Hey Presto! The Illusionist and The Prestige
iView Author:Aditya Mani Jha
(IIT Kharagpur, West Bengal)
EMAIL: amj91288 [at] gmail [at] com
Title: Hey Presto! “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige”
Making films about magic has an air of convenience. You just know that there are going to be ‘it’ moments popping up from time to time……..
“Deus Ex Machina” is a term used in literature and theatre (in Latin, literally “god out of a machine” ) to describe sudden contrived plot devices. It is easy to surmise that when the focal point of a film is magic, there is no getting away from Deus Ex Machina. The trick is pulling it off, not trying to fool the audience.
Recently I watched two films which managed to do this, with different degrees of success- Neil Burger’s “The Illusionist” and Christopher Nolan’s “The Prestige”.
Both films were released in 2006, both were period pieces inspired by literary works set in the early 20th century, but the similarities end there. While “The Illusionist” is like a demure, sober,refined symphony which only lets it hair down in the final 15 minutes or so, “The Prestige” is a big sprawling ambitious romp powered by an ensemble cast.
“The Illusionist” based on Pulitzer-winner Steve Millhauser’s short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” chronicles the story of a shadowy, mysterious magician who is in love with a duchess, set to be the royal consort of the Austrian crown prince. His own troubled past haunts him continuously as he travels around Vienna performing amazing, never-before seen illusions(a paricularly spectacular one involving an orange tree is one of the high points of the film). Ed Norton as Eisenheim is reasonably subdued. The mystique his character exudes is sometimes tedious but overall this is another competent portrayal by one of my favourite actors(American History X remains one of all-time faves). The Duchess von Teschen played by Jessica Biel is not a very demanding role, and Biel manages to look radiant and has a pleasing screen presence.
But the real performance of the film comes from Paul Giamatti who plays Inspector Uhl, a crooked policeman loyal to the cruel, twisted Prince Leopold , but at the same time besotted with Eisenheim’s artistry. Uhl is an intriguingly ambiguous character. He thinks that Eisenheim is a treasure but has no qualms about incarcerating or even killing him in order to further his own ambitions under the impending regime under Leopold. The scene where he tries to convince Eisenheim of the futility of his actions is a delight. So is the climactic sequence where Uhl realises the full extent of Eisenheim’s web of illusions. He realises that he has been conned big-time, but at the same time he cannot help but marvel at the master illusionist’s genius.
The film’s cinematography has a charming, simplistic old-world charm about it. While everyone may not like the film’s Usual Suspects like climactic “twist” the film manages to do just enough to hold your attention.
“The Prestige” which hit the theatres months after “The Illusionist” tells the story of Robert Angier(Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden(Christian Bale), two warring magicians who are always looking to get the better of each other. On one level, it is a straightforward gunslinger rivalry tale, but it in fact explores much deeper questions about the nature of reality, and the terrible power of obesession. Michael Caine plays William Cutter, maker of magical apparatus who is in many ways the conscience-keeper of the story. The cast is rounded off by Scarlett Johannson playing Olivia, a woman torn between the two rivals, and David Bowie who has a magisterial cameo as Nikola Tesla, the famed inventor.
The Chris Nolan brand of storytelling first seen in Memento and perfected in Batman Begins is in full flow here, right from the opening scene where Angier performs a complicated trick called “The Teleported Man” , alternated with Cutter explaining to a young girl the three stages of a magic trick, the last being “The Prestige”. Angier wants to unlock the secrets of Borden’s tricks through his ciphered journal but Borden, who is a clearly superior magician technically, always has a few tricks extra up his sleeves. Journals prove to be dead ends, stories turn out to be unreliable, this Chinese puzzle-box styled plot leaves th audience gasping for breath but in the end it is Nolan who guides the ship home with an immaculate sense of timing.
