Pose Reviews A Movie. #35: The Prestige (2006)

I remember that when The Prestige came out in theatres, it was released in one of those infamous "Hollywood Pairs" that everyone despises.

You know what I mean.

It happened with Dante's Peak and Volcano. It happened with Armageddon and Deep Impact. And it happened with The Prestige and The Illusionist.

Inevitably, when "Hollywood Pairs" occur, no one sees both. (Unless you're weird. Or you have a LOT of interest in the subject matter.)

Back in 2006, I opted to see The Illusionist because Edward Norton is awesome and I can't stand Hugh Jackman.

The Illusionist was nothing if not mediocre, so understandably my enthusiasm for magician movies was somewhat diminished. Luckily, however, my enthusiasm for Christopher Nolan recently overtook it.

The Prestige is a tale of two competing magicians, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden (played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale respectively, neither of whom can really pull off the English accent required for the roles) in early 20th century London.

At first, the men work side by side as partners under the leadership of an illusion engineer by the name of Cutter (adeptly played by Michael Caine).

However, when Angier's wife, the act's lovely assistant is tragically killed as a result of one of the illusions, he blames Borden for her death, and sparks a rivalry that increases more and more intensely as the film progresses.

At first, the men merely try to sabotage each other's stage performances, but when Borden finally perfects "The Transported Man," a trick that Angier cannot figure out, the conflict turns to one-upmanship, and each magician goes to extraordinary lengths to outdo the other and expose his secrets.

The Prestige is a really solid film, and it comes with all the fun twists and turns that you'd expect from Christopher Nolan. Of course, Nolan can't be credited with the story, since The Prestige is an adaptation of Christopher Priest's novel of the same name, but he brings it to the screen with the same mysterious flair present in films like Following and Memento.

The Prestige also brings David Bowie out of a brief cinematic retirement, giving him his first on-screen role since playing himself in 2001's Zoolander. Bowie does a great job of playing Nicola Tesla, the suave, brilliant but altogether mad scientist, and practically steals the show at the halfway mark.

Overall, I enjoyed The Prestige for what it is: a well-crafted period piece that is suspenseful, mysterious and surprising, not to mention unique (if it weren't for that pesky Illusionist!) I'd certainly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good story, complete with a legitimately cool twist that won't make you roll your eyes.

...and if you'd rather just stare at Scarlett Johansson, I suppose it's good for that too.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #54: Samurai Assassin (1965)

Samurai Assassin is a samurai period piece, a jidaigeki, loosely based on the historic assassination of Ii Naosuke at the Sakurada Gate, an assassination that started the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the famous military dynasty that ruled Japan for 300 years. This one stars Toshiro Mifune, which had me excited.

As other staff members have undoubtedly written, Toshiro Mifune is awesome. His performances have a force to them that's hard to deny, and he's typically a treat to watch. In Samurai Assassin I felt like the Mifune factor wasn't at full capacity, and probably not through any fault of his own. In Assassin he plays Niiro, a disgraced ronin (a masterless samurai) down on his luck and full of bile, which is typically great Mifune fodder. But its only in the last half of the film that he starts to show some real character force.

During the first half to two thirds of the flick, there isn't too much to praise. The camerawork is stylish here and there, and the film would have benefited with a bit more of what it was serving on that front, but the film is frustratingly dialogue heavy, and most of it exposition about things that have happened off screen. Or lengthy speeches about a character's history. Since you actually don't see much of what's being talked about it's hard to stay on track with the plot, and as a result you can't quite invest yourself in any worthwhile way. The same thought will get reiterated over and over, and characters are perpetually trying to convince each other of things the audience knows as fact. It's meant to be dramatic tension, but it's too much and it gets boring. There's also a really strange romance between Niiro and the owner of an inn. It doesn't make much sense and progresses only so an idyllic and lamenting conversation can happen before the film's climax.

The last third of the film picks up really well, but by then, it's probably too late for most viewers given the two hour runtime. At this point the information slows down and some pathos slaps our collective audience face when we get to see some hard to watch betrayal go down. Things get worse and worse for Niiro, and the ending is a tooth and nail fight in the snow. The last shot is haunting.

So: Would be worth the watch with just a pinch more reward. Great ending, but comes too late.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #15: Taboo (1999)

I love samurai films. When I think about what taking in cinema feels like, I get certain senses of things bubbling in my brain, maybe a loose, iconic image. One of those is usually of a samurai, holding a sword out and standing in an elegant posture, just waiting. Can’t get enough of that. I’m always willing to watch a samurai film, and once I heard a few things about Oshima's Taboo, I was positively fuming with feudal fascination. The film’s about Kano, a young samurai who takes another samurai in his regiment as his lover, and when news of their relationship spreads, other samurai begin to seek Kano's affections.

