Notes on my homework: The Prestige and Signs

Now that Christopher Nolan has made a film about dreams, I am hoping for a Susan B. Anthony biopic by Mel Gibson.

See The Following immediately its a really great film and is has of Nolan's best film endings.

I'll try to be discreet about this and hopefully avoid embarrassing you, Jim... Anna Paquin is not the name you want :-)

and by the way, I love your observation that "Literalism in fantasy is a terrible combination"; that's exactly why I was frustrated with Batman Begins, as the filmmakers seemed to insist on literally and scientifically explaining how Batman engineered his amazing powers, and I kept screaming in my head "NO! It's BATMAN! He's a comic-book superhero who's infinitely more fun and worthwhile if you're simply encouraged, or even forced, to take him ON FAITH..." - and why did they insist on casting Liam Neeson as another Jedi knight under a different name??

Once again, Jim, you ignore a huge element of "Signs." Yes, the script is dumb and I don't agree with the message, but Shyamalan's filmmaking on a visual level is astounding. His choice of shots, his command of the conventional film language is unparalleled and "Signs" is his first film that is authoritative at such a high level. You should look at the way he chooses to shoot some of those scenes and write a review about that. Educate some of your readers out there.

Roger Ebert wrote "M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" is the work of a born filmmaker, able to summon apprehension out of thin air." What do you think about that opinion, Jim?

****SPOILERS*****
Jim, with regards to The Prestige I dont see how it is a cheat, because it isn't a twist in the first place. We all know Angier's contraption is supposed to 'replicate'. So yeah, what is god gifted to Gordon, Angier achieves through science. It is indeed a science fiction, and Nolan never, ever in his career exhibited any tendency whatsoever to go for the supernatural. Wouldn't you just look at The Dark Knight and the criticisms for all its realistic tendencies and ambition. Wouldn't you just look at the immediate aesthetics of The Prestige where probably for the first time ever, the Victorian era is not passed for an era gone by or some fantastical times but it seems as very much the present and real. Handheld camerawork serves the purpose and the trick is so mundane, it actually acts as a meta-comment on the movie itself. You see, once the secret is known it doesn't feel magical anymore. Sort of like knowing the film-making behind you favorite film.

Come on Jim, this is an argument most of the redundant critics out there would come up with. You mean to say Tyler was the narrator, isn't a cheat then? Ah of course it isn't. Please don't fall to such shallow analysis. We look up to you, you inspire us to dig deeper into a film and find the secrets hidden inside of it. Look not just at its content, but 'HOW' the content is provided. And once you see that in prestige, I believe, you might make much more insightful analysis which would amaze us once again.

One of my favorite Bong Joon-Ho moments is in "Memories of Murder." The bad-cop country cop, the one prone to outbursts of violence and torture, has to have his calf amputated. We see him about to go under anesthesia. He seems helpless. Back at the police station, the other cop -- sadly sweet music plays lightly on the soundtrack -- looks forlornly at the bad cop's boots under a desk, simultaneously making us feel compassion for bad cop and reminding us of scenes in which he kicked innocent suspects with those boots. The shot lasts no more than two seconds, but the tonal shift is executed perfectly. It might not even be a tonal shift. It's more of a complexity of tone, an ability to trigger several feelings at once. Bong is a master of that.

Just for reference, "Reverend" is an adjective, not a noun. The sentence should read "he's a former minister who lost his faith...."

I've been saying this about Asian (Korean, specifically) filmmaking for some time now. They have a knack for mastering the sudden shifting of tone within a film that I don't see in a lot of Western productions -- or, when I do, it's handled ineptly.

I haven't seen "Prestige", but "Signs" I can vote for being both immoral and empty at the same time. Some people say a movie is all of a piece, but in the case of "Signs" that is a damnation and not a description.

Shyamalan's concept of God in "Signs" is of a sadistic interventionist who causes all the bad things in the world to happen as well as the good things. His God conveys a message to Gibson by murdering Gibson's wife in an unspeakable way. Contrast that with the "Fatima" incident in which messages are conveyed to three children by Mary directly, without the use of violence. When I was watching the movie the death of Gibson's wife was so disturbing that it took me out of the flick and made me wonder how sick Shyamalan must have been to think of it.

Shyamalan could have tried the angle that God took the opportunity of her death to convey the message while not actually causing the accident, but that might not have been enough to convince us that Gibson's faith has been lost. Shyamalan instead chose to repeatedly and explicitly tell the audience that God has in fact caused her death so He could convey the message. Hell of an unpleasant God.

I wonder how good "Signs" would be if the religious angle were edited out of the picture, so it becomes just a monster movie.

I find it interesting that you criticize Nolan for cutting during a magic act ("destroys the spacial integrity necessary to sustaining an illusion") and then hail "F for Fake," where Welles cuts several times during a simple coin-in-the-ear trick. You might argue "F for Fake," is about, well, fakery - but so is "The Prestige," to some extent, not least in its onstage magic acts (which are never supposed to convince the movie's audience).

I'm not defending "The Prestige" over "F for Fake," "F for Fake," is leaps and bounds the better film, but I think it's a decent example of you criticizing one director for doing something while hailing another director who's guilty of the exact same thing.

Jim,

I must say that I enjoyed The Prestige (at least until the "explain everything" exposition round-up). I found it a decent time waster that at least held my attention. I think the shift from rational to extra-rational was more of a nod to the fans of magic than anything else. The sort of fan who is looking to figure out a trick and is driven to distraction (see what I did there?) by it. And yet hopes against hope that there is no trick to uncover. These are the twin impulses in a magic show and I think the movie was doing nothing more or less than trying to catch that vibe. Not exactly food for though, more of an after dinner mint for thought.

Signs, on the other hand was painful. I really don't want to rag on it too much because, well, where would I stop? Its enough that the theme's presentation in the movie is a subtle as a fireworks display and that theme is so shallow, ill considered, and entitled...argh. Stopping now.

The thing is if the movie had been played straight I think I would have been all over it. I love the idea of a man on the street (or in the cornfield) view of an full on alien invasion story. Outside of the main combat zones, isolated and without any inside information. Hell, I still want to see that movie.

Oh, and as for everything happens for a reason, Jim do you have any theories as to what the alien invasion of earth was about? Specifically what was their reason to invade a planet that is largely composed of a substance that is lethally caustic to them? While naked?

-Al

I have to disagree with you about "Signs." I don't see Shyamalan concluding that Everything Happens for a Reason. The key scene in the film is the discussion between the Hess brothers in which Graham maps out two diametrically opposed worldviews -- one that submits to fate and the other that subscribes to randomness and free will. In that scene, Graham professes the former. At the end of the film, he changes his mind. But I think that Shyamalan leaves it an open question with us. We, the audience, are supposed to choose which view we subscribe to. It is perfectly possible to believe in either and still accept the film's narrative. Either the water glasses and the baseball bat were preordained to be in place, or it was just luck (coincidences happen, after all). To me, this open-ended question is the great strength of the film.

I'm glad you finally commented on both of these films, as I've been interested in reading your take on them for quite some time. There's no doubt that Nolan and Shyamalan are interesting directors, albeit relentlessly frustrating ones. "Signs" and "The Prestige" contain quality scenes (hell, even one or two great scenes), but insist so strongly on showing what ought to be implied, that I constantly found myself drifting out of the story. (If the movie does all the work for you, what's the point?) The endings particularly baffle me, seeing how they pretty much completely undo everything that has come before. ("Signs" in particular made me cringe. Manipulative storytelling at its very worst.)

Let me start by saying that I am sure I am nowhere near as educated or well-versed in cinema as you are, Mr. Emerson. Your grasp of the language of film criticism is breathtaking, and belies the enormous store of filmic knowledge upon which you can draw for your columns and opinions.

I'm also fully aware of the nebulous nature of film criticism. It's easy to say a film like "The Godfather" is good, or even great, but try making that argument to someone who flat out doesn't like Mafia movies. I think "Lawrence of Arabia" is the greatest film of all time, but my friends hate it because it's too long and monotonous...whereas they'll sit and watch something like "The Green Mile" at a stretch, and it's more palatable because there's more action. But whatever, I'm just saying everyone's entitled to their opinion, no matter how misguided I may think they are.

Having said all that, I feel compelled, as few columns have made me feel, to respond to your arguments concerning Shyamalan's "Signs".

