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Saturday, October 21, 2006

The Prestige

I saw The Prestige tonight. Not a bad film at all in many ways, but not quite perfect in its cat-and-mouse games with the audience. In particular, an excision of about ten seconds would have kept me from figuring out one of the big twists early on. The downfall of many a twist movie is being marketed and reviewed as a twist movie. If you're watching for it, half the fun is gone because part of you is no longer immersed in the flow of the film.

I've adopted a policy of not reading reviews of films of this ilk because the reviewers usually tell more than they should. Scanning a few reviews afterward, I saw that one of the major reviewers gave away a key detail. Roger Ebert is often the worst offender when it comes to giving away things he really shouldn't. I'm convinced it's because he knows his reviews will be recycled into movie guides and the audience for those is presumed to already know the key plot twists.

Anyway, if your film is about magic tricks and a narrator periodically asks "Are you watching closely?" it becomes hard, for me at least, to disengage that part of the brain that is always looking ahead and trying to figure out what will happen. This prevents the moviegoing experience from being a pure escape.


posted at 12:39 AM

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