(Movie Review)I've wanted to see this film ever since I read a review which said it was done by the director of "Memento" and, like "Memento" had lots of surprises which kept the viewer guessing through the whole film.
And indeed, it does live up to the hype. There's not just one twist as you watch this movie, there are several. Followed by a huge twist at the end. (My friend, who watched the movie with me, claimed to see the big twist coming. I was caught completely by surprise.)
Then, after we finished the movie, the nit-picking began. "You know, now that I think about it, this part doesn't completely make sense. Why didn't they just do this or that instead?"
In fact, if held under close examination, very little of the plot actually makes a lot of sense in real life. The characters take leaps of logic that are questionable and deceive each other with plot devices which may work in the movie world but wouldn't hold up in real life. In fact the whole basis for the plot, obsession and revenge, is probably carried farther than would be strictly sustainable in actual life.
This is of course true of "Memento" as well. It completely blows you away the first time you watch it, but then if you sit back and think about it, there are a few loose ends.
But that's not to say I enjoyed the movie any less for it. Like the story of the magicians it tells, the movie pulls off a lot of slight of hand tricks that fall apart under close examination, but you're more than willing to be deceived at the time.
Link of the Day
How Bush Took Us to the Dark Side
(Via This Modern World)
The Prestige: Movie Review (Scripted)
I managed to get out to see a couple of movies in the early part of '07, and the trailer for this caught my attention on both occasions. One of those outings where the Prestige trailer ran was to see The Illusionist with my little sister. Naturally the idea that 2 movies coming out close together would take up this 19th-century stage-performance world & its quirky characters & urban settings was immediately appealing. When I finally got around to seeing The Prestige (not by any plan, incidentally — someone in my family borrowed the DVD from a friend), though, I felt disappointed by it, especially as it compares with The Illusionist. Not that The Illusionist is such a great film. But where The Illusionist just undertakes, relatively free of pretense, to set a story before its audience, The Prestige seems to be all self-aware contrivance — as though it weren't enough to tell a story about contrivance & artifice and leave the audience to their own reflections. Maybe The Prestige comes nearer the contemporary artistic ideal somehow, but for a pleasant movie-watching experience, I'm glad it was the earlier film I got out with my sister to see (and that I actually paid for).
ReplyDeleteInteresting. The Illusionist still hasn't made its way over to Japan, but I'll have to check it out when it does come here.
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