"The Prestige"

The three acts of a successful magic trick

• The Pledge: the magician shows the audiences something ordinary. For example, volunteers are invited to examine the equipments on stage.
• The Turn: the ordinary is made into something extraordinary. For example, the magician makes something/someone disappear on stage.
• The Prestige: after all the twists and turns, the audiences get to see something shocking that they have never seen/expected. For instance, the disappeared item/person re-entered the stage within seconds.
  

I would say “The Prestige” is one of the best dramas of fiction this year.

The script writers do a fantastic job. The “prestige” of this movie in the end is a magic itself, unveiling the secrets in a sophisticated way. Yet, personally, I am not that satisfied with the trick the script writers perform. Still, I believe that it might be the best solution for them to explain the “turn” of the movie.

Christopher Nolan, the director and the one of the writers, is really a talent story teller. (He caught my eyes with his “Insomnia” and “Batman Begins” in the first place.) The movie is like a battle between Sherlock Holmes and James Moriarty, suspenseful and thrilling.

Needless to say, the focused leading actors add more flavor to this born-to-be successful play. I have expressed my affections toward Bale in my review of “Batman Begins”. He is definitely a passionate and immaculate performer. As for Hugh Jackman, his elegance gutters harm of the Great Denton delicately. Plus, with Michael Caine on the same stages, these two “boys” must have tried their best to compete this master.

To my surprise, David Bowie, one of the greatest artists of our age, plays a rational scientist as a supporting actor in this movie. As a post modern singer and visual artist, he is undoubtedly an ideal interpreter of that character, a passionate man but isolated by public because of his novelty. It seems to me that Christopher Nolan is trying to present his appreciation for the gifted artists that have been ignored in the history as well.

Over all, this is an exquisitely-filmed Hollywood movie, quite commercial but arty.