You wrote: "I'm trying to decide if 'Signs' is one of the most immoral films I've ever seen, or just one of the most empty and schematic."

"Immoral"? In what possible sense? I've read and re-read your statements about the movie, and I still can't figure out what you mean by that. "Signs" is ultimately nothing more than a campfire ghost story with a happy ending. Is it immoral because Graham Hess interprets what he has experienced as Divine intervention? That's his choice. Whether you agree with that choice or not is another matter, but disagreement doesn't constitute immorality, does it? That's religious fundamentalism at its worst - trust me, I know, I grew up with a church background.

You also wrote that the film "reduces life to Life Lessons". Well, isn't that, in a sense, what all good fiction does, in the end? In film, a biopic runs only 2-3 hours. In literature, someone's life story is reduced to a novel that can be read in a much shorter time than the real life actually took to unfold. A life is reduced to a series of events, some of which can be taken as lessons, if not for the reader, at least for the protagonist. In the case of "Signs", the life lessons are learned by the protagonists. Is the movie seriously making the case that we, as viewers, should accept all coincidences in life as real signs from on high? No. But it is making the case that's the choice Graham, with all of his issues, needs to make.

(SPOILER ALERT!) You state the movie is "empty and schematic." If it's schematic, it's only because it conforms to the genre of the thriller, while turning that genre on its head in the last reel. The entire movie is spent waiting for the "Shyamalan twist". It's all a dream. It's a government experiment. The little girl is an alien. But it couldn't possibly be a REAL alien attack...could it? When it turned out the aliens were real, I was gobsmacked. That was about as far from "schematic" as I could have possibly imagined, at least while I was watching the film for the first time, which is really the goal of the filmmaker, don't you think? To make you forget about logic for 2 hours or so?

If the movie is "empty", well, come on, what are you looking for in a movie about an invasion of Earth by aliens that are allergic to water? What was the movie missing? An opposing viewpoint? More aliens? More scenes with Joaquin Phoenix? A car-chase/shootout?

I guess I just don't see that a movie like "Signs" is really WORTH all the analysis that you're affording it. If Shyamalan had attempted to make a revisionist biopic of Gandhi, or had tried to remake "Kundun", or something more "weighty", I could understand the depth of the criticism applied to THAT movie. But this...this is just a thrill machine. It's like going to a theme park and criticizing a roller-coaster because it doesn't include an onboard meal. Well, of course it doesn't - for that you have to go to the restaurant. If you wanted a meal, why are you riding the coaster?

I hope I have made my point clear without resorting to ad hominem arguments. If so, I apologize, I am not as gifted at debate as most are.

I think the theme of magic & the world of magicians was integral to 'The Prestige' just as, say, boxing was to 'Million Dollar Baby'. But I believe that's not what these films were 'about'. 'The Prestige' for me is about the dynamics of the obsessions of Borden and, in particular, Angier. The film is less about their magic and more about their rivalry, the pleasure each takes in tricking and upstaging the other. What I particularly like is how Nolan moves back & forth in the plot's timeline and it's only when he returns to complete the arcs that we know, first Angier & then Borden, have been tricked. We, the audience, have been set up but hey it's a good payoff!

I don't see how the movie steps out of its internal logic. For me that would be Hans Solo coming to save Sita in 'Ramayana'. What is the reality of 'The Prestige'? The final trick is still a deception. Like other tricks in the film, it is presented as capable of being achieved by a scientific process. It is of course ludicrous, which is why I think a scientist of Tesla's stature is evoked. I agree that in a film purely about magic, such a turn would be antithetic to its construct. But then the context is the lengths to which Angier goes to destroy Borden and not magic itself. And in the end, Cutter & his monologue are vindicated because the payoff for the audience is not the truth about the tricks of Borden & Angier. By themselves they mean little.

I always love your singular perspective on films, epecially when I disagree with you - which is quite often, other than the fact that our best films of the 00s both included films with Tommy Lee Jones as a Texas lawman near the top. :)
SPOILERS OF COURSE
I only sorta liked Signs, and totally understand your perspective. But your problem with The Prestige kinda baffles me. So you're saying you didn't like the reveal cause Tesla never really invented that type of machine? All movies that aren't narrative retellings of actual events (and even those a lot of the time) take place in an alternate reality, that of cinema. I don't see how it is "outside the movie's reality." Why exactly can't that happen in the world of The Prestige? What earlier in the film established there is no supernaturality in this "world?" And I don't think the film relied on this reveal as much as you think it did anyway, what I loved about it was how it was more a series of small reveals, much like a magic show. In fact, I called the two big twists, yet still found the film remarkable in its ability to keep my interest. As one reviewer at the time put it, and I'm paraphrasing, "It's like watching a magic trick that you know how it's done, but you still marvel at its execution." I especially love how simple Bale's version of the Transported Man was, because the entire time Michael Caine says over and over, matter of factly, "he's using a double!" but Jackman is too blind with envy to see/hear the obvious.
And I've always been one to bitch about the difference between a movie defying logic (which I think any film has the right to do if done well) and defying logic within the illogical world it's created. My favorite example is (stick with me here) that awful nadir of what I like to call the McCarthy era, Mannequin. I can buy that a Eurasian princess has traveled in time. I can buy that she speaks English with an American accent and knows 80s slang. I can buy that she turns into a mannequin when anyone but Andrew McCarthy sees her. What I don't buy is that a department store can completely go from in the red to in the black almost overnight by moderately improving their window displays.

I haven't seen "Signs" in quite some time but I remember liking the movie very much. I believe it's probably Shyamalan's most spiritual film of his three major films, which include "The Sixth Sense", "Unbreakable" and this film. The spirituality of the film may not ring true for all viewers but I wouldn't call the film immoral. I feel that is too hard a criticism for a film that is advocating a positive view of the universe, and a risky one in our cynical times; though I do understand you haven't made up your mind concerning the film's morality.

I would have to see both "Signs" and "The Prestige" again in order to have a more in-depth analysis of both films and their relation to one another. I may even do a double feature like you did. I look forward to reading your thoughts on "Inception."

Wait, Signs is immoral? How?

I agree that The Prestige certainly cheats the viewer, robs us, in fact, of a good movie when it falls flat on its own "prestige," or final reveal. But I don't agree that Signs cheats. Shyamalan establishes his set from the start, and he's not shy about revealing that his movie has something to do with things happening for a reason. That things do come together rather conveniently in the end is not a cheat. In fact, I'd say it's exciting and rewarding, regardless of whether you agree with his approach to fate. If there is a cheat, then Shyamalan set it up right from the start, by giving his characters their relevant traits. In this case the ending is inevitable, or predetermined, and not cheated. I think it's a shame Shyamalan has more or less lost touch with his filmmaking abilities since Signs, which I think is his crowning achievement so far, and while his later movies tend to stink of smugness, I wouldn't go so far as to say any of his movies are immoral. So I'm still waiting on that explanation...

Abigail Breslin, NOT Anna Paquin.

I read the ending of "The Prestige" as a variation on the Asimov "Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic" axiom which I thought was an enjoyable twist to a film ostensibly about the science behind illusions. The idea of a man acquiring such technology and using it in an ethically oblivious way exclusively for self-glorification ties in with the film's major themes.

I suppose there is also a "meta" level on which it works if you draw the analogy with Nolan's expressed preference for practical effects combined with his increasing need to use computer graphics to tell his stories on film.

your analysis makes me want to see these films again, actually.

i do wonder what it is that i don't like about nolan, but i'm sure the literalism you mention has to do with it. i have a weird love for signs, tho, it is a daft film but in a strange way it spoke to me.

As always, I appreciate your ability to really think through a movie and identify motives and intentions.

I liked Signs because I hope for happy endings and liked the fact that Dad got his faith back and the family was saved. I got the symbology about Mom's predictions and Dad piecing them together but I didn't care because I found the future menacing and was glad things worked out. I realize that's simplistic, but I go to movies to get away from life's dreary conclusions and see the good guys win.

For that reason, I hated The Prestige because I couldn't find either protaganist appealing and found myself wishing that both ended up getting what they deserved at the end. I agree that the plot ending was a cheat. It would have been better to reveal a true trick and how it was accomplished.

