Mustn't outsmart yourself.
When brothers Jonathan and Christopher Nolan concocted the story and screenplay, respectively, for "Memento," which Christopher then directed, art-house audiences were intrigued by the murder mystery that started at the end and worked backward scene by scene.
The Nolans have gone a step too far, though, with "The Prestige," a story that flashes forward, backward and sideways so often that finally it is overwhelmed by sheer construction issues and its own inability to involve us in its elaborate emotional motifs.
It heaps on so many deceptions, secrets, betrayals and withheld information, and all within so fractured a narrative, that it becomes a burden to keep sorting through who's influenced by or guilty of what. And still you can't be sure because the characters hardly ever behave with certifiable motivation.
Like the current film "The Illusionist," "The Prestige" is set abroad many decades ago and involves magicians whose confounding feats endanger the performers and their assistants.
We're told at the outset that magicians' most elaborate tricks occur in three parts -- the pledge (setup), the term (something disappears) and the prestige (the payoff, the restoration).
The American Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and the English Alfred Borden (Christopher Bale), who had apprenticed together, become embittered rivals over tragedies involving women and tricks.
While mentor Cutter (Michael Caine) observes helplessly, the rivals draw into their webs such women as Julia (Piper Perabo), Sarah (Rebecca Hall) and Olivia (Scarlett Johansson) as well as the American inventor-electrician Tesla (David Bowie).
The fog induced by splintered continuity heightens both the confusion over what's happening, and why, and when we're supposed to be fooled or at least suspicious.
Bale speaks to a boy the key line: "The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything."
But the film's final act, its prestige, unravels like a movie reel that has fallen off the projector.
The film intrigues, but in surrendering to its own gimmickry, it's more like a parlor game from which you gradually withdraw than it is a satisfying movie.
- In wide release.
Details
'The Prestige'Rated PG-13 for violence and disturbing images;
