The Prestige and Birth
The Prestige comes in the shadow of The Illusionist, which I loved. It is very logical although strange that same subject films come out around the same time, in this case competing dramas about magicians, the stages they occupy, their competition and love affairs. I enjoyed The Prestige. I appreciate the legendary Michael Cane, Hugh Jackman’s smart rise in the pictures, and the brooding and intelligently selective Christian Bale, whose character the film centers upon. Mr. Bale has a sting of intensity about him the likes of Daniel Day Lewis, whose acting I respect highly yet whose film subjects interest me less than that of Mr. Bale. Bale and Ed Norton, who headlines The Illusionist, are well cast as they are adept at mystery in character, the sorts who one looks at and wonders what these actors are not telling us in the secretive lives they are made to play. And both films end in similar fashions, the last several minutes unravelling the entire riddle of each film that keeps their audiences on edge throughout, as in Spacey’s The Usual Suspects. I preferred the Illusionist as this film is one of the most romantic I have seen in years. Here is a beautiful romance, where love in the end conquers all. The Prestige tells a darker tale in which the art of illusion in life is seductive enough to obliterate love and all around it.
In keeping with this thread I saw last night Nicole Kidman’s Birth, whose ending contrary to the above pictures if read properly raises more questions than it asks and unsettles the heart with notions of afterlife in the argument that here in this film might be a 10 year old boy who is the reincarnation of Kidman’s lost husband. The film is brilliantly scored and directed. It also allows heartfelt notions of possibility to creep into the soul, which I find attractive and resonant. The movie jarred audiences for America’s Puritanical rejection of such material, and the press spin was strange so I bypassed the big screen. Thankfully I have netflix, so I can report that the experience was a moving one, if the viewer is open to the great possibilities in humanity that most humans flatly deny.
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