they can.
In the final scene, where Angier and Borden converse in whispers so softly I could hardly catch what they are saying, Angier confesses he suffered for the tricks to become great. Borden, on his part, in an earlier scene, severs his twin brother’s pinky and ring fingers to show his commitment to the perpetuation of his illusion.
Ah, the movie portrays Chung Ling Soo in passing, but his brief screen time also drives home the lesson of dedication to the art. The film shows him as someone who maintains his unnatural stage gait even offstage, so that when he hides a large production of bowl of water between his legs during his performances, nobody suspects the stratagem. (Yes, the production of the bowl of water, at least the Chinese method, is exposed in the movie. I don’t expect any howl of protest from WAM this time, or any uproar from the guardians of magic secrets. I guess it’s all right to expose magic tricks in the movies but not on television. Valentino chose the wrong medium.)
How many modern magicians can claim dedication to the art of magic to the extent that they show willingness to suffer for their tricks? Nowadays, one can hoard on tricks easily and cheaply from legal and illegal sources. The glut of secrets, methods and props in the market does not seem to offer much motivation for magicians to aspire faithfulness in their art.
Unappealing Portrait
Despite the lessons offered, alas, the film does not paint a flattering portrait of magic and magicians. While the movie contains no explicit exposure (only pseudo explanations of magic tricks courtesy of magicians/advisers Ricky Jay and Michael Weber, I suppose), the overly protective mantle thrown over the tricks unwittingly gives rise to the not-so-savory impression of magicians and their practices. The phony exposure of the collapsing vanishing bird case, for example, proffers an apparatus that kills the bird each time the trick is performed, thus portraying magicians as given to cruelty to animals.
One message I find in the movie among the layers of nuances is its seeming claim that, since a magician lives a life of deception, he cannot be both successful performer and successful human being at the same time. The movie validates this proposition by showing Borden (who dotes on his daughter Jess) so engrossed in secrecy that he drives his wife to suicide. Angier, on his part, pushes his girlfriend Olivia (played by luscious Scarlett Johansson in an underwritten almost cameo role) to Borden’s arms just so she can spy on Borden and uncover his secrets.
I recommend the movie to all lovers of magic, not only for the lessons a magic entertainer can learn from it but also for its superb acting, direction and cast. It’s just a darned good movie.
Leodini
