Are you look­ing closely ?!

Christo­pher Nolan — I reg­is­tered this name strongly when I watched the film “Memento” and aston­ished [ blinked :) ] how to tell the story to some­one else. That was a mas­ter craft in script, to my knowl­edge. That movie intro­duced me the term antero­grade amne­sia!. The point is Christo­pher Nolan treats the audi­ence respect­fully as matured view­ers and doesn’t use cheap tech­niques to make his film a suc­cess­ful one. Sim­i­larly, he made “THE PRESTIGE” with minute and inter­est­ing ele­ments, through out the flow.

It’s not just another film on illu­sion [ after “The Illu­sion­ist” ] but prob­a­bly the dark­est movie, I have seen in the recent past. This movie treats illu­sion, lives behind the magic pro­fes­sion, pas­sion, rivalry, envy and the extremes of 2 com­peti­tors turned ene­mies. The tough­est part of win­ning is not the win­ning itself but retain­ing it. That’s what the winner’s all time efforts involve in. Also, watch­ing what the com­peti­tors are up to. These 2 become dan­ger after cross­ing a cer­tain point. To what extent ? .. The pres­tige answers the question..

Plot :

There lived 2 famous magi­cians Rupert Ang­ier (Hugh Jack­man) and Alfred Bor­den (Chris­t­ian Bale) in Lon­don, a cen­tury ago. Both are equally good but they don’t have good terms with respect to their pro­fes­sions. Ini­tially, it starts as a com­pe­ti­tion and turns slowly rivalry to its peak. They attempt to spoil each other’s great tricks and end up in some­thing extraordinary.

They get into extremes, to win the race and what hap­pens in the flow is the film all about.

View :

A kind request — Never ever attempt to read the story fully or the cli­max before watch­ing this movie. The sus­pense and twists are too good for the view­ers to under­stand and fol­low. Every 10 mins, the story turns into a dif­fer­ent direc­tion. The story is told in an ellip­ti­cal style [ the story starts and ends in the same scene or event as in “The Eng­lish patient” , A per­fect world].

The cast is really inter­est­ing.. yes.. It’s the super heroes.. X-Men mem­ber Vs the Bat­man :) Hugh Jack­man and Chris­t­ian bale play the lead roles as two rival stage magi­cians of their time. The per­for­mances are jus­ti­fied in their respec­tive roles. They are nei­ther heroes nor vil­lains. It’s all about their activ­i­ties and efforts.

Scar­lett Johans­son — the beau­ti­ful dis­trac­tion [ remem­ber ‘Match Point’ ]. Once Crankx said, the role of half dressed lady assis­tant for a magi­cian is a major dis­trac­tion. True ! She dis­tracts the story to an extent but there’s much more in the movie than her part. She does an inter­est­ing char­ac­ter in this movie along with Michael Caine. The film inter­est­ingly touches upon the char­ac­ter TESLA — a great mechan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal engi­neer worked along with Thomas alva Edi­son. That part of the story is really inter­est­ing — every inven­tion has got it’s own ene­mies [ Alter­nat­ing current !! ].

The orig­i­nal novel was writ­ten by Christo­pher Priest and it has been nicely adapted to screen by Nolan broth­ers. Of course, this story also fol­lows a non-linear struc­ture shuf­fling between the past and the present. This movie once again proves the impor­tance of a story with craft. The art direc­tion and cin­e­matog­ra­phy were nom­i­nated for acad­emy awards and they are truly jus­ti­fied in the movie. Every scene is crafted with appro­pri­ate light­ing and mood. Watch out the Col­orado Springs in the 1800s. Just Awe­some! The movie flows slowly some­times and it’s jus­ti­fied at the end. [ It’s like PMP classes — every new class fetch ques­tions based on the pre­vi­ous classes Ha..ha. ].

Mes­mer­iz­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal n mys­tery thriller is the sin­gle line; I can describe the film about.

–Toto.

Thanks to Vijay for rec­om­mend­ing  this movie.

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