The Prestige

[gob]

Just got back from it and think it's fantastic. Don't care about any plot holes that might be there to be honest, there was so much else going for it that I'm a surefire supporter. Plus it makes me want to see The Fountain even more after seeing Hugh Jackman acting for grown-ups and acting very very well.

[SiliasRuby]

Just got back from it and think it's fantastic. Don't care about any plot holes that might be there to be honest, there was so much else going for it that I'm a surefire supporter.

I feel the same way, it's possibly Nolon's best since memento

[Pozer]

i was watching a doc about the ark of the covenant on the national geographic channel last night, and it was mentioned that nikola tesla had a theory or had done an experiment to show electromagnetic properties that the ark may have had based on the bible claims that it fried those who touched it.  anyways, i didn't realize this guy from the movie was a real scientist.  quite an amazing dude according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

[Pubrick]

one day in the distant future, ppl will watch the movie and not believe this david bowie dude was a real person.

[socketlevel]

one day in the distant future, ppl will watch the movie and not believe this david bowie dude was a real person.

not only that, but they won't realize how close Tesla was connected to the machine he constructs in the film.

i originally thought that Tesla was just the cool underground scientist that the novelist and the film makers could use to get some Indy cred or something like that.  and fair enough, if that was it alone, why not, it's cool shit.  this was until i did some research on the scientist himself.  about a week ago i looked him up on wikipedia and read through his biography (EDIT - the same link that pozer posted).  it mentioned the lab that you see in the film, and various other little nit picky stuff that Nolan and the novelist did a good job reproducing.  so at first i couldn't find any direct connection to teleportation until, strangely enough, i watched Brian depalma's "dressed to kill."

it's funny how one thing leads back to another within only two weeks.  so i watched dressed to kill and it was a lot of fun.  the actress Nancy Allen was in the film, and i was thinking how i used to think she was hot when i was younger.  so after the movie was done i looked her up on imdb.  i wanted to remember what other films she had been in, to ring a bell cuz i couldn't directly think of anything.  i noticed she did the film "the Philadelphia experiment", which for those that don't know was the supposed conspiracy theory that a navy ship was teleported to Philadelphia port, a governmental warfar experiment.  An alternate explanation was that the ship was rendered invisible and traveled to Philadelphia.  both answers to the conspiracy were based on Einsteins unified theory that never got completed.  Tesla, also, shortly before he died stated that he had finished the theory and put it to practice.  which the film relies heavily on.

on the Philadelphia experiment page in wikipedia mentioned Tesla as a possible connection to the conspiracy:

"However, the brilliant inventor, Nikola Tesla, claimed to have completed a unified field theory shortly before his death in January 1943. He died before he presented it to the world, but after his death all of his belongings and scientific notes were seized by the FBI. This hugely influential scientist had also been theorizing on electricity and magnetism's power to warp, or rather change, space and time. His death in 1943 and the alleged date given for the Philadelphia Experiment coincide. Coupled to this is the fact that, although he was hugely well-known during his life-time, he has remained almost conspicuously unknown to the public since his death."

so there, that's what i dug up, and gives the film more credibility in my eyes.

-sl-

[Kal]

If u dont understand the purpose of the female character, u didnt get the film... ergo... your review is NOT valid 

[socketlevel]

I got it, each one of the Bales loved a different woman, very clever. Still didn't think it was good, so harumph. Still, good to see Michael Caine stretching himself in roles like this, eh?

you my friend, are wrong

[polkablues]

I got it, each one of the Bales loved a different woman, very clever. Still didn't think it was good, so harumph. Still, good to see Michael Caine stretching himself in roles like this, eh?

you my friend, are wrong

Except for the Michael Caine sarcasm.  His character may as well have been an olde-timey phonograph through which Caine could have phoned it in.

[MacGuffin]

The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige, The DVD
Exclusive Interview: Christopher Nolan talks about his magic movie, bolstering DVD bonus materials, and delving into The Dark Knight.

We can't be certain, but chances are that most of IGN's readers have heard the name Christopher Nolan. In 1998, he did a picture called Following, and more recently he shot a remake of the Danish film Insomnia. Oh yeah, and he also did Memento and Batman Begins. His latest film, The Prestige, features some similarly recognizable stars (Little Women's Christian Bale and Paperback Hero's Hugh Jackman) and debuts on DVD this week.

Nolan recently spoke to IGN for an exclusive phone interview about The Prestige. In addition to discussing his expanding profile as a filmmaker of note, Nolan talked about tackling magic - movie or otherwise - on the silver screen, and described his own challenges meeting the expectations of a demanding public while keeping true to his own creative vision.

IGN DVD: After the movie was released there was a lot of discussion among viewers about how quickly people "figured out" the plot. How much did you design this film to be a mystery that unravels, and how much does it just play to the line in the film that the idea is not to deceive but make the audience complicit in an illusion?

