David Bowie's a Scientist (The Prestige)
The Prestige, Christopher Nolan. Mar. 24, 10:30pm. View count: One.
I'd heard people say about this movie things like 'Oh, it was good, but there was this part at the end that was really unbelievable.' That unbelievable thing was the thing that made this movie worthwhile. The rest of it was decent, and it's obvious that loads of effort went into it, but the novel-based roots really showed. Voiceovers and telling rather than showing, mainly, and the simultaneous storytelling thing that Nolan enjoys doing hurt the first half especially. The structure wackiness was in place before we'd gotten a sense of the characters, which, for me, hurt my immersion. The characters were, all in all, fairly flat, too.
The acting was pretty nice; David Bowie does well. Christian Bale's rubbery lips are starting to bother me, though, and his accent was a little unfortunate.
Having read the wikipedia entries for the book and movie, the movie made the correct choice regarding the Unbelievable Thing (which the book did not), but that did not save it from endless meaningless repetitions of catchphrases ('the prestige!') which everyone seems to know for no reason, portentious talking about things we haven't seen, and a general plotline that, while tightly arranged, is not very character-driven.
Bowie, though, there's Bowie. And the first shot of the film made me giggle almost like the plastic bag scene in American Beauty. (When it showed up later though, it was a stock sound FX graveyard that stomped on my immersion's windpipe a bit.)
So this morning, I realised this: the movie follows its own instructions, but only to a point. Thematically, plot-wise, structurally, all fall in line with the stated 'three part' premise. But the acting does not. The characters never give away their unhappiness at their difficult positions, in any way that matters. The example I just came up with is, during the annoying 'You totally have secrets!' 'Yeah, well, so?' argument between Christian Bale and his wife, we should have seen Fallon standing in the hallway, looking affected by this. This should have been killing him, but there is no sign of it. The most painful part of this is that, had we had a shot of him from behind, with dejected posture, and THEN focussed on the child (one piece of misdirection), we could have had TWO pieces of misdirection, because his unhappiness would have been attributed to his crummy job, or just general character stroke. Oh, that poor guy, he's had to listen to this for years. I wonder if he's going to crack and kill the daughter or something. Misdirection! I mean, isn't that what they WANTED?
I'd heard people say about this movie things like 'Oh, it was good, but there was this part at the end that was really unbelievable.' That unbelievable thing was the thing that made this movie worthwhile. The rest of it was decent, and it's obvious that loads of effort went into it, but the novel-based roots really showed. Voiceovers and telling rather than showing, mainly, and the simultaneous storytelling thing that Nolan enjoys doing hurt the first half especially. The structure wackiness was in place before we'd gotten a sense of the characters, which, for me, hurt my immersion. The characters were, all in all, fairly flat, too.
The acting was pretty nice; David Bowie does well. Christian Bale's rubbery lips are starting to bother me, though, and his accent was a little unfortunate.
Having read the wikipedia entries for the book and movie, the movie made the correct choice regarding the Unbelievable Thing (which the book did not), but that did not save it from endless meaningless repetitions of catchphrases ('the prestige!') which everyone seems to know for no reason, portentious talking about things we haven't seen, and a general plotline that, while tightly arranged, is not very character-driven.
Bowie, though, there's Bowie. And the first shot of the film made me giggle almost like the plastic bag scene in American Beauty. (When it showed up later though, it was a stock sound FX graveyard that stomped on my immersion's windpipe a bit.)
So this morning, I realised this: the movie follows its own instructions, but only to a point. Thematically, plot-wise, structurally, all fall in line with the stated 'three part' premise. But the acting does not. The characters never give away their unhappiness at their difficult positions, in any way that matters. The example I just came up with is, during the annoying 'You totally have secrets!' 'Yeah, well, so?' argument between Christian Bale and his wife, we should have seen Fallon standing in the hallway, looking affected by this. This should have been killing him, but there is no sign of it. The most painful part of this is that, had we had a shot of him from behind, with dejected posture, and THEN focussed on the child (one piece of misdirection), we could have had TWO pieces of misdirection, because his unhappiness would have been attributed to his crummy job, or just general character stroke. Oh, that poor guy, he's had to listen to this for years. I wonder if he's going to crack and kill the daughter or something. Misdirection! I mean, isn't that what they WANTED?