Yesterday's Movies

Before watching the movie:

I think the main thing I know about this movie is the big secret that drives the plot. The core mystery is about finding out how a magic trick is done, so I suppose it’s about a younger or rival magician trying to learn the master’s secrets. I’m not sure how an entire movie can come out of that, so I don’t know what’s going on around it.

I believe I’ve heard there’s a lot of Christopher Nolan’s philosophy of moviemaking in how the character approaches being a magician. I recall some discussion of looking through this movie for clues of what Nolan was going to do with the Dark Knight trilogy, or that The Dark Knight Rises was going to be Nolan’s Prestige in the trick he was performing with Batman. I’m not sure that panned out, but speculation drives engagement.

After watching the movie:

In the early days of their magic careers in the late 1800s, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden worked as audience plants for Milton the Magician, an established but lackluster illusionist, until Angier’s wife Julia failed to untie herself in a routine water tank escape and drowned, ending their boss’s career. Angier was convinced that Borden tied a more difficult knot that they’d discussed using, but Borden couldn’t remember clearly which knot he used. The two move on to their own stage careers, Borden as The Professor and Angier as The Great Danton, taking with him Cutter, Milton’s engineer. In revenge for his wife, and raging with jealousy over the family Borden has built, Angier sabotages Borden’s bullet catch trick and shoots off two of Borden’s fingers, and in retaliation, Borden sabotages Angier’s humane disappearing sparrow finale. Borden debuts a new finale called The Teleported Man where he tosses a ball to himself appearing to teleport across the stage, and Angier is obsessed with learning the secret, as it’s too obviously the same man to be a double. Angier sends his assistant to Borden to steal Borden’s secrets, but instead she begins an affair with Borden, though when confronted, she does provide Angier with Borden’s notebook. The book claims that the trick involves a machine built by Nikola Tesla, and Angier goes to America to commission his own Teleported Man machine from the eccentric inventor. What Tesla creates for him, he warns against using, but Angier comes home with the perfect bait for his ultimate trap for Borden.

I hadn’t realized this was after Batman Begins, nor that this was based on a book. I suppose that before The Dark Knight, Nolan wasn’t fully able to do just absolutely anything he wanted as an original screenplay, but this is so identified with Christopher Nolan that it might as well be his own. The framing was a bit odd in that for a large portion of the movie, we are seeing events happen through Borden reading Angier’s diary about reading Borden’s diary. Looking briefly at a summary of the book, the story is told through the two men’s diaries but by a different framing mechanism. It was confusing for a while, but I can definitely see how the story is enhanced by being shown through contrasting perspectives and their reactions to them.

I was ready to talk about the irony of Jackman, an Australian, playing an American in London, and Bale playing a working class Londoner, but it turns out that Christian Bale is English, and Jackman’s character may not be as American as he seems. I was also very surprised to see Andy Serkis in a completely non-mocap role so soon after Lord of the Rings. He seemed to become solely the go-to for motion capture after Gollum and as far as I knew had only gotten to show his own face again as a Black Panther villain. And of course Tesla. I thought Tesla looked familiar but I couldn’t place him, only to find out that it was David Bowie. Turns out he was cast for his extreme charisma, which I’m not sure really came across in the haunted and weary performance. To make one final note about accents, I have no idea if Bowie’s Tesla was what a Serbian accent sounds like, but there were times he sounded Irish. I also don’t know why I’m delighted to see Roger Rees every time he turns up, but he’s here in a small role and it’s nice to see him again.

The late 1800s are a magical and sinister time, and the setting infuses the whole movie with an illusionist’s charm. The real trick of the movie is that Angier is the protagonist becoming the villain, and Borden is the villain becoming the victim of his own hubris. Also much like a magic trick, the smashed and restored sparrow trick that’s used as an illustration of how to pace a magic trick is of course thematically important, but you don’t realize just how much it foreshadows until it happens.

This is a highly polished yet down to earth movie, made in our most recent peak of cinema where movies could be lush and fantastical without drowning in rushed CGI, honed rather than glutted. I think Christopher Nolan has gotten a bit too self-important, but going back to his early catalog really shows just how much he earned his early praise.