One of the many interesting things about the film is its de-mysticised treatment of the magicians as opposed to Eisenheim’s mystique and mastery in “The Illusionist”. Angier and Borden are painfully human, they are stabbed, shot, pummelled into submission. They are petty, often insecure and always vindictive. On the other hand it is the scientist Tesla who has been portrayed as the real magician, a shaman-like dabbler in all things dark and mysterious. Case in point being Tesla’s entry scene where he steps out of a huge machine, elaborate electric sparks flowing all around him. Cutter says in a scene, “We are just pretenders acting the parts of magicians but that machine was horrible…….it was real magic.” , about a machine Tesla made for Angier. The real-life rivalry between Thomas Edison and Tesla has been depicted here as a sort of mirror for the Angier-Borden rivalry.
Fresh off the back of the dark reboot of the Batman saga “Batman Begins” Nolan teamed up with Christian Bale and veteran Michael Caine once again with spectacular results. The camera loves Bale’s deep dark brooding gaze and his innate inscrutability shines across in the grim, determined character Borden. The “unreliable narrator” device employed by Nolan works to a tee as you are kept guessing in this lavishly told story.
On the whole, I think that “The Prestige” gains a point over “The Illusionist” for its greater scope, better performances, and for Nolan’s artistry. I hope to catch his next film “The Dark Knight” real soon, which even as I write these words, has already started to draw rave reviews from around the world(including these pages).
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I haven’t seen The Illutionists but have seen The Prestige…n man i loved it…now i want to see every movie of Nolan…but i wud like to know why Kartik n Dpac found it “wanna be”…
here’s the link wher dey have said dat
http://passionforcinema.com/christopher-nolan-how-does-he-do-that/
aditya….
i was thinking of writing exactly the same thing as above few days back….but u beat me here..
but im not complaining
both movies were quite good…
and yes the prestige has an edge over the Illusionist …
Rasik - CORRECTION …
I DIDNT FIND PRESTIGE WANNABE AT ALL
it was dpac … i was just playing to him to avoid a discussion with him on prestige …
as far as im concerned ..prestige is my fav nolan film (a tiny weeny notch above Memento)
apologies to you and mr nolan if thats wat it looked
nice post ..now i must watch illusionist tooo
PRESTIGE IS WANNABE?????
ahem ahem……genius. pure genius.
hey good post aditya.. though i’d have liked you screaming in favour of one film over the other, unlike the gaining-point-over-business
i love PRESTIGE man!! no two-ways!!
keep writing aditya..
nice post. Illusionist is good especially towards the end…also the scene where he performs ‘bringing back the dead’ trick but Prestige is AWESOME!!!
Rasik,
yes, kk was being sarcastic there.
wannabe was something i said and you wouldnt get that word amongst all the drool drops from kk.
the plot twist and everything else felt very very ‘wannabe great’ in Prestige. my reaction could also have been influenced by the fact that the end was very obvious… at least to me
Prestige is a masterpiece when compared to ILLUSIONIST.
Illusionist is a boring film. One can say a lot of things about Illusionist but one must also add boring to it.
sorry for not entering the discussion board earlier guys(I was changing hostels….nasty business..) although I must say I seem to have divided your opinions pretty sharply:)
@kartik
As a fellow Nolan fan, I agree that “The Prestige” is a notch above Memento…….
@Dpac
Great filmmakers always have doubters………..
But seriously, one has to consider the fact that “The Prestige” is wildly ambitious and it’s not always feasible to achieve everything you want to within 120 odd minutes…
I was very intrigued with The Illusionist’s metaphor of the director mis-directing the audience. Mis-direction, a technique used by directors and magicians, distracts the audience into thinking one thing is happening when in reality something else is happening.
In “Edge Codes,” a video we watched for our aesthetics of editing class, film critic Cameron Bailey describes how a tradition of magic through editing began with the earliest filmmakers. Movies such as Georges Melies’ “The Untamable Whiskers” (1904) aimed to create a surprise, amaze the audience, and show a greater reality. Norman Jewison added that the whole impetus at the beginning of filmmaking was to “give ‘em a show.”
