the prestige

the number of reflections in christopher nolans new film about the parallel lives of two rival magicians in 1890s london is mind boggling. there are mirrors and doubles everywhere you turn refracting and reflecting loves, hatreds, passions and ambitions. a film about destroying the person who hate by becoming him, capturing and making your own what was his, by stealing and assuming identities and in the process losing your own; about the line that lies between truth and fiction and our perpetual need to lie in between it.

the maze of mirrors is further maddened by the complex flashback structure that seems to be nolans forte. its all great fun throughout as mysteries are revealed and tricks are unmasked. but the real trick is when at the end nolan turns the mirror on the audience and makes them an integral part of the trick of the film. he even makes the inevitably ordinary end an essential part of the story. when the solution to such a great mystery was so simple it makes us wonder why we expected more? were we not wanting more.. magic perhaps? the trick, i assume, is to keep us there on the edge of the mirror between fact and fiction constantly trying to outguess the other, hoping that somehow somewhere there is more to hope for- something unpredictable by science as we know it.. god perhaps?