Is it wrong to just go to the movies and enjoy a scary movie with a happy ending? Is it wrong to not like a movie because the characters are mean spirited? I don't know but I think we do tend at times to pschoanyalyze movies too much as indicators of the human condition rather than simply stories that are meant to entertain us. Maybe the fact that we are entertained by one type of movie over another is the true indicator of the human condition.

I'm with you on Signs, but I completely disagree with your analysis of The Prestige. Why is it cheating for that film to delve into science-fiction, as long as it's internally consistent and intellectually challenging? I actually wrote about this very issue after I saw The Prestige in 2006, where I wrote the line: "In The Illusionist, I was annoyed at how I had to suspend disbelief that the computer effects I was seeing were actually mundane magic tricks. I far preferred suspending my disbelief in The Prestige to believe that Nikola Tesla could have invented a matter duplication machine."

Somehow you have managed to miss the point of both movies entirely. Brilliant, Emerson. Brilliant.

My biggest problem with the last shot of "The Prestige" (spoiler alert) is its anti-recycling message - couldn't they have reused some of the glass containers?! :)

Also, small correction: Abigail Breslin plays the daughter in "Signs".

Agreed on "Signs;" it took the untenable central gimmick from "A Prayer for Owen Meany" (another of Irving's endless character-pieces, but this one strangely ends on a note where Everything Works Out because God Says So) and turned it into a frighteningly simplistic, religious mania. I guess I've always been intrigued by it, because it is terrifying, but for reasons it itself doesn't even seem to realize --- it's a testament to the failures of human expectation, that when a serious problem is presented that you don't want to face, the 'great whatsit' will simply solve them for you.

But I found "The Prestige" one of Nolan's most honest works. It's been a while, but I remember the whole thing turning into this overarching microcosm of cinema itself --- all of it really is goofy, and none of it trades on reality, because its patent artificiality is the express point. I think Nolan was marveling in the power of emotionality and meaning managing to wrest-up, weed-like, even out of manufactured and manipulated sources. There's a speech by, I believe, a weeping Christian Bale that almost seems like an open-heart admission from the filmmaker himself: the thesis (again, it's been a while) seemed to be a metaphor for illusion as Buddhist enlightenment (thus linking the whole thing, subtextually, back to "Memento"), wherein Bale/Nolan marvels at the ability to find meaning with other people even in the most contrived and meaning-less situtations. Pretty stunningly honest, yet affirming stuff. I'd boil it down to:

Cinema is false. Its results are true.

Which, in a subtext that I find genuinely mesmerizing, validates Nolan through him acknowledging his (and to a degree, his medium's) own failings --- like all of his movie, it *is* prosaic, manipulative and literalistic, but here that's almost the point. Compare to Shyamalan's "Lady in the Water," which I saw as a similar expression of self-doubt, but like his protagonists in "Signs," Shyamalan would rather live in a preposterous fantasy world where his banal writing actually saves the world (!). Nolan isn't a great filmmaker, but at least he can be a startlingly honest one. My only fear is that the prompt-critical adulation that "The Dark Knight" received may have divested him of that necessary insecurity --- with "Inception," I suppose, we shall see.

Oh, and "Following" is definitely worthwhile. The grainy, run-n-gun, low-budget aesthetic forces Nolan's perfectionist tendencies into some pretty fascinating corners. It's basically his "Pi" --- formative, refreshingly free, occasionally hamstrung by its own enthusiasm.

I had the opposite reaction to The Prestige. I loved that it went sci-fi at the end because that was the one direction I thought it wouldn't go. The whole movie was so grounded in the brutal mechanics of the illusions that I rather enjoyed the turn into fantasy at the end. Totally unexpected yet satisfying (for me). Yeah it was a cheat I guess, but a totally unexpected one because the movie had earned the expectation of a "real" explanation. I had figured out how Christian Bale was doing the trick very early in the movie, so I was engaged throughout to see what Hugh Jackman would come up with. It kept me guessing to the last shot, and after the reveal... well it was a logical explanation.

Most critics I've read heap higher praise on The Illusionist, which came out about the same time and the two are usually compared. For me, the unforgivable cheat was for The Illusionist to claim standard magic (that is, it's all just an illusion), yet rely on obvious CGI. Totally lame.

Thanks for this very insightful article, Jim! You really don't let these filmmakers get away with anything. I happen to like both Signs and The Prestige, but you do bring up some very good points about both. In fact, many of these same objections occured to me while seeing them, but I thought overall their innovativeness outweighed their flaws. After all, I don't insist that all good movies must be perfect (although it is truly exhilirating to see movies that are such as No Country for Old Men and A Serious Man).

In this post, I'd like to discuss your points on Signs. I have no idea where M. Night is coming from so I can only speak for myself. I am a Christian and while I don't believe that everything always happens for a reason, I do believe what the Bible says in Romans 8:28: "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." I don't think it's out of place for a filmmaker to express this concept from a Christian viewpoint in a movie about a preacher questioning his faith, a movie that is ultimately about spirituality and the questioning of events in our lives. I understand what you're getting at when you say that Signs is an artificial construction designed to show that "everything happens for a reason" and it certainly seems that way for Graham Hess. I'd like to point out though that movies, by defintion, are artificial constructions. If a filmmaker uses the medium to express a specific worldview or philosophy or religious idea, he is merely illustrating that concept. Most filmmakers rely on manipulation of events to get certain ideas across, the only difference is that M. Night does this more obviously here. I don't think the question should be if Signs is immoral, but rather how artistic is it? I think that on the grounds that Signs is insistent on a single interpretation and overtly didactic, it is more of a spiritual parable than an artistic film. The necessary ambiguity that opens the doors for two-way communication between the viewer and the film is absent here. So I just want to say that I don't think Signs should be seen as an immoral movie, just not a very artful one.

But I thought "The Prestige" wasn't really about magic.

The key line is: "man's reach exceeds his imagination!"

It's a movie about ambition, obsession and the forfeit of ethics in pursuit of upstaging, which the increasingly sci-fi elements of the film only underscore more -- how far the Jackman character has come from doing something magical versus Bale's which actually had a trick. A flaw the movie has is that Bale's trick is a cheat, as you pointed out, because the audience had little to no clues. So it doesn't quite work on that level but as a portrait of jealous rivalry it engaged me enough.

Moreover, I suspect the movie is actually Chris and Jonathan Nolan working out their feelings towards their estranged, non-famous, criminal brother. (But that's only a guess.)

This notion of playing by the rules reminds me of a piece that ran earlier this month in the Telegraph. It was about Penn and Teller's magic show in Las Vegas. Here is an excerpt:

[Penn] also has a habit of giving away the tricks – before Teller’s red ball act, he declares “this is done with a thread!” – something he describes as “a kind of peace offering” to the audience but which some of the other magicians in Vegas see as a professional blasphemy. He couldn’t care less what they think. “I have always hated magic,” he says. “I have always hated the basic undercurrent of magic which Jerry Seinfeld put best when he said: 'All magic is “Here’s a quarter, now it’s gone. You’re a jerk. Now it’s back. You’re an idiot. Show’s over”.’

Jim, it finally occurred to me today why I get so much more out of Ebert's film commentary than yours. When I read Ebert's reviews, I nearly always come away with a very good impression of what a film is like and why I may like or dislike it myself. Subsequent viewing experiences validate my impressions more often than not.

When I read your comments on a film, all I come away with is an idea of how you process information. It's too fussy; too hung up on the particulars of individual editing choices or camera angles.

Maybe it's just that I tend to favor reviewers that are able to articulate the tone or feel of a film rather than going on about the little technical details they happen to have siezed upon. In short, I feel Ebert's reviews. When I read one of your posts, all I get is "Wow, this guy is really smart." You have a little . . just a little . . of Armond White in you.

Lastly, I feel Ebert always tries to give a film the benefit of the doubt; to at least allow his human prejudices to be persuaded by what's on-screen. I tend to believe that you're a guy who makes up his mind before seeing a film based on either your existing opinions of the people involved in making the film.

With "The Prestige" and "Signs," you had previously made a choice not to see those films when they were released. As someone whose career is tethered to a degree to the world of movies, this choice isn't insignificant. "I just didn't get a chance to see them" can't fly. It says to me that you expected to dislike them, and finally seeing them years after their release . . well, you couldn't very well be too effusive in your praise, now could you? You didn't eventually watch these two films to enjoy them or not enjoy them; you watched them as research to help craft your dismissal of them and new films by the same directors.

