Rating: 16/20
Plot: Two magicians in 19th Century England stretch a professional rivalry to ridiculous proportions.
Another little Nolan puzzle movie. I usually complain about them to people, but there's actually not a Christopher Nolan movie that I don't like and he's got a consistency that most modern filmmakers would love to have. So I probably don't know what I'm talking about. I missed this one when Nolan sneaked it between a couple Batmans, but I really liked it. It's a spiraling sort of movie, one that twists around and around and on top of itself, and I was intrigued by the whole thing. The rivalry between Bale and Jackman's characters was palpable, and the performances of those two were just great. Jackman plays dual roles, brilliantly. Michael Caine mumbles and points a lot. He really emphasizes every other word with a point in this movie. David Bowie makes an appearance, and so does Scarlett Johansson which makes for three superheros. And one King Kong since Andy Serkis also has a small role, this time as an actual human being. I think it was actually him anyway. Maybe they hooked him up to a computer and had him pretend to be a human being and then put a CGI Serkis in the movie. This is a movie about rivalry and obsession, and the allusions to Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, although I don't have enough background knowledge to really know what's going on or how accurate it all is, it added an interesting flavor to the whole thing and didn't make it quite as shocking when the whole thing transformed into a science fiction movie midway through. I also liked the look of the movie. 19th Century London is gorgeous, all browns and grays and faded blacks. But as good as the effects, the visuals, and the performances are, the real star of the show is the writing and structure. Like Memento, this is one that I immediately wanted to see again just to put some of the pieces together a little better. You could accuse it of being gimmicky and maybe even accuse Nolan of pulling a ridiculous ending out of his ass, but the more implausible parts of this serve to compliment the movie's themes, and it all raises some fun and complex philosophical questions, almost like little koans. It's complex material that is handled in a way that gives it just the right amount of coherence and the right amount of frustration as you watch it and keeps you guessing a little bit even after the credits have rolled. And it's all enormously entertaining although arguably a little too long.
I know one of my readers really hated this.
I dont hate it so much as I think it copped out with the ending. Its a movie set in a specific period, with specific rules, and it takes that huge right turn at the end to explain everything. Its like writing yourself into a corner, then having supernatural deity's just show up to solve all the logical problems. Its a very well done movie, and I appreciate the acting and tensions, but I just cant get past the whole logical fallacy of cloning/teleporting machines being built simply because thinking of a clever way the trick could have been done is too much work. I know it was a novel before a movie, and thats how the book went, but in a book they can go into backstory more. In this film we have this seemingly impossible problem and VIOLA....just have real magic solve everything. Bleh. A 13 for me.
ReplyDeleteI caught your review on imdb actually when looking up your 'Monolith Monsters' one. I understand exactly what you mean with this sort of breaking rules and maybe taking a lazy way out. I wonder if there's a point to the very sudden shift from magic to science though.
ReplyDeleteI took this screenwriting class in college, and the professor (and Mary Anne) talked about how to start a screenplay: "Don't think so much about what WILL happen in the story, but what WILL DEFINITELY NOT happen." He was talking about when you are writing a screenplay, you're not just creating a narrative; you're also creating an entire world/universe. In it, you can have whatever happen that you like; while giving adequate preparation for your audience to accept what is happening.
ReplyDeleteFor example, he talked about if a unicorn showed up. Did you prep your audience for that? Are the characters reactions appropriate for the universe you've created? If so, the more illogical direction most people take their stories are with dialogue (people actually don't speak that way), characterization (people don't behave that way), and an attempt and representing the world as we already know it (that's not how those things happen, he would never get away with that, etc). Critics actually scrutinize the attempts to represent the world as we already know it harder than they would a proper creative attempt at making something new.
I think that description fits nicely to this movie. We think Nolan is representing the world as we know, but we discover this other dimension in the end. I think Barry right when he talks about what the book might have offered that the movie cut, but I was able to fill in the gaps pretty well. I didn't think it was lazy, I thought it was purposeful. I can picture the writer sitting down and having that ending in mind before ever writing the beginning. It's a great moral dilemma presented to the audience. How can such a deep philosophical question be an accident?
Right, I just thought the ending complimented the themes really well. I need to see this movie again actually, but I think you said it well there. I think when you look at the movie as a whole, the end feels like something that the rest of the movie really did build up to.
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