Abracadabra

Saw The Prestige yesterday. I didn't read the book, but a friend gave me the synopsis, and it sounds really good too.

Two magicians (stage magicians, not Harry Potter types) start out as colleagues but end up as rivals. They try to outdo and sabotage each other's acts. The movie is told in several sets of flashbacks -- one is being tried for the other's murder. As a storytelling device, the trial-as-narrative is usually a good one. Overdone sometimes, but here it works well. The story is also moved along by each magician's journal entries, and flashbacks within flashbacks. It was very well done. I figured out one of the twists about 2/3 of the way through the movie, which took away the shock of the ending shot.

The story also switches back and forth between London and Colorado Springs, where electrical engineer Nikola Tesla has a lab and works to advance science, not magic. It's kind of funny that the (true) rivalry between Tesla and Thomas Edison, Edison is the thug hiring hit men to squash his opponent's ideas. In that way, the two scientists' rivalry mimics the two magicians'.

I disagree with the central notion that people like magic shows because they want to be deceived, though. I think it's a combination of curiosity and appreciation. There's a moment where, if you can't figure out how the magic is done, you clap for the good presentation of a clever ruse. Small children, I think, who aren't as cynical, will clap because there's the possibility that it really is magic, and there's more to the world than the easily explainable.

The film explores the darker side of magic acts. Some of the tricks to the acts are clever, some are just downright cruel, and the audience is blissfully happy because it is ignorant of everything that happens behind the curtain. That still doesn't mean they want to be decieved; they realize they're being tricked, they're just fine with not knowing how.

There's a segment where Hugh Jackman's character needs to find a body double, so his friends search the London streets and drag in some random guy that resembles him. The delightful irony of "trick" photogaphy goes so well with the movie's theme of magic --it took a good couple stares before I realized the lookalike was also played by Hugh Jackman. On a side note, it was also great to see Christian Bale (always a Newsie, sometimes a Swing Kid to me) not faking an American accent; and Scarlett Johanssen does a good job of faking her accent, too.

I'm putting the book on my reading list. Don't know when I'll get to it, but from my friend's description, it's very different and has entirely different creepy moments.