The Prestige
This is a nice movie to see on the big screen. I loved Batman Begins, which also starred Christian Bale and was written and directed by the same guy. That would be Christopher Nolan.
I shouldn't say it's a nice film, though. It's not really "nice." Interesting, dark, entertaining, well-acted and well-told, beautiful to look at, yes. The movie starts at the end of the story, and I like that particular narrative trick. All of the acting was very good: Hugh Jackman, who has seemed run-of-the-mill until I saw him in this; Michael Caine, who's always very good; Christian Bale; even David Bowie, whom I forgot to recognize during the film. (I'd read somewhere that he was in it, but then I forgot, remembered during the credits and had to look at the cast listing to find out who he played. He played Nicola Tesla, who was a real person, of course, inventor of alternating current (AC) electric power and lots of other things. Tesla in the movie was interesting and weird enough that I went and read about him on Wikipedia. Pretty interesting guy, to say the least.)
However, I do wonder why the big question in the early on-screen death is "Which knot did you tie?" Wouldn't they all have been able to see which knot it was? Or did I miss something? I did miss a few minutes towards the very beginning of the film, because I was receiving the sad news of our dog's death. But I think that was well before the death in the film. Maybe that's explained in the novel, on which the film is based. I'll have to read it someday.
Funniest thing to happen in a while: At the end of this movie, where the camera pulls back to show all the water cases, one of the two college girls sitting behind us said to the other "That could never happen," but pronounced more like "Tha' cuh neveh happuh" (with lots of glottal stops). My wife and I looked at each other for a second wondering if we had just heard what we thought we did. Then the other one said "I know, they could, like, never happen." We loved that and laughed, hard. They gave us a confused, judgmental look, which I loved almost as much as their commentary. What do you think their world is like? Pleasant probably?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure they don't realize how much pleasure they brought us. I love eavesdropping on people's public conversations. When Jon and I saw One Night With the King a while back, the movie-viewing experience did not benefit from a couple of girls/women who sat directly behind us in a nearly empty theater. Throughout the movie, we listened to their commentary, which included one saying to the other about the king, "Doesn't he have pretty eyes?" In retrospect, though, maybe the experience was thus enriched.
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