mayoraasei | the prestige

...should be watched without spoilers.

What counts is the initial wonder, not the sickened feeling of dread of knowing what the trick is.

We went in expecting a light-hearted film, at least for some length of the beginning, but the script made quick dispense with the joy. It is dark, the two main characters confrontingly unscrupulous.

In a film about obsession one hopes to - if not identify - at least sympathise to some extent with the characters. The Prestige lends no such courtesy. Neither men, Angier (Hugh Jackman) nor Borden (Christian Bale) were likeable - narrow-minded and narrow-sighted in their pursuit, malicious, vengeful, petty, bastards.

The film is clever, undoubtably. The editing that jumps between three different time points was never confusing, particularly not in the way Tripping Over is. It touches on a highly sensitive issue that exists in our contemporary society. The stake of the rivalry builds up impressively, but the final trick is just a touch too neat, and a touch too contrived.

And so the film these two men inhabit is cold, warmed only slightly by the very human characters that surround them - Borden's frustrated wife Sarah (Rebecca Hall), Angier's assistant Olivia (Scarlett Johansson), the old helpful mentor Cutter (Michael Caine)...even the slightly too ingenious Nikolas Tesla (David Bowie) proves to be more human at heart than either of our two leads.

And so, as Olivia parts, "You deserve each other."

They do, and if only both got the deaths they deserved.

And pity me who knew in advance the final trick, who could only wince when other audience laughed at Borden's boorish replies to his wife.

If there is any humour, it will be stained by blood¹.

"The sacrifice of magic," so they speak, with all their exuberant self-importance.

1: Except for that one line about the worth of scientific research lies in what goes wrong, which made me metaphorically head-desk several times =P