j* movie reviews 2020

The Prestige (2006)

It's raining men, surly egotistical men.

It's not often I'm forced to say "not even Hugh Jackman can save it" and it is true that not even shirtless Hugh Jackman could save this. The Prestige continues director Nolan's obsession with masculine power and secret identities. It could be called "Batman: The Magic Years."

The most probable main character, Angier (Hugh Jackman) is revealed early on to be the pseudonym of a wealthy or important man. In a mirroring of the Bruce Wayne/Batman idea, he has adopted this alternate identity to perform his secret and obsessive acts. His inherited rich identity isn't revealed until the end. Instead of fighting crime, Angier does stageshow magic, with the help of his magic servant Cutter (unironically played by Batman butler Michael Caine). As with most "help" it is Cutter who does all the intellectual work in this magic business, allowing Bat-Angier to stalk around being moody a lot and making demands.

Like any standard superhero story, we need a sad tale of woe to kick things off. This introduces us to Borden (who is literally Batman's Christian Bale). Borden kills Bat-Angier's hot wife in a magic show gone wrong. Revenge motive established. Then begins a near endlessly circular back-n-forth tale of "an eye for an eye sends the whole world blind." It reminded me a bit of all the fighting over those stones in Avengers: Infinity War... now this one has them, now the other one. Except instead of colour and spectacle, this has man-huffing and surliness. Instead of occasional comic relief this is two hours of drudgery - lighten up fellas!

Literally nothing is at stake in this movie. To stretch the Avengers analogy a bit far, there are too many characters and roughly half of them seem to die. But the only thing actively under-threat in the whole scenario is male ego.

There's a somewhat intriguing turn when Bat-Angier heads to the USA to see Tesla. It's never really clear how this has eventuated - was it just a massive coincidence that Borden gives him the name of the one man who can provide extra men to this already massively man-filled plot? It think it was because it seemed there was some "clever paralleling" to be done here by bringing up Tesla vs Edison and saying "look, here is another man who steals from a man." I'd like to be impressed that they used David Bowie but I didn't even notice until I looked at imdb.

Whilst obviously a man of science, Tesla in this incarnation is played as a dumb wizard, and the "science" is played as magic. Thank goodness our hero Bat-Angier turned up to notice all those cats in hats out in the yard of Tesla's impressive hilltop castle. I mean Tesla has only invented electricity, wireless electricity and cloney-portation... you can't expect him to be observational like a real inventor. Anyway, Bat-Angier buys the cloney-portation machine, because don't forget he's rich, and Edison turns up and torches the joint. Or maybe Tesla burns his own life's work to the ground. It's a bit unclear.

In Batman the sidekick bird is Robin, in The Prestige we have canary sidekicks. The saying "canary in the coal mine" is based on the idea that caged canaries taken into gloomy mine shafts would die if there was suffocating gas, and they'd die earlier than the men. This is exactly what happens here... heaps of canaries and the occasional dove are slaughtered in the process of "magic" and because no-one really takes much note of this, eventually so too are men.

A couple of women crop up here to serve as "tricks" in this sorry saga. In all honesty when Borden's wife takes her own life with dramatic flair in front of the cage of birds I was all "big mood Jules." Because it was bad enough watching the film, imagine having to live it. The only reason she seems to do this is because it helps add to the man-o-drama. If she'd just walked away with the kid there would have been a lot less conceited plot points.

Moody, dark, unclear ending and less clear point the bulk of the film. Shot real pretty though.

J* gives it 2 stars.