Can’t say that I spoiled the movie for you, when this YouTuber beat me to the punch…
Excerpts from the THE TENTH RECORD OF MOVIE TICKET STUBS:
The Prestige – Granville Seven Cinemas – 16:00 – Wednesday, 20. December, 2006 ($9.85) – I seem to have lost my magical ability to create records of two movies for an individual movie ticket stub, but I am a bit out of practice. However, I don’t mind paying another $9.85 for this film (which is still a few dollars cheaper than most discounted tickets back in Japan). This is by far the best film I have seen this year (slightly edging out Tideland, which would’ve remained the number one of 2006 if I had waited some couple of months to see the Prestige in Japan). A superb character study that takes on imaginative innovation and envious rivalry in a twisting, turning tour de force, one of its chief attractions is the story gets set up right at the beginning, just like the pledge that Michael Caine’s Cutter kindly explains to the audience. And there are plenty of turns during the turn; including the narrative structure, where Borden reads Angier’s diary account of his attempt to decipher Borden’s notebook – not sure what you’re watching, or when events in this story take place, is the filmmaker’s trick of making the ordinary extraordinary so that the prestige, in its rightful place at the end of the film, makes the viewer look back in wonderment. I can’t imagine anyone who could watch this, closely following Borden’s initial advice to watch closely, and figure out all the tricks, upon one’s first viewing, and I would gladly stand in line again to see how what I know by the end affects everything from the start of the film. Some big questions that came out of this, my first viewing, may still only be partially answered with the next viewing, or the one after that – not that I am going to be fatally obsessed or anything. One of the big questions that may eventually be answered is at what point did Borden find his double Fallon? That either of them could have tied the wrong knot is dramatically significant, but does Julia’s death come before or after Borden met with Nikola Tesla? It at first seems like all sympathy should be with Jackman’s Angier, as Bale’s Borden is reckless, arrogant and the reason behind Angier’s tragic loss. But there is something missing from Angier, the Great Danton, a part of his psyche knocked out of place by grief and professional envy. These are crutches he uses to justify his actions that drive him on in a bitter, savage rivalry. But they are only his attempt to make up for what is truly missing, some passion to be innovative that only Borden and Tesla understand, and only Tesla of the two understands fully. Danton’s competitive urge makes him doubt all the obvious signs: the transported man is merely a trick with trapdoors and doubles, that Fallon wears a disguise, or rather is the disguise. One scary tell from Angier comes when he tells Olivia that he doesn’t want his wife back, but rather wants to get back at Borden. Perhaps what gets him the most is that Borden has Jess, his daughter, while Julia met her watery demise when perhaps she was with child? The drowning sailor story that Cutter tells Angier is rather a nasty trick when Cutter tells the whole truth. It seems to suggest that Cutter knew more than just Angier’s murderous design, although he is supposed to have been left in the dark along with the blind stagehands. Did Cutter cruelly let Angier commit suicide every night, just to aide Borden’s reunion with his daughter after his execution? There is something in it reminiscent of the arts courses I took at university: Angier’s romantic sublimity compared to Borden’s modern expressionism (or something like that – I should really get to my storage locker soon to find my old notebooks and sort this out). One thing I have been studying a lot recently is the nineteenth century novel, often concerned with the dualism found between characters, and this movie gets a lot of bonus points for presenting the turn of the last century at the turn of this one – just when you think you had seen everything there is see at the movies, along comes the Prestige!