Christopher Nolan: It's very much a film that is defined be the viewer's response to it, which I like material like that anyway, but it's really the extreme of that because different people figure things out at different times as they watch the movie. There isn't a unified response, and to me that was always an interesting thing because that is very much the way magic works - magic depends on the way people watch things, and this film highlights and deconstructs the way in which people watch movies. It's very sort of concerned with that. So it was always my intention to play with those ideas, and there are a lot of surprising things that happened in the movie that most people don't see coming or look at the first time around, but at the same time whenever you put something in front of people and tell them it's playing tricks, you're inviting close scrutiny, so for some people there are a lot of very obvious and clear clues to things in the movie. Certainly the movie is constructed so that if anyone is interested to watch it a second time, they realize we've played very very fair with the audience in terms of providing all of the necessary information to work out what's going on.

IGN: How tough was it to create illusions in the movie that would photograph well and yet not look like typical "special effects" you might see in any other movie?

Nolan: Well a lot of what we did in terms of presenting magic in the film was to get the actors up to speed with magic so they could do their own small-scale illusions, the little prestidigitation or the little moves they could do with their hands - things they could make appear or disappear and so forth. With anything bigger than that, we actually quite purposefully put cuts in all of the wrong places, if you will; we allowed people to dismiss as camera trickery what illusions are presented on stage because that's not really the concern of the film. The fun of the film is that we engage and involve the audience in how those things are done, and we give away plenty of our tricks in that regard. But at the same time, the actual elements of magic and trickery that are most important in the film are actually in the narrative of the movie itself, and the script therefore was always constructed according to the principles of the way a magic trick is constructed.

IGN: Does that carry over when you're considering what will be on the DVD - how much to show and how much to keep "secret"?

Nolan: It definitely did, and there were certain things that we considered putting on the DVD that at the last minute we changed our minds because there are things that you want to reveal. I believe actually there are certain aspects of filmmaking that should be hid from the audiences - that revealing too much of how illusion is put together I think damages the appeal of those illusions ultimately.

IGN: It seems like there is this mentality now that all of the movie magic must be deconstructed or explained. Is that something you're trying to counter in general?

Nolan: I think that for me there is generally a sense in which too much of filmmaking is demystified - we know too much about the movie stars in their life, we know too much about how movies are made to some degree. I have a fascinating book that someone gave me about matte paintings, glass paintings and the film history of that, and when you look back it's sort of extraordinary to realize that when those guys were first working on sets they worked inside tents so that no one could see what they were doing even among the crew. Their art was as with magicians considered a mystery, something that people shouldn't know how it was done. I think there is a great appeal to that - there's a very important sense in which the way in which things are constructed should be left mysterious.

IGN: Is that at all why you decided not to do a commentary track for the DVD, or was that a matter of timing?

Nolan: It's both, really. There are two things behind the [recording] of a commentary: because of the lead times on producing elements, you are often asked to do a commentary before the film has been released, and particularly with this film, the film is all about audience response and you're not really qualified on what the film is until the audience has contributed to that. Also, from a point of view of not wanting to demystify the story we created too much, I really didn't feel it was appropriate to do one on this movie. I've done them sometimes and I've not done them sometimes and it's always for different reasons.

IGN: How involved are you in the production of the special features? Do they bring you ideas to approve, or are you involved from the conception stage?

Nolan: It's different on different projects, and on this I very much liked the direction they were going in and I let them kind of do their thing and then looked at stuff for approval. I was involved with various decisions related to what went on and what didn't, but it was interesting to watch someone kind of have fun with what we'd done. There are other DVDs where I've been intensely involved with it, and some less so; it's different in every situation and in the case of this film I was certainly involved, but a lot of other people's imaginations went into what it would be and that was actually very exciting to be a part of.

IGN: One of the most interesting themes you explore in this film is the disparity between showmanship and substance. Is that something that you have been challenged with in your career - balancing your own vision with a responsibility to your perceived or actual audience?

Nolan: I think very much it's something that I deal with in my job, really, because there are many different ways to approach filmmaking and film directing. There are very different levels of stylization, for example, or ways in which you present the story that there are temptations to show off as a filmmaker and there are purist ideas behind certain things you want to do that call for more restraint or more subtlety than in other areas. I try not to have too many rules about the way I shoot a film, but I definitely have a very purist approach to why things should be shot in a particular way and I think that as a filmmaker, you do deal with these concepts - the purist aesthetic versus the slightly flashier way of doing things that might gain you more attention.

IGN: The casting is perfect in terms of embodying that dynamic - Christian Bale in particular practically embodies actorly integrity and his character's sense of commitment to his art. Do you like working with the same actors multiple times? Would you like to work, say, with Bale again on a third role?

