The Prestige

So I don't generally post movie reviews, but I feel I'm uniquely qualified to talk about this one. A little-known fact about me is that my grandfather was a professional magician for over 60 years, and as a child I often served as his stage assistant.

While I'm not nearly as attractive as Scarlett Johansson, I do think the audience trusted me. After all, what's more innocent than a 10 year old?

I'm not going to discuss the major plot points, I don't want to ruin the story for anyone else, although it is unfortunate that I saw the two big twists coming an hour out, but what troubled me more than anything about the film is the way the two rival magicians' attitudes towards the audience was portrayed.

Both Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are fine actors, but both their characters treat their audience as a group to be deceived. This undermines the intent of pretty much every magician I ever met. No magician assumes to deceive their crowd, merely to distract them. It is a small distinction I know, but an important one. Magicians believe in the intelligence of their audience, and work to confuse and distort the images through a variety of spoken and visual techniques.

In the film, the two magicians instead work to control their audiences through increasingly elaborate illusions designed to suggest the most evil and diabolical end result. Its both disturbing and unsettling to watch the distaste they have for both the audience, and each other.

I freely accept that top-level illusionists don't necessarily get along. I'm sure David Copperfield and Lance Burton aren't best friends. But I've spent a great deal of time with the most respected magicians in the country, and while they don't share all secrets of their tricks, they certainly all work together to improve performance and illusion.

I understand this would not have made nearly as entertaining a movie if they got along, but I wish there would have been a bit more effort to portray the magicians as something other than the audience's antagonist.

Now that I've expressed my reservations, I will say this. Its a good movie, with fine acting all around, and if you don't see the twists coming, you'll love the ending. Now I have to get caught up on The Illusionist to compare...