The Prestige – United Cinemas Kanazawa – 14:45 – Sunday, 1. July, 2007 (¥1000) – Here is a merry meeting indeed. Not just to get Yuko out to see this film, one of the best to be screened last year despite its cruel treatment of birds (as suspected, she had an adversity to scenes of cages crushing them), but we were also joined by John and his girl Hiromi (someone I had only heard about the evening before the wedding dinner, and met on the following night). Getting the four of us to meet up and see this film proved to be more of a challenge than one would think, with weeks of planning, mainly me sending text messages to John, repeatedly being thrown out the window at the last minute – I can only imagine how long it is going to take for him to watch Titus! Nevertheless, we all got to the theatre without a hitch, and while it was the first time for others in our party, I had a very engaging time watching this spell-binding film for my second time. Was the written request (in English and Japanese here) not to reveal the ending part of the film as I saw it in Vancouver? Whether or not I had been instructed beforehand, I upheld the tenent of this pledge by not giving too much away to either Yuko (except for the aviary carnage) or John (except for David Bowie appearing as Tesla). It was a lot more clear this time concerning the narrative structure, that had me stumped the first time I saw the film: Bowden reads, in prison, the diary Angiers wrote as he was deciphering Bowden’s diary, which was only used to lure Angier away from London. Pretty obvious, once you know the trick of it. One thing which was much more obvious on the second viewing was the class difference, and every little nuance and gesture shows the two magicians up for what British society would expect of them: Angiers is a count, respectfully married one would imagine, to Julia, and both of them dabbling in magic as if it were a lark. Without his love, Angier is a wreck, near alcoholic mirror to the gruff actor Root. An impressive theatrical life Root must have had, being Hotspurs and Tamberline, yet stooping to play the Great Danton, and later his Judas. He may be more alike Angiers than the latter could imagine. Even in the end, Angiers doesn’t end up as bad as I had first thought, with his impressive “the whole world is solid, through and through” speech in his dying moments. Since Julia’s death, he has been rehearsing his own similar drowning, whether literally in his kitchen sink, or figuratively at the bottom of his glass. His discovery in the Americas, the creation of Nikola Tesla allows him to perform his suicide nightly, with the added incentive of snaring his rival in a cunning trap, similar to one played upon him. Yet for all these watery deaths, Lord Caldlow lives a comfortable life, never getting his hands that dirty, but enough blood on his hands to make the green one red. In contrast to these high stations, Alfred Bowden is at the bottom of the social ladder, and knows what it takes to make his way up. He lives by his wits, and as he explains to his future wife’s nephew (who may indeed grow up to be a Houdini himself) once people know your trick, you are worthless to them. Not only is he wiling to get his hands dirty, but strives to put them to better use, such as tying the Langford double and being a bit more innovative than the next guy, who to both their misfortunes is Angiers. He has his great trick, which may or may not have used a Teslian teleporter/human facsimilie machine (some intriguing comments on IMDB suggest that Fallon may have been his naturally born twin brother, and whatever Tesla would have invented for him – if he invented anything at all – would have only been a dummy prop, but more on this later), yet puts off this less dangerous dazzling trick until need presses him, as he can’t keep doing the bullet catch and losing more fingers or worse. Yet once the game is afoot and his double life leads him to fame and fortune as two halves of the Professor, some monstrous changes begin happening, worse than what he cunningly cautions the Great Root Danton about working with a double. His Fallon-half, perhaps better to call him Alfie, doesn’t so much go on a power trip, but just wants more of what Bowden, his other half, worked hard to come by. Here it is achingly apparent with the loves of each of their lives: Bowden loves Sarah, and lives for their daughter, Alfie does his part to keep the Professor’s pact, but has little interest in his partner’s family, feeling more at home with Olivia, another street urchin living by her wits. It is perhaps Alfie who wants to push the boundaries of his craft, and most definitely had his hands in tying the fatal Langford. Bowden truthfully answers Angiers increasingly angry question about the knot, yet keps back the more honest answer that his double Alfie would remember which know he tied. This dishonest truthfulness comes back to haunt him, as his wife Sarah begins to understand which days he is in love with her, and chillingly tells him when it’s “not today.” The other woman caught in between, Olivia, may have met up with Sarah prior to the latter’s suicide, and would have discovered the monstrous truth. His own argument with himself, from the discovery of the trapdoor on the stage in the final act of Angier’s hit show to Alfie’s final moments on deathrow, the Professor keeps his professional secret safe, knowing al the life how worthless he is without it. While Angiers seems to be the picture of wounded vanity, staring out at the faces looking in wonder at him, Bowden has been etched with the greater vice pride, and it is hopefully with Alfie’s death, this precious part of himself, that the deadly sin is erased. How exciting, too, this film has one more layer that reveals yet another doubles in rivalry, very similar to Angiers and Bowden’s career. Nikola Tesla has the innovative spirit in the field of science that was lacking in his more successful rival Thomas Edison – one is truly a wizard, while the other is a sorcerer’s apprentice made rich by stealing others’ potions and selling them as his own. Yet unlike Angiers, enterprising Edison had no qualms about doing dirty work, and his reward was to become a household name. no surprise filmmakers had it in for him, as Edison infamously ripped off the Méile’s Trip to the Moon, he is the proto-film pirate. Tesla was a scientist of a different stock – a horrible businessman, yet knew lots about risk, even cautioning his prospective client about the dangers of following an obsession. If it is true that Bowden never got a teleporter from him, and the designs in the diary were just a sham, Tesla had the marvelous ability to make the impossible reality. As I expected, John was impressed with these Teslian scenes, and had much to say about the enigmatic inventor after the film. Of these tales about “the most advanced human that ever existed” he told us of his plan to evade death for 151 years or so, flying above the Earth in his spacecraft… wait a moment, that chamelion of pop, David Bowie, seems to have an unusually long life and knows a thing or two about spaceships… do you think he might be Tesla himself? Yuko must have enjoyed the film, too, even though her initial response after the credits was along the lines of what the fu–. She was at least relieved that no harm came to Alley’s cat.