That said, I enjoy reading your posts. They are informative. I just can't imagine using any of them to help decide what to see at the local multiplex this weekend.

I very much enjoyed "Signs" until the very end, when I realized that most everything that I enjoyed about it had been pulled out from under me. I really liked that all sorts of random quirks and details were thrown in - that Phoenix's character has a history and isn't just about his function within the plot, that the young girl had an amusing, weird obsession with leaving water in the glass, etc., etc. You know how that turned out. I also thought (and still think) the tension and fear of the family in the face of the unknown was well done.

If the ending had actually been at least a little ambiguous - if we didn't know if the person at the end lived or not,( much less the final shot of Gibson!), leaving it as more of a Rorshach of our own views of faith and meaning, instead of having The Correct View imposed upon us - I think it would have been a great, great film. This is a good example of an ending ruining all that came before it.

Jim,

I'm not sure I agree that the reveal of Jackman's trick changes the "rules" of what happened before. Although its been a while seen I saw The Prestige, I seem to recall that the audience understands from (reasonably) early on that Tesla's machine is some sort of sci-fi contraption, and not just an illusion. I mean, Tesla is a scientist and all.

True, we don't see until late that the machine is a cloning device, and that one of the two Jackmans has to die every time the trick is performed. I can appreciate if that was too far out there for you, but I do think enough info has been provided at that point so that the audience understands that its not just an illusion.

Which fits perfectly with Jackman's character: a great showman but a terrible illusionist.

Yeah, I have to back Jim up on this one. I'm a big fan of his blog, even though I'd venture to guess that I disagree with his opinions and assessments as often as I agree with him.

I agree that he doesn't always try to give a reader a sense of what the movie is like, especially during negative assessments like these. And yup, that is something that Roger Ebert often does, and does well.

But so what? This is Jim's personal blog. He's not reviewing Signs or Prestige for a wide audience. This post seems pretty clearly aimed at readers who have already seen the films, and simply making an argument for why he didn't find them successful. Nothing wrong with that.

I strongly disagree with his take on Prestige (I do think the final reveals are well set-up in advance and aren't cheats), but I enjoyed reading this, and I could hardly give a shit that he didn't spend much type describing the movie in objective terms. I've already seen the movies, I don't need him to. He's talking about his experience of it, and he did a clear and illuminated job of it.

OK, I think I see what you are saying a little more clearly, and you are probably right.
I grant you that the movie's play between "fantasy" and "the real world" is feeble compared to that of, say, Kubrick. The difference is that Kubrick's movies, even when they use fantasy elements, still speak directly to and about the real world as it actually is. Whereas the "deep meanings" of Nolan's films really only have meaning in the world of the movie.
Well, it can comment on the real world, but it takes a bit of cheap sleight of hand to do so. You could say that in The Prestige (which is really a steampunk tale), Tesla's device, which would clearly be magic in the real world, is a symbolic stand-in for science. I did say "cheap."

I don't think it is fair to say Bale's reveal was a cheat - i.e. that it came out of nowhere. As I mentioned above, I figured it out early on. **SPOILERS** The twin was there throughout the movie as the mysterious bearded man. The fact that the camera makes note of him multiple times yet he was ignored by the plot is a big red flag. Then in conjunction with his seeming schizophrenic behavior toward the ladies and the very nature of the trick he was performing, I pieced it together well before the final reveal. I think having done so was what made Jackman's reveal all the more surprising, even though it was happening in plane site, so to speak.

Once again, the well-thought out post I spent 30 minutes not doing my work to write this morning has been gobbled up by the spam filter monster. :(

I didn't curse or nuthin! And I really wanted you to respond.

JE: You weren't alone. I just checked the filter and restored several comments. As I write this, however, I haven't had a chance to read or respond to them.

Your review of the The Prestige was, as expected, not in good faith. As pointed out, you criticize it for little nitpicky things that also occur in the wonderful Welles film you champion as an alternative to it. You hate Nolan. His films are commercially and critically successful, and this combination bothers you somehow. If you had lived at the time, you would probably have hated Hitchcock for similar reasons.

Ty Burr's idiotic criticism of Nolan, by the way, which you point out because you're sure it's insightful and really cutting and witty, could also have been made about one Jorge Luis Borges. And in that case it would have been obviously stupid despite all its parts being true - and it's as dumb in this case.

You are not judging the films of Mr Nolan. You are not judging the art of Mr Nolan on their merits or lack thereof. As I say, you're not doing this in good faith. Your public opinion and arguments on his films can have no merit, and to be honest this particular lapse makes me wonder if any of your opinions on film can quite be trusted. Understand - I'm not saying this because you dislike Mr Nolan's films, but because you have no compunctions about going on and on, presenting untrue and insincere reasons for your dislike, despite that dislike having been set in stone before you even saw the particular film, and despite its having nothing to do with the film itself. A critic who cannot review the actual film is of no value.

I feel you Jim. Two things:

"if he was meant to be a science-fiction creation, why not make him purely fictional?"

Hey, is Time After Time not a science fiction film because HG Wells and Jack the Ripper were real people? In all seriousness, I think they use Tesla and not a fictional character so that we'll view his machine as being scientific, and not magic/fantasy. I understand you're point that supernatural magic and science fiction devices aren't really different functionally, they are both equally unrealistic. A few of my friends made the same argument. But for me it works: the device has a "scientific explanation" in the world of Prestige, even if its total made up horseshit.

"the bit with the cat and the hats... has the feeling of a set up."

Yes, the film certainly misdirects you a bit and makes it seem like Tesla and Golem are pulling a con. But what I think is cool about it is that it's not. The movie doesn't lie to you at all, it just makes you THINK Jackman is being lied to. The shot of the hats at the beginning aren't setting up a con, they are setting up the fact that it actually works.

Also, unrelated, but you have to admit that its pretty cool the way they establish the final "illusion" that Bale (unwittingly) pulls at the end of the film, with the disappearing bird trick earlier in the film. Bale and his brother are the birds, and one has to die so that the other can magically reappear. You dug that at least, no?

I feel you Jim. Two things:

"if he was meant to be a science-fiction creation, why not make him purely fictional?"

Hey, is Time After Time not a science fiction film because HG Wells and Jack the Ripper were real people? In all seriousness, I think they use Tesla and not a fiction character so that we'll view his machine as being scientific, and not magic/fantasy. I understand you're point that functionally supernatural magic and a science fiction device aren't really different functionally, they are both equally realistic. A few of my friends made the same argument. But for me it works: the device has a "scientific explanation" in the world of Prestige, even if its total made up horseshit.

"the bit with the cat and the hats... has the feeling of a set up."

Yes, the film certainly misdirects you a bit and makes it seem like Tesla and Golem are pulling a con. But what I think is cool about it is that it's not. The movie doesn't lie to you at all, it just makes you THINK Jackman is being lied to. The shot of the hats at the beginning aren't setting up a con, they are setting up the fact that it actually works.

Also, unrelated, but you have to admit that its pretty cool the way they establish the final "illusion" that Bale (unwittingly) pulls at the end of the film, with the disappearing bird trick earlier in the film. Bale and his brother are the birds, and one has to die so that the other can magically reappear. You dug that at least, no?

Oh, I'm very sorry Jim, but I'm going to have to disagree with you on "The Prestige", which is actually one of my favourite films of the past few years (and I say that as a non Nolan-devotee...although I love "Memento" and very much enjoy "Following", I have felt that the two Batman pictures are ludicrously overrated, and the remake of "Insomnia" is fairly flat and uninspired).

Here's the way I see "The Prestige": not as a cheat, but as an extension of some of the great storytelling traditions of late 19th-century science fiction, particularly in the tradition of one of my favourite books, "Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde". The criticisms you leveled against "The Prestige" could easily be leveled against "Dr. Jekyll...": that what appears to be a Victorian-era mystery grounded in the real world eventually reveals itself to be a science-fiction story. Like "The Prestige", "Jekyll" doesn't reveal its final twist until at least the last quarter of the book. This is not a "cheat", but a deliberate building of this particular story. And contrary to what you said, the final shot of "The Prestige" is NOT a deus ex machina...rather, it simply confirms what alert viewers will have figured out by this point. Notice the hats at the beginning of the film and the clue of Tesla's cat (this is when I figured out the twist of the Transported Man...what actually threw me was the simplicity of Bale's secret). The aggression between the two cats also foreshadows Jackman's instinctual violence toward his "duplicate".