Nolan: Well, I'm about to start working with him again, so I'd better be (laughs). To be honest I don't really worry too much about who's going to do a film; things come together in the way they are meant to, so if that means working with the same people that's wonderful thing, but sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Really every project is unique and has unique requirements and in the case of both Christian and Michael [Caine], it just so happened that we had two very different projects with very different requirements but both of which they fitted the characters just perfectly.

IGN: At this point in your career, do you have the freedom to explore what you want or do you similarly have to juggle that balance of personal vision and commercial responsibility?

Nolan: Well, every situation is unique, once again, but a lot of it is really balancing your time, frankly, because the turnaround times with a production lead times they have on the DVD material mean that you're not able to participate as fully as you would like to because you're actually finishing the film still. So for me I'm intensely involved with every aspect of making the film, and so when those two things overlap you can't spend as much time on one thing or the other, and you're very much at the mercy of having gone into bed with the right people who are going to be making the DVD and hoping to include you to the extent they can. Certainly I had a good experience on this one.

IGN: You moved so quickly from Batman Begins to The Prestige. Did this seem like a continuation of that work load or was this a change of pace?

Nolan: Well, there are a number of ways in which this film was a shift in gears and a change of pace. The scale of the film, although large for what the story is, is obviously much smaller than Batman Begins, and we had to work with far fewer material resources - which required a different type of ingenuity which was very refreshing, actually. The difference in subject matter was also interesting, and the methodology and where we shot the film; we shot the entire film in Los Angeles doing London in L.A. where we'd done the reverse for Batman effectively - we shot an American city in London. It had very different challenges and my brother and I'd been developing the script for several years prior to Batman Begins so that was the reason I was able to follow it pretty quickly. We'd already put in the time developing the script.

IGN: So how then does that reinvigorate or just challenge you moving back to something that is much bigger in scale?

Nolan: Well, I think it has been reinvigorating from the point of view of things that we learned about our process on The Prestige that we would actually attempt to carry through on the bigger film. On every film you learn a lot about what you're doing and why you're doing it, and those lessons that can be applied to the next thing.

IGN: What lessons did you learn on The Prestige?

Nolan: Well, I think what we did on The Prestige from my point of view very successfully was we created a production methodology that was based around flexibility for the actors. We shot the film not in conventional coverage, we used a lot of handheld camera, so within the same take we would be doing a close-up and a two-shot and a wide shot and just really moving around and following action much more like a documentary. That's a very efficient way of working, but it's also very liberating for the actors because it achieves a degree of reality with things that I'd like to maintain on other projects.

IGN: So are you taking a break between this and your next movie or are you starting up immediately on Dark Knight?

Nolan: No, I'm straight in. I'm doing three films in a row without a break, so maybe when I finish The Dark Knight I'll have time for a holiday.

[matt35mm]

SPOILERS

I already had an inkling before I started it of what some of the twists were because of my clicking on this thread.  I avoided the posts that stated spoilers, but several of the posts freely talked about "the Bales."  That's all I caught because I very quickly looked away after realizing that it was a spoiler.  I suppose it's my fault for clicking on this thread, but there should be more careful monitoring of that sort of thing, as we all frequently look at threads before actually seeing the movie.

Anyway, even if I hadn't seen that spoilerful remark, it was obvious all along that there were two of the Bordens.  That guy was fishy all along just hovering around all the time like that, also we very obviously aren't allowed to clearly see his face for a while and then when we are, he's clearly played by Bale.  I assumed that Nolan was making that obvious until that apparently was the twist.  Especially things like the scene where Borden is already in his future wife's apartment, and how she kept saying that some days he meant that he loved her and some days he didn't.

It also seemed to be made obvious that Tesla's machine made duplicates of things.  "They're all your hat," and the cat thing SHOWED that the machine makes duplicates!

So when the last scene comes and they both very dramatically tell each other that one has a twin and the other had a duplicate... I dunno, I was expecting another twist because I thought that the twin/duplicate thing was the slight of hand on Nolan's part--in other words, that being led to suspect the twin/duplicate thing was a misdirection.  But nope, that was it.

In any case, the movie was successful in generating atmosphere and it was an interesting enough, if relatively shallow, study of obsession.  Entertaining to watch until the end, I felt.

[I Love a Magician]

chris nolan always looks like such a douchebag

[pete]

I really hate movies that punish you for being smart.  fuck that.  I came back from a party that was super lame and super loud, and I thought, ooh, I'll watch the prestige to rinse out the bad taste, but then there it was, more punishment for smart people.  fuck.

[grand theft sparrow]

I really hate movies that punish you for being smart.

You sure you weren't watching The Illusionist?

[pete]

is the illusionist even worse?

[grand theft sparrow]

The Illusionist punishes you for having seen any other movies before it.