The director Christopher Nolan is known for being able to combine a cerebral approach to filmmaking with an ability to stage effective action sequences and to bring out the dark nuances of his source material. During the early part of his career, he produced intriguing films such as Memento, a film that stood out for the way in which it, quite literally, pieced together a puzzle out of the elements of a protagonist’s fractured (and short-term) memory. In his second and more commercially-successful stage, he was invited to take over the reboot of the Batman franchise, and he did so to much acclaim. His films captured the dark undertones of a character that reclaimed once again the dark menacing quality of a vigilante who assumed a certain nightmarish quality. It was certainly a change of pace from the way the franchise had been evolving of late, having been overtaken by a certain camp quality that robbed the character of this tormented quality and rendered it more one-dimensional, like a cartoon character. Nolan rescued the Batman.
During this time while at the helm of the Batman franchise,
the director was enlisted to adapt and bring to the screen Christopher Priest’s
award-winning novel from 1995, The Prestige. This was bound to thrill many fans
of the book, for the director and his cerebral style seemed suited to the material. Priest is known as a literate writer who
delves as much in horror as in science fiction, and it is a pleasure to read
his graceful prose. This novel is set at
the turn of the century, an imperial age in which London was the seat of a
vigorous empire and in which mass entertainment was evolving to meet the
demands of a new proletariat that craved illusions and magic acts. What else
but magic could encapsulate the tenor of the time, and the dramatic
transformations under way?
One is drawn to ask, what is magic if not spectacle? We audience
members are all willing collaborators in these illusions, and to share them
with an audience is to relive once again those episodes from deep in our
primordial past, when small tribes cowered in caves protected by fire and
looked out to a sea of gleaming eyes that gazed back intently, dangers that
needed to assume tangible and symbolic force and were incorporated into our
stories. As with any artistic creation, the audience is a necessary
participant, and we are forever creating that nighttime ambiance of dancer and
menace, for however charming lighter illusions may be (card tricks,
intersecting chains and coin tricks), they don’t feel compelling unless there
is the suggestion of risk.
In this work, we had the portrayal of an obsessive rivalry
between two magicians, a rivalry that seems innocent enough in the beginning,
but that takes on a successively darker edge. We need the evocation of
darkness, and an early death provides this element, one that feeds a
self-consuming obsession that serves as the impetus for the final culmination
of the show, the final illusion. We depend on the evocation of mystery, and the
tone of the film portrays this succession of events in a way that reveals
hidden layers of deception. The diaries, in particular, serve as effective
mediums to underscore the way in which these characters deceive not only
themselves but the others, a framework that involves the audience in the mystery
that is bound to be revealed on the last page.
The actors Hugh Jackman, portraying the lanky magician
Robert Angier, and Christian Bale, the more frenetic Alfred Borden, are cast as
the two doomed protagonists in this rivalry. The film captures the atmosphere
of this period, of a cloudy London and an impossibly distant Colorado, and of a
public that seems somehow more innocent, more trusting. It is a period piece,
but the moral ambiguities as well as philosophical reflections are eternal, for
they lie at the basis of all artistic endeavor. Magic shows are still taking place in
theaters, and we have an earnest public that reveals an enormous appetite for
these shows, a public that in a way needs figures such as Angier and Borden.
We all know that magic acts are “fake”. The public back then
knew it as well, and yet we also appreciate the value of a good illusion. In
this film, we see the elements that are involved in the staging of these acts,
and how danger and suspense formed such an integral part of these spectacles.
Much of this film, as mentioned before, takes place in dark interiors, in
cluttered rooms filled with props, and on dark stages (and a dark laboratory in
Colorado) where this lack of light evokes a dreamlike quality. It seems logical
to affirm that seeing and appreciating an act of magic is akin to dreaming, and
it also evokes a certain innocence that takes us back to a simpler time. We are
transported, if only for a short moment, away from the sordidness of the
everyday working world, for what defines the reality more than the necessity of
work, and the humdrum rituals that so beset us into a style of existence that
we must term “unconscious” living? But magic can also be cheapened, for magic
serves as a form of symbolic language at work, and there is a grammar involved
that needs to cohere with the successful combination of the requisite elements,
of articles and conjunctions and the artful deployment of verbs and the
suitable matching with adjectives. It is a form of showmanship that is united
with craft, and the deployment of metaphors and symbols that allude, in the
end, to the dynamics at play within the human heart.
It is natural that the film, as does the novel, hinges on
the implied brotherhood between the dueling magicians. One, Robert Angier
(played by Hugh Jackman) is a lanky and somewhat mild character who from the beginning
seems too hesitant, and who never seems to convince the audience is anything
other than a figure with movie-star looks, until we see the transformation in
the end. The other, Alfred Borden, played by the ever-brooding Christian Bale,
seems much more manic and unfettered, and as evident in the film, has been
seduced by the illusion. Perhaps he sees in capacity to transform and deceive
and seduce others a craft that is capable of providing a sense of coherence,
but this is an insight that only comes to the audience at the end of the film,
when the full nature of the illusion at work is revealed.