Also, like "The Prestige", "Dr. Jekyll" could be accused of not having a fixed point of view. The 3rd-person account of the story initially focuses not on Jekyll or Hyde, but rather on J.G. Utterson, Jekyll's lawyer and friend. A rather bland character, he is our window into the mystery...similarly, I would say that that role in "The Prestige" is played by Michael Caine. And like "The Prestige", "Jekyll" switches points-of-view midway through (although not as rapidly as the film does): after an omniscient point-of-view throughout its first two thirds, "Jekyll" switches to the final letter of Dr. Lanyan (a mutual friend of Jekyll and Utterson), before finally ending with the Last Will and Confession of Dr. Henry Jekyll.

Not to draw the comparison on for too long, but I feel as if sometimes people miss great writing in films because they feel as if anything that doesn't conform to the physical world is "cheating" reality. I don't just love "The Prestige" for its original story...I love it for the acting, the film-making and the ways in which it looks at the dangerous line amongst performers between high professional ambition and outright destructive competition (admittedly, this is nothing new among films about artists, whether they be painters, musicians or magicians).

I'm sure this won't change your opinion, but I just wanted to give you a slightly different prism to view "The Prestige" through. As I said, if you read some of Stevenson's books, particularly "Jekyll", you can see how "The Prestige" fits in as an early 21st century companion to those late 19th century masterworks.

BEWARE! SPOILERS!

I think what makes the ending of "The Prestige" so disappointing is also what makes the secret behind most real-life magic tricks disappointing: the method, once revealed, usually seems obvious and even kind of stupid.

For instance, the secret behind the cabinet trick in real life is -- surprise! -- twins. See? Disappointing.

Yet the method in "The Prestige" is such an extreme and wasteful variation of this as to seem even more stupid. I mean, actually creating another human being for the sole purpose of performing the trick and then murdering him to keep it a secret? What an absurdly brute force solution!

As all stage magicians know, *showmanship and storytelling* are what really sell the trick, and in this film, Nolan simply isn't a very good showman or storyteller. Without the gimmick, there's nothing.

I felt that the deep droning music in the Prestige was a harbinger of what scifi was to come. The music makes sure you keep in mind what really matters and discard all the fancy period settings and jargon and logic.

I think you're missing the point of the ending of "The Prestige." Yes, supernatural elements are introduced, and explain the secret behind Jackman's trick. But the point is that he took a shortcut to being a great magician by using science to practice his illusions. Christian Bale's character actually lived by the physical rules of illusion, therefore in his mind he is of pure moral character because he didn't "cheat" his way to achieve a great illusion. This thesis is laid out in the early discussion of the Asian magician's techniques to accomplish his illusion...he also lived his magic, you could say he practiced what he preached 24 hours a day. This difference in character between Jackman and Bale is the central point to the film.

SPOILERS, OF COURSE....

I'm sorry, Jim, but I think your interpretation of The Prestige is *shockingly* shallow. The "leap into science fiction" is not a cheat it is a major point of the film. It's about the dichotomy in the viewer of a magic act--that they go in wanting to believe, for a moment, that magic is real--but if the magic were *real*, either it would be horrifying or it would quickly become mundane. The idea here is to see a magician that is, in fact, doing exactly what they appear to be doing--and show how that counter-intuitively destroys the magic, instead of increasing it.

I have no idea how you could express this idea without taking said leap into sci-fi. And, please, compare this to the incredible schlock of the Illusionist, where each trick truly is a CGI trick that could only be explained in context of the film by magic that they try to pass off as mere illusion...

"The Prestige" is a semi-faithful adaptation of a science fiction novel by Christopher Priest. (It's unusual in that it won a non-genre literary prize in the UK.) Things are handled a bit differently in the novel, but it does indeed turn on the same sf-nal conceit of teleportation.

Several modern sf writers have enjoyed taking the MacGuffin of teleportation -- or transporters ("beam me up, Scotty") as Star Trek called them -- and showing what the consequences would be if the technology existed. Such devices would either have to copy or destroy (or copy AND destroy) the original.

Consider that every time Kirk, Spock, McCoy & Co. beam down to a planet their bodies are scanned and destroyed, and they are replaced by exact copies at the other end. In "The Prestige" alternative, they beam down, but the originals are ALWAYS left on the Enterprise. And even if you beam up the copies on the planet, the "original" copies are left behind. What do you do with the copies? Or the originals? Or who's an original and who's a copy? The Prestige -- book and movie -- do a good job of opening up the dilemma. (A spoiler: In "The Prestige," the "original" is always destroyed.) I recommend Michael Swanwick's "Ginungagap" and James Patrick Kelly's "Think Like a Dinosaur" as stories that also further explore these issues.

Well, Jim, if it means anything I am in complete agreement with you and as perplexing as those who like the movie find our take, I am equally perplexed that they aren't bothered by the cheat. I've read through the comments and probably have nothing new to offer so I will try to answer the question of "how is it a cheat?" through an analogy of another film. This only describes how I feel about it and hopefully this will convey that feeling.

Let's say I'm watching Kramer vs. Kramer. I'm caught up in the story. Who will get the son? The father, who has my sympathy? The mother, returning after abandoning both of them? They go to court and my interest heightens and then, right at the end, the very end, I find out none of it matters because the son was really an advanced cyborg sent from the 23rd century to study human relationships. Gah? And then I complain about this ending to others who say, "You're too picky. You must hate the director. What's wrong with dramatically and jarringly shifting the genre in the last five minutes?"

So, for what it's worth, that's The Prestige to me. A dramatic genre shift in the final minutes. Not a mix of genres, like The Host, a genre shift. That doesn't happen with a well thought out story.

And once you've seen it, don't you think, "Now if the whole trick was just a trap door trick, done with his double, and on the last day when Bale shows up Jackman drowns his double to frame Bale for murder, that would be a good story. You'd have both magicians lose a double (to execution and murder) and never even be quite sure who got killed."

Or I guess you just make the kid a cyborg from the 23rd century, drop the curtain and say "the end." Then you don't have to work anything out and apparently people will still like it.

Jim,

You're provocative as ever. Agree with you on SIGNS, a terrible film. Will M. Night ever make another one as good as UNBREAKABLE? Disagree strenuously on Nolan in general and on THE PRESTIGE. I'm a huge fan of thrillers of all sorts--books and movies, fiction and non, all subgenres too (crime, spy, sci-fi, survival, etc.)--and for my money Nolan makes some of the best. So, Jim, do you have any special fondness for or indifference to thrillers? How about listing the ten best thrillers you've ever read/seen so we can get a better sense of your relationship to the genre?

That was Arthur C Clarke, not Asimov.

I think something gets lost in translation watching Signs now, in the summer of 2010, as opposed to when it came out, in the summer of 2002.

One of the things that Signs captured really well was that sense of "exotic bad guys are coming to get us for reasons that are not particularly clear". Even if it was a total accident for which MNS probably doesn't deserve full credit, the paranoia of that particular time really heightened the experience of watching Signs. The idea of trying to survive in a basement (or whatever) for an extended period of time was exactly the kind of crazy thing people had been thinking about for the past 11 months.

As for The Prestige, that movie really opened up for me when I realized it was a backdoor anti-cloning screed. I mean, in addition to Nolan's typically artless exploration of the nature and cost (and, sometimes, virtue) of obsession. Inception is, alas, no departure from that trend by the way.

I think my favorite thing about The Prestige is how he flipped the premise of Memento around. In Memento, the idea is sort of that revenge has a higher purpose, and that the pursuit of it can be valid (and arguably just) even if you aren't going to achieve any meaningful satisfaction from it.

But the best thing about the reveal at the end of The Prestige is the idea that Borden's efforts to get back at Angier are, regardless of however personally satisfying they may be, ultimately irrelevant. He's shooting a copy of a copy of a copy...of a copy of Angier. It's the epic fail of revenge shootings. I really liked that.

