Results tagged “Magic”

The reasons for recording (with Bride of Culture Snob) this commentary track to The Prestige are many and simple:

• Director/co-writer Christopher Nolan didn’t include one on the first DVD release — at least not that I’ve found.
• In my essay, I faulted the movie’s ending, but I now accept it as suitable and even necessary.
• There remains great confusion and debate about what actually happens in the movie, even though the script and presentation seem to me models of clarity and foreshadowing.
• Bride of Culture Snob and I continue to argue about the conclusion, and whether it fits or panders to an audience’s anticipated inability to follow the story.
• While it received generally favorable notices, The Prestige seemed to be dismissed as a mere entertainment, and I think critics and audiences failed to recognize the movie’s depth, density, and elegance.

We address all these areas in the commentary track, come to some resolution about the ending, and explore my theory that viewers tend to understand one of the movie’s “tricks” while watching the first time but get fooled by the other.

Rather than merely join the chorus of those who dismissed Brian De Palma’s The Black Dahlia, and rather than cast a dissent from the general critical favor accorded The Illusionist, I’ll respond to critics I enjoy and respect whose perspectives on these movies differ significantly from mine.

This is, to some degree, an act of self-doubt. I disliked both films and have no difficulty enumerating their faults. But part of me fears I didn’t open myself adequately to the movies, or watch them closely enough.

Most importantly, though, these essays from other critics do a better job articulating and developing the movies’ themes than the filmmakers do. These writers see great things in The Black Dahlia and The Illusionist. I see them, too, although I think they’re in raw form in both movies.

The disappointment of Christopher Nolan’s enormously entertaining — and slyly provocative — The Prestige comes in its closing minutes, when it adds a fourth act to its illusion: the final reveal. As any magician will tell you — as the movie itself reminds the audience — knowledge of the secret robs the trick of its power and allure.