Tuesday - Movies
The Age
Thursday August 7, 2008
The Prestige (2006)
Movie One, 6.20pmChristopher Priest is one of Britain's finest living novelists, rightly acclaimed by the late John Fowles and several others. He is perhaps best known for A Dream of Wessex and An Infinite Summer (much of it written while living in Melbourne) but many consider his masterwork to be The Prestige. As perfect a novel of the imagination as has been written (Priest is the true heir to H. G. Wells), it concerns two rival magicians in Victorian England and their battle to perform the ultimate illusion of human transportation. This big-budget Hollywood movie is the first feature-length adaptation of Priest's work and was directed by Christopher Nolan, maker of the latest two Batman movies (and Priest's choice of director). British-born Nolan has a similar interest to Priest in imaginative fiction, in creating almost surreal worlds that are still recognisably our own. On this occasion, however, Nolan and his co-scriptwriting brother Jonathan have proved not quite up to the difficult task of marshalling Priest's narrative intricacies into a coherent story. Disappointingly, they took the easier route and invented their own dumbed-down plot. It never feels believable, lurching from one disinterestedly acted scene to another. -- SCOTT MURRAY
© 2008 The Age