It seems many comments on this thread are referencing a complaint about the Prestige that people have regarding the late introduction to the "supernatural" element. Personally, I think arguing over this is missing the point of the movie, but that's not what I want to talk about.

I want to point out that about 20 minutes into the film there is a scene between the judge and Michael Caine in which Caine talks about Tesla's machine:

Judge: You built this, Mr. Cutter?
Caine: Oh, no, sir, this wasn't build by a magician. This was built by a wizard - a man who can actually do what magicians pretend to do.
...
Judge: I'm sure beneath its bells and whistles, it's got a simple and disappointing trick.
Caine: Most disappointing of all, sir. It has no trick. It's real.

I mean, what more do you want?

It could be argued, I suppose, that this scene is cryptic or that we don't yet know whether Cutter (the Caine character) is someone we can trust, or whether we just forget about the scene after a while.

However, I think that this is lazy. Christopher Nolan does not treat his audience like idiots. Take Memento for example. You have to pay attention in that movie or you'll miss all sorts of important information. The same is true of Insomnia (what with it's complicated forensics subplot involving three guns and a bullet casing) and the densely-plotted The Dark Knight.

And if it does take a few viewings to piece together exactly what happened, so be it. The same can be said of Chinatown. Or The Godfather. Or The Big Sleep.

Nolan does not make movies for people who can't (or won't) pay attention. He tells complex, dense stories, and to quote David Simon (who is very similar in that regard), "All the pieces matter."

What is the first line of The Prestige? It's this:

"Are you watching closely?"

Jackman was always the man in the box and the man in the balcony. There is nothing "supernatural" in "The Prestige." There's just science we can't do, but which the movie's Tesla could. Are you watching closely?

Listen to Jack Frost. He nails it.
(I think Caine's brief scenes in "Inception" are essential to understanding that movie, and I'll be watching those scenes particularly closely the second time I see it.)

"And what about that suggestion that Jackman never knew whether "he" would be the man in the box or the man in the balcony?"

On a storytelling level, it's logical that, were Tesla's invention a perfect duplicator, neither Angier (the original or the clone) would know who is who. Because they're exactly the same. Thematically, I found its homicidal implications disturbing, but I suspect that you thought the development deserved more room to breathe, and I did too. If you're interested in a film that devotes more time to similar thematic elements, I'd recommend Duncan Jones's "Moon."

The intrusion of the supernatural at the end is a bit jarring, and I see where you're coming from, but I was more interested in watching the two men rebound off each other, as their talents became obsessions. While I know you're no fan of Nolan (and I agree that his films can sometimes feel workmanlike and unimpressive on a formal level), I enjoy and share his interest in wounded, destructive obsessives. Shelby, Dormer, and even Wayne all have this in common, and it's fun, in a dark sorta way, to watch Angier and Borden take their implacable journeys into self-destruction.

Also, I'm glad you called out "Signs" as being immoral. Its presumption of answering such huge questions in such a self-contained, consequential universe is tawdry and insulting.

I don't see anything in this argument aside from "These films reflect a point of view I disagree with. Thus they are invalid."

Which is, sorry, just kind of horse shit.

I seem to recall there was one film critic who used to say that "Movies aren't what they are about, but how they are about them." Now if I could only remember who...

I liked Prestige until the ending.

Inception suffers the same issues. Nolan does not obey his own rules, but asks us to believe in the rules. How can we believe in something, that he doesn't? Inception did not work for me, because Nolan was more interested in creating situations, than creating characters and real drama. Maybe he was into the stories of the immoral characters. I wasn't. I can appreciate crooks, and I am interested in their methods, but when their methods end up being magic, how can I be interested? Once you recognize that no rules exist, there can be no suspense.

I like that Onion AV club comment: "The Prestige is also about the role technology plays in our alienation, as science makes possible feats that were charming as magic tricks, but horrific as reality."

The Telsa machine creates (apparently) sentient clones that are then drowned for the benefit of a magic trick. The complaint of this being a "genre-shifting" cheat doesn't really match the emotional weight of what we are seeing.

At first seeing it, I thought that The Prestige was good, but a little too conventional. A good yarn well told and that's it. These "con" movies rarely ever stick to my bones. I'm beginning to think that the film is about, in part, how that frivilosity ultimately innoculates us from having an empathic response.

When I first saw the Prestige I admired the look, tone, setting, and the cast, but I hated the story and especially the cheat.

However, it's become one of my wife's favorite movies so I've seen it multiple times, and — knowing the cheat is there and watching it anyway — I've come to really like it. I don't think much about the plot and regard it a fairly unusual tale of obsession, ambition, and how we can never truly know another person.

The risk of putting a heavy third-act twist in a movie is that the movie becomes "about" the twist. In the case of The Prestige, the twist is actually the least interesting (and undeniably the worst) thing about it.

hey emerson,
SPOILERS: i'm curious, did you have a problem when bill pullman turned into balthazar ghetti in the middle of lost highway? or when mullholand turned out to have been a dream thereby explaining all the weird, probably going to be gone into more detail if the tv show had been picked up, events in mullholand drive?
it just seems to me that lynch has made his bread and butter over the last fifteen years freely moving between "reality" and "fantasy/science fiction" and you really like him right?
don't get me wrong, i like lynch alot. although i re-watched mullholand the thought it didn't hold up at all. but that's neither here nor there. i guess what i'm saying is, lots of directors make drastic switches in the middle of or towards the end of the movie that cause you to re-evaluate what you where just watching, isn't that part of the fun?
for gods sake, the man who wasn't there ends with a spaceship doesn't it?

Jim, you may be the first commentator I've read who has pointed out what I consider to be the biggest problem with "Signs": its main character's shallow morality. When bad circumstances cause terrible happens to Graham Hess, he dispenses with his faith; when good circumstances save his family, he reclaims his faith. I can accept a reality where God is in complete control of events, but I can't help but find Graham's moral decisions to be nearly opportunistic. Furthermore, while you've complained about Nolan's heavy-handed and literal moralizing in "The Dark Knight," his script to that film looks like a tour de force of subtle understatement next to the obviousness of Shyamalan's film.

Regarding the twists in "The Prestige," I have to say that, while I thought that the reveals for both "tricks" played out like uncomfortable after-thoughts, I can almost understand where Nolan is coming from thematically. He's trying to say that Angier and Borden's escalating one-upmanship will have frightening, violent consequences. If Borden had also employed pseudo-magic in his trick, then the themes at least would have added up.

The problem with Nolan's film-making is that he is, as one of those you quoted has pointed out, so relentlessly left-brained; he is so concerned with thematic structure that he often overlooks the more fundamental structure, e.g., shot structure, scene structure, narrative structural integrity. I haven't brought myself around to watching "The Prestige" since it was in theaters, but in "The Dark Knight," which I re-watched last night, he seems so concerned with the dialogue and plot development that he ignores editing and shot composition. Every ten minutes or so there is a nice, inspired, and artful shot... and then Nolan resumes coasting on the dialogue and acting, cutting frequently (and confusingly) enough that it keeps our attention.

(For the record... I consider both of Nolan's "Batman" films to be superior to "The Prestige." While his scene-for-scene, shot-for-shot film-making is equally uninspired in all cases, the Batman films at least have some emotional resonance)

Hey Jim, when you do your two cents on "Inception", I think some of Nolan's flaws may be illuminated by comparing the ending of his latest to the very similar but, I think, better constructed (director's cut) ending of "The Descent"... Just throwin it out there. They seem to both point towards the same idea but in "Inception" we're confused how that came about (because of the filmmaking leading up to it) whereas in "The Descent" the ending seems to grow of the film organically.

Unless of course you thought the ending of "Inception" worked. That would be a surprise.

The supernatural ending kind of struck me as the whole point of the Prestige.

That these magicians are so hell-bent on creating the perfect trick that it goes beyond being a trick, that they begin to dabble in real dark magic and the horrible consequences of that.

You act as if it's literally only revealed in the last 4-seconds that there's absolutely any possibility of the supernatural being involved, but that's silly...it was hinted at throughout the entire second half of the movie. It fakes you out several times, but you can feel it coming.

Hah! Signs and Prestige were each the one film from their respective directors that I loved. I was meh to ugh on every other Shyamalan film (although I stopped watching after Lady in the Water), and I've been pretty meh on all of Nolan's other films. Same for Fincher. I though Seven was okay at best, Fight Club was pretty awful (sorry Jim, none of your defenses for that film will change my mind), but Zodiac is one of my favorite films, and the best serial killer movie ever made.

