The Prestige (movie and book; spoilers)

[kate_nepveu]

If you haven't seen the movie The Prestige, then you should not read the notes behind the cut. Really. However, you should know that the movie is based on a book of the same title which won a World Fantasy Award, and while events diverge a fair amount, the book's shelved in fantasy for a reason.

I finally got around to writing this up thanks to coffeeandink's

Comments

[coffeeandink]

I reread The Prestige after seeing the movie; you and Chad are remembering a couple of things wrong

[kate_nepveu]

Huh. Why does Borden give up his child?

And I have no idea about Victorian forensics, actually, either.

Someone somewhere--possibly you!--pointed out how Angier was unable to accept that it _was_ a double, which ties into what you're saying.

(And I never considered it was a message about science, either, I think both because of the characters and because of the book.)

[kate_nepveu]

Also, I forgot to say, this makes the movie a lot creepier in comparison.

[agrumer]

They could reuse the tank after replacing the glass. That’d make more sense than building a new tank every day.

Tesla’s device seems like cheating because it (from an SF fan’s point of view) it changes the genre of the story.

Also, holy crap, how could Tesla invent such a thing and then not use it to change the world?

[kate_nepveu]

We're clearly shown lots and lots of tanks as the camera pulls out of the basement, all with a dead Angier in them, though, so that's not what they did.

Why Tesla doesn't use the device is a problem, but not one within the, hmm, frame of the picture.

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah, but you could end all scarcity with that thing! Not quite the same thing.

[kate_nepveu]

We're shown that other magicians want to know, though, even non-crazy ones like Cutter. So it's a bit of a plot hole, but handwaveable as a product of his monofocus.

[kalimac]

A story with a trick-laden plot should be, pardon the expression, water-tight. This one had huge, gaping holes in it. I liked the acting (except that Michael Caine needs to SPEAK UP, and Christian Bale looks far too much like Will Ferrell for human comfort), but the plot was more annoying than anything else

[kate_nepveu]

I'm afraid I don't remember about the fingers, but I suspect not because a review said that the rivalry in the book wasn't as violent.

[kalimac]

Actually, Hamlet's obsession with revenge has been puzzling a lot of serious critics for centuries. Not a good example to excuse some other character's obsession.

But you miss my point - I'm not objecting that Angier is too obsessed. I'm disbelieving that even someone as obsessed as he is said to be would do what he is shown doing. The more so as excuses are offered for why Angier's behavior is not as crazy as it looks, excuses that would not have been offered had the film-makers not judged them needed, and excuses which in fact don't make any sense.

[anna_wing]

My own theory was that Tesla was just as insanely obsessed as Angier or Borden, and disregarded the machine because it wasn't what he was interested in. It was just a convenient source of funds for his Real Work.

The reviews that annoyed me were the ones that wittered about supernatural power and how it spoiled the story. Tesla's machine is a science fictional device not a fantastic one ("wizard" is a metaphor, idiot reviewer!). I liked it, actually, that Angier's last "trick" could not be duplicated without the machine because it wasn't a trick at all. And that it was Borden's own illusion (the key to his coded diary) that brought Angier to Tesla in the first place.

The structural elegance of this film was very pleasing.

[kate_nepveu]

That was a nice touch, that Borden's misdirection resulted in the quote-unquote real thing.

I'm not usually very interested in sharp divides between science fiction and fantasy, but regardless I think the machine was *functionally* magic rather than sfnal--it was treated that way, rather than any attempt to engage with it sfnally. But I like your theory about Tesla.

[mmcirvin]

In my own spoiler review I called it "crackpot science fantasy". Tesla's device is sfnal, but I agree with Kate that it's functionally magical: its principle of operation is apparently something literally occult that can be lost forever by the machinations of Edison's goons. This isn't the way science actually works, it's the way fictional mad science works, which is basically sorcery with scientific trappings

[kate_nepveu]

Oh, link to yourself: http://mmcirvin.livejournal.com/355264.html

I was more interested in the emotional consequences of the tricks, which may well be because I knew them going in. But YMMV.