The viewer is struck by the way in which this innocent
rivalry between two likeable figures quickly takes a darker and more tragic
turn. And once again, this situation can’t help is invested in ancient
allusions, in particular, to the rivalry between the biblical figures of Cain
and Abel, a rivalry destined to become destructive.
Within this ancient drama that is being played out, we see
the intercession of a morally ambiguous figure, that of the stagecraft who
would seem to be pulling all the strings, the figure of the 19th
century reclusive scientist, Nikolai Tesla. It is fitting that we should have a
dark wizard introduced, for he has already assumed a legendary quality as the
purveyor of a dark secrets and insights, a forbidding figure who will take a
prominent role as an intermediary between the humdrum world of homo economicus
and the dark world of magic. The character is a compelling one, and is played
by David Bowie, the rock star who always did have an enigmatic quality.
Tesla is also in a way an auteur. He creates works of art,
and not simply technology that is the commodification of magic. As portrayed in
this film, he is almost an acolyte for a new religion, a Promethean figure, a
new Frankenstein, if we appeal to the powerful myth created by Mary Shelley. There
is also an otherworldly character to this portrayal by Bowie, and one must
remember that the historical Tesla was involved in his own destructive rivalry
with another wizard, he of Menlo Park and the light bulb, Thomas Edison.
Rivalries have two sides to them, for they point to a bond that is just as
strong as brotherhood, and just as capable of ending destructively.
The pace of the film is one that gradually works up a
crescendo, another scene of destruction that is prefigured, as so many other
episode are, by preceding scenes. Just as Tesla’s estate in Colorado is burned
down by the agents of Edison, so will Angier’s end, in a sequence that will
provide the final key to the mysteries involved, while failing to shed any
light on the real obsessions at play. We know at the outset of the film that
Alfred Borden is witness to the murder of Robert Angier, and we are held in
suspense because the evidence would seem to suggest that he was the architect
of this act. For this, Borden has been convicted and sentenced to die. But are
things really the way they appear to be? What is the real nature of this murder
mystery?
What we have, then, is a peeling back of the mystery and of
the illusion, so to speak. In retrospective episodes that recreate the sequence
of events, as well as through narration provided by the reading of the
respective diaries of the two magicians, we come to understand that the Borden
character has been framed. And yet, throughout this film, there is also the
powerful secret that seems to tie the two characters together, the secret that
becomes an obsession, a hidden presence that haunts them both.
Illusions seduce us, and as such, they are capable of
provoking jealousy, rage and the release of dangerous energies. The wife of
Angier is killed during a performance, in an act that seems to have been caused
by an act of recklessness on the part of Borden (but with the collusion of the
woman herself). There are, then, repeating acts of destruction. The wife of Borden will hang herself, the
magician Angier will himself be killed in a tank of water, and the magician
Borden will also die by hanging. There is a symmetry at play, a mirror-like quality
that suggests powerfully that illusions are only a reflection of projected
internal processes at work.
Violence and creation, the two sides necessary for the
crafting of an illusion; is this not an unstable edifice? What can sustain an illusion
if not our collaboration, and the rivalry between the two magicians Borden and
Angier forms a much deeper bond than any that their spouses or any of their
personal relationships could have wielded to tie them down to the humdrum
illusion of modern industrial society. Their shared illusion is one of disputed
power, and the belief that they can somehow seduce the other, for they are
courting each other, at the same time that they are wounding and discrediting
each other. That is the nature of this rivalry, one that engulfs them both,
that enchants as well as liberates a more depraved side to each other. Angier
becomes more and more desperate, while Borden becomes more and more cocky. It
is a suicide pact.
The revelation of the secret at the end is one that conveys
a powerful visceral thrill. It was a haunting ending, as I recall, from the
novel, one that was unexpected for it revealed a degree of inhumanity that was
unexpected. It is captured well in this film ending, although it has been
altered from the novel. And it is the perfect frame upon which to end the film.
This work, then, portrays the elements of an obsession writ
large. I would have loved to see more of the Tesla character, one which could
have occupied a greater role in the film because of all the magicians in this
film, he is the true wizard, a doomed figure as well, hounded from one place to
the next, never at rest. Of the two actors, Hugh Jackman seems to be somewhat
more tentative in his portrayal of Angier, without the emotional resonance that
one comes to expect from a tortured figure. He lacks the menace of the despair
of Christian Bale who has made it a point of portraying tortured characters, in
the Batman films as well as others. Michael Caine appears, once again, as an
earnest counselor, a friend and collaborator, and in the end, a moral arbiter.
We have, then, the portrayal of a simpler time, where
collective spectacles had not lost their lustre and had not been cheapened by
the spectacle of expressions such as “reality” programming. But the ancient mysteries of the human heart
still find scope for their development, and the audience can’t help but wonder
if, indeed, as Freud was to show in the 20th century, the human
psyche isn’t as much a crafted work of illusion as the card trick.
Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013
