The Prestige
Taking time off from my Futuristic Dystopia project to see a current release, and what could be more current than —
BATMAN VS. WOLVERINE IN 19th CENTURY MAGICIAN SMACKDOWN!
(read in complete safety! no spoilers revealed!)
Who will win in this titanic battle of magical superheroes? Batman’s got the skill, the ability to misdirect and the mastery of his dual nature, but Wolverine has mutant powers! He doesn’t have to put on a mask to do magic — he is magic!
Point for Batman — his character has thirty years on Wolverine, he’s acquired a lot of wisdom. Plus — he is the night.
Point for Wolverine — he’s got three blockbusters under his belt! Not to mention extra-super healing powers, an adamantium skeleton and retractable claws! Snikt!
But wait! What’s this, a femme fatale? Lovely Rebecca from Ghost World, twisting a spritz of highbrow, independent comics into the mix! Where do her loyalties lie? Only one thing is for sure in a movie about a superhero magician smackdown — nothing is as it appears to be.
Actually, one thing is for sure — 19th-century magicians are total dicks.
But watch out, there’s a ringer! Yes, that’s right, a plant in the audience! But who? Maybe it’s Batman’s butler, Alfred, or maybe it’s the guy from Labyrinth! He’s magic for sure! Hell, he might even be a space alien!
Exquisite in its production and complex in its construction, a thoroughly good time at the movies.
Truth be told, Michael Caine is probably here less to remind us of Batman and more to remind us of Sleuth, the premise of which could fit into any given five minutes of this movie.
Special mention goes to Rebecca Hall, as the Other Woman, who’s quite good and has not been in any big-hit movies. Go Rebecca Hall!
And the lovely and talented David Bowie is also quite good here. Bowie has most often been used as an effect in most movies, stunt-casting, but he gives an honest-to-goodness performance here, unflashy, controlled, subtle and sad. He also does for The Prestige exactly as he did for The Venture Bros — create an environment where it seems that anything could happen.
The screenplay, which is devilishly constructed, cheats, twice. There is one highly unlikely coincidence and one big fat made-up lie. But unlike, say, Vanilla Sky, this movie uses its big fat made-up lie to say something interesting and worthwhile about its time. Saying more than this would give away the game.
If folks would like to discuss the many spoilable things in the movie, perhaps we could do so below the fold. But that may be too immodest.
Fahrenheit 451
WHAT DOES BIG BROTHER WANT? Big Brother wants people to be happy, and books don’t make people happy. They are filled with lies, made-up stories, silliness, sophistry and fake drama. Why do so many people insist on being unhappy?
WHAT DOES THE REBEL WANT? Montag (Oskar Werner) burns books for a living. He’s comfortable and respected, but he is also is bored and mopey. He craves intellectual stimulus. His wife, Julie Christie, is a babbling idiot and the TV is filled with political fiction, propaganda and nonsensical gibberish. He finds his desired stimulus in the form of sexy neighbor Julie Christie (again with the sexy neighbor — if there were not attractive women in futuristic dystopias, there would never be any rebellion at all!) and, less cinematically, in the pages of Charles Dickens. When that turns out to be asking too much, he wants to get out of town and keep the literary flame alive.
WHAT DOES THE REBEL GET? A whole heap of trouble.
DOES THE SOCIETY CHANGE THROUGH THE ACTIONS OF THE REBEL? Not to any measurable degree. But the protagonist does find a way to rebel that has some positive effect and yet adheres to the letter of the law. Wait — the rebels want to adhere to the letter of the law — and that’s their brilliant idea? What the hell kind of movie is this?
NOTES: Handsomely produced and well-intentioned, it’s hard to get excited about this movie. There is no drama or conflict to its argument, there is no “other side” to it — who would make a movie promoting the burning of books? This is not to say that there should be an “other side” to a movie about totalitarianism, but even The Matrix allowed that there would be some people who would be happier living in pink goo with an electrode in their brain.
Wait a minute — why are some of the day’s leading cinematic lights making a movie that encourages people to spend their time reading books? Obviously the position of film in the minds of the world’s teenagers was in a much more secure position at the time.
Truffaut (wait — this lumbering, earnest, dour, leaden, humorless, stilted movie is directed by Francois Truffaut? [author shakes head vigorously, Bugs-Bunny style]) itseems, made this movie about reading books in order to indict what he saw as a greater evil — not book-burning or totalitarian government but television. One day, mark my words, there will be a video game about a society intent on destroying films.
The occasional sparks of cinematic interest, like subtle use of backwards-motion and the dead-end double-casting of Julie Christie as Idiot Harpy/Sparkling Intellectual don’t do much to raise the pulse of this movie. Its heart is in the right place, it’s just not beating very strongly.
By the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) Montag’s wife has left him, he’s burned his supervisor alive and he’s on the run from the law. He finds a commune in the woods (commune in the woods!) where the people memorize books in order to keep them alive until the dark ages lift. I always liked that idea, a little community where each person’s job would be to memorize a book. I always felt that if it came down to it, I would pick Samuel Beckett’s Endgame.