When I first watched it, I felt The Prestige was a great film but with a dissapointing ending. But as you said, on some previous post, don't let the ending ruin the rest of the film for you. I think is quite an emotional picture, about two men struggling for success and admiration and vengeance, and in their quest forgetting about everything else and ruining the lifes of those who loved them. My senses were entertained, and my heart was moved by it, but yeah my brain was like "WTF!? this is a cheat!". So yes, the Sci-fi elements substract a lot from the emotional resolution of the plot when when the final piece of puzzle is put in place; but at the same time that very "turn" gives the movie another layer to chew on and ponder about: science as the ultimate form of magic, one that has no tricks. Of course is more Science Fiction than Science, but I think Tesla would aprove.

Hi Jim. There isn't a posting yet, really, for Inception. But we just saw it, and I have few thoughts I just need to get down. Spoiler alert: DO NOT READ FURTHER if you haven't seen it yet.

1. Audacious.
2. The perfect ending. (Was it a dream, or was it real?)
3. This movie is a perfect Rorschach test. Casually ask a friend what they thought of it. Their answer will tell you all you need to know about the friend.
4. Was the Michael Caine character really behind the inception? This idea isn't fully thought out, but it just seems to me he was really more important to the movie than what he seems on the surface. Was he really "incepting" the whole thing to give his son some peace?

I didn't know much about the movie before seeing it, other than that many critics were somehow dissatisfied with it, and that Roger gave it 4 stars. And, of course, the special effects shots from the trailers. I just finished actually reading Roger's entire review. Yes, this film will be cogitated on for years here on the web. However, I don't know if Roger's comment that it is a purely original film really holds water. At times, it seems to be a mash-up of themes from The Matrix and the old Mission: Impossible TV series.

Nevertheless, even with some of the old ingredients, it is a tasty and delightful dish. Magnificent set pieces, especially Levitt's hallway fight scenes. And, just the right amount of humor. La Vie en Rose?! Really?!

Also of note: As we were leaving the packed theater, the conversations of the audience discussing the movie were actually louder than the music soundtrack playing over the closing credits. A rather good sign, no?

A few questions about "The Prestige", which involve spoilers:

1) If Tesla can duplicate matter, why doesn't he duplicate bars of gold? He would never have funding problems again. Or he could replicate himself and be twice as productive. Only Dr. Seuss would keep replicating cats and hats. And why is it that the only thing the magician can think to do with the machine is a rather simple stage illusion? If I had access to a matter duplication machine -- let me write that again -- a MATTER DUPLICATION MACHINE -- I think I'd come up with a better application for it.

2) Why are none of the characters in the film astounded, gobsmacked, amazed, etc., by the scientific and philosophical implications of the invention? The machine calls into question both the Laws of Thermodynamics and the concept of an individual soul. Maybe it's supposed to be a commentary on human nature, or a parable about dedication to craft, but I find it hard to believe that real people could so colossally miss the point.

(((spoilers)))

My biggest problem with Signs is the aliens' weakness—you've got a planet that's covered with water, so you arrive to conquer it...completely unprotected? That would be like one of us deciding to go conquer an active volcano. Mass carnage every time it rains. So my read on the movie is that the aliens were actually committing mass suicide as some kind of religious ritual, and this makes a lot more sense than the surface-level explanation. It becomes a story of faith on both sides, so to speak.

I didn't mean to imply that the characters would specifically have the laws of thermodynamics in mind (although Tesla, as a scientist/inventor, might be expected to), but rather that they might stop to wonder how a machine could create matter from seeming nothingness, a feat which contradicts common experience in addition to one of the laws.

That said, it's been a long time since I've seen the film, so I've forgotten most of the finer points about Angier's personality and the other characters' reaction to the machine.

I think you're using your own version of a chronology shift. Nolan's Following came out in 1998.

JE: Ergh. Sorry, I thought I'd fixed that.

I don't normally read your work, but Roger Ebert linked here and I perused through your article.

The Prestige is one of my favorite films, and while I respect and understand your opinion, I feel it is flawed. The trick of the movie is considerably deeper than the plot, and is truly only visible through reviewing. Nolan introduced a large number of subtle pieces of the twin Borden ending, and once you know that twist, the rest of the movie reeks of it. That's the point.

Nolan, like a magician, hid the trick deep within the film for a first-time viewer. Throughout the trick/film, the audience is searching for the answer, even if subconsciously. Nolan reveals the trick to us. Upon reviewing, just like a magic trick, you can no longer see how it was concealed - it's right there, everywhere you look, that they were twins. You can't believe how he was able to slip it past you.

That is the brilliance of the film. Nolan constructed a film about a magic trick in a way exactly like a magic trick. It's something you can only see by reviewing it, but when you see it, it is truly an awe inspiring feat.

Were you watching closely?

Is it possible for a film to be better than its creator intends it to be? Signs seems meant to show us a character who goes full circle from belief in signs through belief in coincidences back to belief in signs, but you might notice that he is brought through that circle by a series of coincidences. In the boy's case, for example, his asthma saves him from the poison, but it also causes him to be captured by the aliens in the first place. So while the film that Shyamalan presents to us isn't very interesting, there's also a better film hidden there about how people choose to read coincidences as signs. Would you as a viewer count that, or would you dismiss a more satisfying interpretation because it's not the one the filmmaker allows?

As for The Prestige, like HB in the comment above, I find it interesting that Tesla invents a cloning machine and it seems to be used only for a magic trick.

Hmmm, Ebert tweeted a link to this entry saying Emerson had done his homework. Not so. After a glancing acknowledgment that the Prestige is based on Christopher Priest's novel, all the blame for the muddle of magic and science falls in Nolan? You seem to be unaware what a right mess the novel is. In it, Priest assures the audience that certain things are true, then 300 pages later says, "Oh, remember when I told you this was absolutely true? Turns out it wasn't!" Worse still, he spends 80% of the novel leading the reader to believe that the book is a work of historical fiction before introducing a single element of science fiction: The fact that Tesla had, in fact, been able to teleport matter.

The movie is not great, but it is a considerable improvement over a terrible novel.

Others have ably taken up the case for "The Prestige," which I think is more effective than you think it is. Hugh Jackman's character claims to be doing magic, but in fact he's cheating--and the cheat is to defy, through the tech/fantasy that's revealed at the last minute, both the laws of physics and the laws of morality. That what he's doing is impossible in a conventional narrative is part of a way of demonstrating to the audience how far he has gone from the true spirit of magic, which is making the seemingly impossible happen through, e.g., Holmesian means (like Bale does).

Everyone considers the cloning thing an abomination. It's an abomination because it's morally repugnant to the extreme--he kills versions of himself every single time!--and because it goes against the filmic conventions. Jackman is, after all, the bad guy, the one who has a fall from grace. Of course we're supposed to be apalled by his solution, and we get to be apalled on both in- and out-of-story reasons.

I think the movie itself should be considered a cheat only if you believe that the primary aim of the film is to wow you with both Jackman and Bale's methods of magic. But it's not. It's to wow you with Bale's--the real magician, the one who makes great personal sacrifices--and to have you reeling with disgust at Jackman's--who cheats.

"Signs" is just a bad remake of "From Dusk Till Down." But I found "The Prestige" entertaining and thought provoking. One thing I liked was that it *wasn't* clear that the supernatural involved. Recall the bit about new technology having the appearance of the supernatural to the uninitiated. Perhaps you were waiting for the Mechanical Turk? The whole film was about trickery and rivalry and the possibility that Tesla really could do things that as yet our modern society hasn't figured out how to do (at least from a public acknowledgement sense).

As Bale's character says early on "the secret impresses no one, the trick you use it for does."

"Nolan doesn't feel he has to play by the rules of the worlds he presents to us."

The world he presents as interpreted by you, more like it. The world of The Prestige is quite clearly established and foreshadowed by Tesla's mysterious device (among other things), and it's the crux on which the film's "fantasy" hangs.

