PRGAAMWA DVD Fight: The Illusionist vs. The Prestige

I though these two movies about magicians would have some similarities, and maybe be different treatments of similar topics. Was I ever wrong. The Illusionist is nothing more than a love story with a magician at it’s center. The Prestige is about magic tricks, competition and revenge.

The Illusionist is a very pretty movie taking place in Vienna at the turn of the last century. Everything about Vienna is very clean, including it’s people, who run around in impeccably clean and well ironed costumes. The Prestige takes place at about the same time in London, and is much grittier. London is a soot stained city and the people have a smoke stained look about them. It’s nowhere near as polished as The Illusionist’s Vienna and feels a lot like the Gotham City Nolan delivered in Batman Begins.

The treatment of the magic itself is radically different in both movies. Norton’s character in The Illusionist, Eisenheim, is assumed to have real magical ability, although at the end it’s revealed that he doesn’t; he just has elaborate trick mechanisms that can convince the audience that they’ve seen a ghost appear or an orange tree grow in seconds. His tricks are very heavy with CGI. The Prestige shows magic for what it is: misdirection, props and equipment. Angiers and Borton’s tricks aren’t as elaborate and pretty as Eisenheim’s, but they’re still pretty cool, and require no CGI.

Michael Caine has a line that was featured in the trailers for The Prestige: “He can do what magicians pretend to do.” He’s referring to Nicola Tesla. This is where The Prestige really trumps The Illusionist. While Angiers and Borton are competing, Tesla is in the midst of a similar competition with Thomas Edison, but theirs is a competition of scientific supremacy. Historically, Edison invented the light bulb, but Tesla may have been the better scientist. Keep in mind that, at the time, electricity was as close to real magic as anyone had ever seen.The Illusionist gives you everything you need to root for the characters, and The Prestige gives you none of that. It’s hard to root for either Angiers or Borton because they’re both such jerks. When you get right down to it, The Illusionist is simple and The Prestige is complicated. It keeps tricking you, right up until the end, which is why it wins this match.

The Pink Raygun Association of Associated Movie Watchers, Associated 2008 March Movie Madness Tournament Prize Pack So Far…”