The Prestige

My favorite film critic is Roger Ebert. (I mentioned him in my first post as the kind of writing I aspire to get to with this, so you see what I mean.) One thing he resents is having to rate films by stars: His reviews do a much better job of telling you about a movie than how many stars a film gets. "The Prestige" is a good reason as to why numbers, stars, thumbs, etc., aren't good ways to show what you thought of a movie.

The movie is, taken at face value, well-done. The film gets your interest and it rewards it. But when you think about it, there's a problem. Here, it's the characters, specifically, the main characters, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman. (I barely recall their characters' names, which is unfortunate, considering my annoyance at people who see an actor in a movie and say, "Hey, it's that-guy!") Their characters have pretty much no redeeming qualities: They're driven by obsession, revenge, and vengeance for their revenges. They're not likeable at all.

I know main characters don't have to be likeable. There are lots of movies, some of which are good and a few of which are great, where the main character is unlikeable. But the good ones at least give you something to sympathize with. There's nothing underneath the two characters here to give you anything. They do what they do without a single motive with which we can identify. (And before you can say that we've all felt obsessive or vengeful, these guys take it to an extreme you probably haven't felt unless you're in prison.)

So I don't like the main characters. The others are mostly sympathetic: From Michael Caine to Christian Bale's daughter (and no, I can't remember their names, either) to Nikola Tesla (played by David Bowie... yes, I remember his name, but mainly because it's how I found out, not to mention it's the only name the movie leaves in your brain), they have some kind of sympathetic characteristic. But you don't really get into their brains. You're stuck with the two main characters.

Not helping matters is that about 3/4 of the way through, the film reveals a plot twist that takes itself from "involving but hateful" to "damn near ridiculous." The spoilers shall be hidden, so don't highlight if you haven't found out for yourself and you care about it: Eventually, it turns out that the two can end up essentially cloning themselves using electricity and Comic Book Science (where science functions in ways unexplainable without saying "the plot requires it"). Not only is this preposterous, especially considering that this story takes place in the 19th century [!!], it sets up an ending where we're nearly cheated out of a resolution because there seem to be just enough versions of the two of them that they're able to get away with everything. It also makes the characters more unlikeable, because really, how can you sympathize with someone who's apparently killed dozens of versions of himself? Sure, it makes for some interesting plot twists, but if you think about it enough, you'll figure out all but one of them. But for the most part, the story is interesting enough to keep you guessing. It's just too bad that it has to end the way it does, to satisfy everyone at the expense of actually resolving everything.

So, could I recommend it to you? Probably not. It's nearly impossible to get on the side of either of the two main characters; otherwise, it's an interesting film that 'works,' but without sympathetic characters, what good is it?