The Prestige

So, I tend to like Christain Bale; there's something like believable desperation underneath most of his characters for me (and he's not at all painful to look at). Scarlet Johansen ranges from almost attractive (The Black Dahlia) to pretty darned hot (The Perfect Score); here, she was at her observed peak (something about period corsetries really works for her; I wonder what?). Plus, we got David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, a living hero playing a dead hero. You'd think this had all the ingredients of an excellent movie and, well... you'd be wrong.

Unlike a lot of people, I'm not impressed with Christopher Nolan's structuralism (but unlike a lot of people, probably even him, I went to school to understand structuralism). After about a third of the movie (pay attention; there are three steps to this movie*), I desperately wanted to ask him how that clever thing was working out for him; in the final third, it was a foregone conclusion that it wasn't working out well at all. I'll lay some of the blame at Hugh Jackman's feet; he was in a movie with incredibly talented and/or pretty actors, and he just didn't measure up (but I'm hardly a fan in general). Some turned in performances ranging from the very workmanlike to the astounding (Caine, in particular), but poor Mr. Jackman just wasn't up to snuff. The majority of the blame, however, I lay on Nolan, who thinks a moderately nonlinear plot with heavyhanded foreshadowing is the absolute height of sophistication.

So, see a matinee; I'd say the good parts are worth reduced admission. It's an interesting failure, but that's because some of the cast, not the ham fist of the direction.



*My own weak attempt at cleverness was telling fairyhead that we'd seen two thirds of a good movie. In all honesty, it was at best half.