The most spectacular tricks Edward Norton/Eisenheim performs aren’t really possible, even in the hands of a highly skilled magician. They are actually visual special effects created digitally in post-production. So, who is creating the illusion here — the main character or the filmmaker? It almost seems to me that the heart of the movie was the commentary on illusions made possible by movies, and the historical tale/love triangle/murder mystery were researched and molded to support that.
Radio Times host Marty Moss-Coane interviewed director NEIL BURGER:
http://www.whyy.org/rameta/RT/2006/RT20060808_20_2.ram
About 5 minutes into this interview, Burger says movies themselves are a trick, they’re a deception, they’re artificial, that involve misdirection… they take you down one road and then they reveal some kind of truth at some other time in a round-about way.
He says that he likes to be as astonished as anyone else. He was inspired after seeing magician Ricky Jay perform a trick and wanted to give his audience a similar feeling and to change their perceptions of everything they take for granted.
Burger also says he gave the film the color palette of “autochrome,” the original color film process invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1903. He also says this movie takes place at about 1900 in Vienna, so this definitely harkens back to the magical early era of filmmaking.
Sorry for the long post above. I’ve been editing something for 16 hours straight and just pasted in a bunch of separate thoughts I’d posted elsewhere into one long comment while I was rendering a clip.
I liked the way you managed to showcase “The Illusionist” though twasnt that good he way you are making it to be.:)..the movie was pretentious..but in parts good..the worst part was that I had seen the illusionist much after The prestige..so..wasnt impressed by the illusionist.The prestige is by far the best Nolan Movie followed by Memento and The dark knight..The dark knight lower cause of the batman franchise.
I think it is a little inappropriate to compare these movies.
The only common ground they share is that the protagonists are magicians.
The Illusionist depicts life of a magician and how he uses his magic to deceive and achieve his ambitions, simple. The movie’s beauty lies in its picturisation. It resembles an oil painting of 18th Century.
The Prestige on the other hand is based on themes of rivalry, jealousy and devotion to one’s passion. The introduction of Tesla not only brings a sense of realism into the movie, but also illustrates a case in point . his rivalry with Edison. The movie screenplay is definitely intricate, suggestive of the three parts of Magic tricks. The movie talks of sacrifices one has to make for devotion to his passion. It talks of Rivalry and guilt. A hidden human desire to surpass his nemesis by all means.
In terms of content, The Prestige is more ambitious, successful and subtle. IMO
@Evelyn
Why on earth would you apologize for long posts….?
Long posts are not only welcome…..they are encouraged by this author at least……..
The “mis-direction” you refer to manifests itself in the literary arena,too in the form of a device called “The Unreliable Narrator”
Philip Roth is a master at it(Portnoy’s Complaint), as were messrs Nabokov, Twain and Faulkner……..
And yes, I loved the luminous, blast-from-the-past colour scheme of “The Illusionist”
@Sourav
I’m confused……is “The Dark Knight” somehow less worthy because it’s part of the Batman franchise????
If so, how????? Please let me know…..
@aditya..
i mentioned nothing about Nolan brotha
No doubts there..
but the movie, i stand by my statement (or even ‘wildly ambitious’ is an accurate substitute :-)]
Mani..it goes this way…it is more of personal thing..am not a great fan of super heroes movie..i simply cannot watch them but since The Dark Knight was Nolans I had to watch it..I have Batman Begins with me for the past 2 years but havent watched it yet..I find the batman cape very funny..the only reason i watch dark knight was to check out how screenplay sequences were like..the work of David Goyer and Nolan Brothers..and they are very very impressive.The last time i was fascinated by batman was when Star Plus helecasted Batman and Robin technicolor series starring Adam West.Hail Nolan but not the Caped Crusader!!
I saw ‘The Prestige’ on weekend on HBO and I simply loved it. It was second movie of Christopher Nolan I watched, first being ‘Batman Begins’. ‘The Dark Knight’ is the third which I watched 2 days ago.
I simply loved all of them. Of course The Dark Knight is highest point. This man has not even directed 10 movies yet and his latest movie is competing with ‘The Godfather’ for top spot.
And now I am eager than ever to get hold of Memento.