I've been trying to decide whether or not my disappointment with the ending is justified. After all, I've both enjoyed and written stories that made similar left turns into crackpot science-fantasy. It turns out that the film is based on a novel by Christopher Priest, a writer of somewhat logically loose science fiction (I've read his novel "The Inverted World", which has similar third-act trouble); had I known that I'd have had different expectations.
I think it's at least in part because of a couple of personal preoccupations of mine. First, in my own head the magic community has always been associated with a kind of joyous rationalist debunkery, typified by The Amazing Randi, and it's a little disapointing to see a movie about magic that feels the need to serve up some in-world-genuine wizardry at the end.
Second, the paranormal Tesla cult annoys the hell out of me: Tesla was both a world-changing genius and the victim of a genuine conspiracy, but he was also a raging loony whose mouth wrote some checks that bounced, and the inventions of his that we really use every day have the notable property that they work by standard electromagnetic physics, not voodoo rays. (David Bowie and Andy Serkis were great as Tesla and sidekick, though.)
The title of the movie comes from the supposed three parts of a stage illusion, as explained by the Michael Caine character at the beginning: the Pledge ("nothing up my sleeve"), the Turn (the lady sawn in two), the Prestige (the lady restored). I'm not the only critic to observe that the Prestige is actually where this movie goes wrong; it feels as if, to some extent, it stopped at the Turn.
no subject
I think it's at least in part because of a couple of personal preoccupations of mine. First, in my own head the magic community has always been associated with a kind of joyous rationalist debunkery, typified by The Amazing Randi, and it's a little disapointing to see a movie about magic that feels the need to serve up some in-world-genuine wizardry at the end.
Second, the paranormal Tesla cult annoys the hell out of me: Tesla was both a world-changing genius and the victim of a genuine conspiracy, but he was also a raging loony whose mouth wrote some checks that bounced, and the inventions of his that we really use every day have the notable property that they work by standard electromagnetic physics, not voodoo rays. (David Bowie and Andy Serkis were great as Tesla and sidekick, though.)
The title of the movie comes from the supposed three parts of a stage illusion, as explained by the Michael Caine character at the beginning: the Pledge ("nothing up my sleeve"), the Turn (the lady sawn in two), the Prestige (the lady restored). I'm not the only critic to observe that the Prestige is actually where this movie goes wrong; it feels as if, to some extent, it stopped at the Turn.