Now, I think Taboo lacks the gravity it might have achieved if it had focused a bit more. The plot tends to get a bit lost at times, and frequently a change in the story and the introduction of a new character makes the film seem flippant. But Taboo makes up for it with its visually arresting cinematography. The drifting, ethereal camerawork is wonderfully atmospheric and fluid, and does well to highlight the sense that we are observers. The action sequences are elegant, and they really swept me up. Deft use of steadicam pulls you in and around the samurai blade strikes without resorting to the shaky camera style that's so fucking popular in movies today. Sorry, rage.

I was glad to see that the film contains a questioning of the samurai's role in the rigid feudal Japanese caste system of the 1800s, and doesn't, like many samurai films, revel in the romance of honour and glory that you might well imagine when you read the word 'samurai'. There's an interesting parallel in effect where the samurai hegemony and its penchant for using men's lives for political posturing is matched with the sexual hegemony, and the men entangled in love affairs with their fellow soldiers are secretly loathe to give up their lives in the name of the samurai order. There's even some attempt to hetero Kano, but attempts fail, and in the end, even the officers high up in their chain of command question their sexual roles, while paradoxically, Kano’s lovers come to use Kano as the military system uses them - for their own ends.

The film's pretty casual acceptance of queer lifestyle is, to my knowledge, not too consistent with feudal Japanese culture, but it serves to put a new spin on such an influential and pervasive genre, and Taboo is worth a look.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #6: Witchfinder General (1968)

A gem of a film based loosely on the life of the Witchfinder General, one Matthew Hopkins, a lawyer turned witch-hunter during the tumultuous upheaval of Cromwell's revolution. Hopkins roved from village to village exploiting the superstitious for good coin by inflicting cruel witch-finding tests upon anyone suspected of being a witch. So basically anyone kind of weird. Or anyone people just didn't like.

In the role of Hopkins is the inimitable Vincent Price. Now, this film gave him his 75th role, and by this point Price had understandably been coasting through his horror roles like a sleeping Cthulu through the epochs, but two things now awakened him:

1. The shock of having a director like Michael Reeves, who had wanted Donald Pleasence in the role and was furious over the studio's insistence on Price. Reeves refused to speak directly to him the first day, and when Price fell from his horse, reportedly didn't even check to see if the man was alright.

2. The level of the crew's competency was something Price hadn't expected. Everyone on set was dead-serious about making a good film, and the majority of the cast seemed to be delivering the kind of performances he could actually work with.

These two things sobered Price, and later, he conceded that his own performance in the film was probably the best of his horror career. His Witchfinder General possesses a quiet belligerence made more menacing by an aloof, emotional disconnection. That disconnection doesn't seem lazy, though. It seems carefully set, and most of it comes off through his enigmatic stares.

The level of torture and violence that initially got this film banned in places, by today's standards, manages to be bloody without being gory, and fiercely uncomfortable instead of indulgent. The watershed Bonnie and Clyde was released just a year earlier, and the kind of screen violence that was emerging held a new potency. Witchfinder General could actually be considered England's Bonnie and Clyde, as both pushed the boundaries and ended off on a violent down-note. Reeves ended WG with an improvised and unnerving final sequence that will ring in my memory for some time.

So: A fluid and stylish revenge tale with Price back in action. Check it out.

Ryan Watches a Motion Picture #5: Billy Budd (1962)

This one's an adaptation of the unfinished Herman Melville novella and its subsequent stage incarnation. Directed by Peter Ustinov, and the film debut of Terence Stamp - who got the role because he clammed up and couldn't answer properly when addressed by Ustinov. That happens to be Billy Budd's problem too.

Billy Budd is this pure soul working on a merchant ship that gets picked clean for conscripts during the Napoleonic wars. He comes off like some lucky aberration of nature so intrinsically pleasant that when faced with any kind of real malice, becomes utterly speechless. Unfortunately, the military ship he's taken to is managed by a sadistic master-at-arms, Budd's polar opposite, who enjoys torturing the sailing crew every chance he gets. Ustinov plays the ship's captain, who must somehow mediate between this brutal man and Billy Budd and crew. As you might expect from the source material, the film's characters are part of a philosophical allegory, and their relationships are meant to highlight the human conditiony stuff that urge a lot of us into cinema or any other fine such medium.

So: Check it out. Doesn't pack much in terms of high-sea adventure if that's what you're looking for, but it does, in Melville style, prove involving in its ability to present a simultaneously epic and ethical microcosm.