I think it's more you being unable to get into Nolan's world than a mistake on his part. You speak for the minority, so using the collective "us" is a little bit of a stretch when "me and some others" qualifies your argument better. I understand that you might not find his vision appealing, Jim, but Nolan not conforming to your ideas of storytelling doesn't make him a bad storyteller. Calling both Signs and The Prestige "cheats" is unfair, too, as the "worlds" they establish are 100% true to...well, their established worlds.

You might not like them, and I can't fault you for it, but to posit that Signs is immoral* or that The Prestige is a cheat says more about the baggage you carried into the films than what they're trying to achieve.

PS - I'm a little confused as to your job title as Roger's editor. Roger's review of The Prestige has a photo of Hugh Jackman incorrectly named as Tesla, an error correction I submitted almost a year ago but which remains unchanged. Are you the one who received it and overlooked it because you hadn't yet seen The Prestige, or are other proofreaders and checkers just not doing their jobs?

* Is The Diary of Anne Frank also immoral when considering the millions of Holocaust victims? Is Polanski's The Pianist?

To me, Nolan's films are navel gazing fests. You can rewatch them again and again to pick up little clues, foreshadowing lines, and repeated motifs. I'm sure in the Internet age people love them for precisely that reason. But The Prestige is the kind of movie that leaves me with a feeling of never wanting to watch it again. There's a difference between being clever and being good. And Nolan isn't that clever. For example, in Inception, the whole last act is about setting up the return of the characters up the levels. Putting aside the fact that this premise is by no means as original as some people seem to think it is, all Nolan can think of to keep the action rolling is to keep the characters engaged in gunfights. It's like a bad cliche where the battle outside has to be extended long enough so that the hero breaks in at just the moment when the villain comes across the MacGuffin.

I think those commenting on how Angier's secret is a cheat at being a true magician are misunderstanding the film. The Tesla machine is only the last and most extreme example of its ilk in the film. Do we forget the little bird in the cage being smashed? Or how about the contraption Cutter creates that spares the dove? Before presenting it to Angier he first demands that he be willing to dirty his hands. The cloning machine is just the logical conclusion of technology creating an illusion and Angier's continuing suicide/murder just the peak of the character's willingness to get his hands dirty at the expense of one-upping his rival.

Wow. This has turned out to be one of my favorite comment threads. It's great to see The Prestige finally getting the serious analysis it deserves and which it didn't receive at the time of its release. (I couldn't care less about Signs.)

My two cents:

I love that The Prestige is not just science fiction, but *Victorian* science fiction, a favorite subgenre. (See also, Pal's Time Machine, Harryhausen's First Men in the Moon, Mamoulian's Jekyll & Hyde ....)

I love the way the last shot is NOT something pulled out of nowhere, but answers the first shot formally and thematically - formally in that it is another image of absurd multiple replication, and thematically in that it *explains* the first shot which seems purely surreal on an initial viewing.

I dunno, Jim, but for me, the whole point of 'The Prestige' was that the trick is ruined as soon as you know how it was done; no matter how amazing the illusion may be, there is ALWAYS a very disappointing explanation behind it.

I'm happy believing that the magician can really read my mind to see what card we picked, and it's a letdown to learn that he just slipped in a loaded deck while he was distracting me.

Similarly, we were happy believing that Angier really could teleport himself, or that there must be some mind-numbingly clever trick behind it, and learning the secret was a letdown. I maintain that this was by design. Every trick, no matter how spectacular, has a mundane explanation.

As for 'Signs,' I'm with Ebert, when he brought up Hitchcock and the notion of playing the audience like a piano. The themes may have been trite and obvious, and the story may have been loose, but Shyamalan surely had me on the edge of my seat for most of the proceedings. The Brazilian party video, the chase in the cornfield, and the bit with the chatter on the walkie-talkies all gave me the major heebie-jeebies. I really can't think of another recent movie that affected me that way.

Also, the scene with the UFO book by Dr. Bimboo ("Bimboo?") cracked me up.

This is a fascinating discussion.

I've always liked THE PRESTIGE but this comments thread has increased my appreciation for it tenfold. I'm pleased to see that you're willing to give THE PRESTIGE another look, Jim. When you do, something that you might (or might not; I don't know) find interesting to try is to determine at any given scene which Bale brother you're looking at: the one who loved Scarlett Johanssen or the one who loved Rebecca Hall. It's an interesting exercise because there are times when which brother it is turns out to be irrelevant to what's going on at that moment in the story and other scenes where which brother it is turns out to be essential to understanding what's REALLY going on in the story. If you engage in this exercise I think you'll come to see how they are, in fact, different in personality and maturity and how hat affects their different destinies. In my opinion, the "Scarlett Johanssen" brother seems to be the more unwise, out-of-control, obsessed brother. The other brother seems to learn his lesson before the film ends. I have little doubt that Christian Bale had to have made up in his own mind, which brother he was playing most of the time.

P.S. Also look for a very quick shot of Fallon's (Bale's "engineer") reaction when Borden humiliates Danton in front of an audience.

Arthur C. Clarke, not Asimov. The indistinguishability between magic and advanced technology is known as Clarke's Third Law. (Asimov had laws too, but they mostly had to do with robot behavior.)

Well, speaking of Double Features and "Unbreakable", I think that movie would make for a good illustration of what's wrong with the ending of "The Prestige". A final surprise that is integral to the story - and particularly to the movie's world - versus a twist that means and accomplishes nothing. What does the final reveal in "The Prestige" really say about the characters, the story, the world they live in or the themes of the movie that hadn't already been said by then? If the movie is about obsession, hadn't it already made its point?

The overall feeling I get from "The Prestige" (and from the Joker's amazing organizational skills, his avowed dedication to chaos not-withstanding), is that it's a bit like solving a tricky locked room mystery by revealing the killer was a ghost after all. It defeats its own purpose.

Wow, thanks to all the people who weren't real impressed with "Signs." I have felt much the same way and appreciate the support. I see literally hundreds of copies of the dvd in clearance bins at pawn shops. While this does speak to its popularity, there are other popular movies that you never see in a pawn shop because people want to keep them. "Signs" suffers greatly upon repeated viewing.

I liked "The Prestige" much better. I will admit it has its flaws, all of which have been exposed in previous postings (in excruciating detail), but the overall atmosphere of the picture was enough for me.

I love the steampunkin' world view it creates with Tesla and the mystery of technology the movie creates in a current world where tech has lost all sense of personal wonder and revelation and is compressed to "cool apps" rather than the creation of forces that approach magic.

The Prestige gets better and better with each viewing. It is an atmospheric masterpiece. I loved the way this movie entered the depths of satanic obsession. The film could easily be a prophetic metaphor of how technology will commercially trump artistic perfection.

There was no cheat in the final shot of The Prestige. We were forewarned that the contraption actually replicated items that were inside. The trick was on the viewers that thought the movie was about magic, when in fact it was science fiction and horror. To think he hated his rival so much to ostensibly commit suicide 100 times in order to get "revenge", that is true horror. I will side with the 8.4 favorable rating on IMDB over your criticisms.

Just caught Bergman's "Magician" recently released on criterion and I think it'd make a great double feature with either "F for Fake" or "The Prestige." Makes you think what other parts of life beyond movies or art can be illusory. And Gunnar Björnstrand KILLS IT. He's like a lion.

I've been calling "Signs" my absolute favorite film for years. And, yeah... I do watch a lot of films and I do appreciate a LOT of filmmakers. Shyamalan is currently my favorite film director next to Clint Eastwood. People can't believe their ears when I say that, seeing as how we live in a "Shyamalan-bashing" culture. I'm a hardcore Chris Nolan fan too. Take that to the bank.
That being said, I LOVE reading critics that despise Chris Nolan... many of which present strong cases. But, I still saw "Inception" 5 times in theaters. Then I bought the DVD and watched it 5 more times. I think its a great film, a fun film. An adventure that I'll be happy to go on repeatedly for years to come. I think "The Prestige" is wonderful too. I remember standing up in the theater afterwards and turning to my friends like, "Wow!" I just said "wow" for the next 10 minutes. I was blown away. There isn't a critic in the world that could take THAT feeling away from me. I was there and I felt it first-hand and I don't make money off of sharing these sentiments online.
Anyway, you gotta wonder: Jim seems to be a master at explaining why Chris Nolan is a subpar filmmaker. I'd really like to see him explain why Nolan and Shyamalan continue to be the most talked about filmmakers alive. That would be an essay worth reading. =)