The Fighter (2010) – Boxing and Skewed Family Dynamics

Article first published as Movie Review: The Fighter – Boxing And Skewed Family Dynamics on Blogcritics.

The Fighter (2010) is a boxing movie. That means you will be seeing some blood and some violence and some rope jumping and sparring. The more unexpected parts of this is probably the fact that so much time is spent on the family dynamics between the lead character Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his seven sisters, his manager/mother Alice (Melissa Leo) and his drug-addled trainer/brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale). The relationship between Micky and Dicky is fascinating, to say the least. Based on the true story of the welterweight fighter Micky Ward’s life, this is a story more about overcoming difficult circumstance and seeing at which point loyalty stops being admirable and starts becoming a burden.

Dicky Eklund squandered his potential as a boxer through hard living and drugs. As we enter the story we are shown how Micky and Dicky walk down the streets of Lowell, Massachusetts, where they are obviously well-known. They are being trailed by a camera crew that Dicky insists is there to show his come-back to boxing, when in reality the cameras are there to capture the life of a crack addict for HBO. The documentary exists, by the way. It’s called “High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell” (1995). The brothers are treated like local legends, like kings of the street. There’s a little mockery thrown in there, but it’s mostly good natured. Dicky, for all of how much he brags about once knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard, is more infamous than famous at this point.

Micky’s career is handled by his mother and that’s interesting for a lot of reasons, and there’s something there that subtly hints at a family dynamic of epic Classical Greek tragedy proportions. The fact that Micky loses several of the fights we are shown early in the movie due to bad decisions made by Micky’s mother and brother lead up to the inevitable break from the family. Dicky, meanwhile, gets into more trouble than he can handle when he tries to raise money for Micky to be able to train full time. Being that Dicky’s logic circuits are more than a little impaired due to all the crack he’s smoking, he goes about all that backwards, exhorting money and getting into a fight with the police that actually lands him in jail.

Micky meets the bartender Charlene (Amy Adams) and she points out that the management Micky’s been under doesn’t seem to be doing him any favours. At this point Dicky is in jail doing time for various misdemeanours and Micky actually listens to those around him who tell him it might be time for him to distance himself a little from his family to further his career. Eventually Dicky does come out of prison, clean and sober, and he gets involved in Micky’s training again, basically because Micky wants him to.

The actual boxing scenes are shot with the TV-cameras used at the time and that does give them some extra authenticity, this is a cinematic language you understand, if you’ve ever watched boxing. And, unlike other boxing movies, this has a sense of realism to it in little things, like the fact that you can actually knock your opponent out with a body shot. Also, the level of punishment Micky Ward takes in any given fight is astounding, to say the least. And true to life, which is what makes this worth my while. Any victory Micky has is eked out the hard way.

There is plenty of character driven humour in this, which is not all that surprising given the family the movie deals with. The seven sisters who line up and glare disapprovingly at Micky’s new girlfriend, the fact that Dicky thinks he can escape his mother’s notice by throwing himself out of the same second story window of the crack house where he hangs out, the poor harassed father Jack Ward (Jack McGee) who has to wrangle all those women… they all provide moments of some much needed levity, but you won’t end up laughing at them. The comedy is more subtle than that.

Christian Bale is the obvious scene-stealer here. He is doing a truly awesome job with a character that could easily have been simply annoying. You find yourself liking Dicky, sometimes despite himself. Mark Wahlberg’s Micky is the perfect foil for Dicky’s extreme extrovert. Where Dicky is loud, Micky is quiet and restrained. Other reviews make a huge point of Bale’s transformation, but overlook the fact that Wahlberg is thoroughly believable as a professional boxer, and a rightey, at that, when Wahlberg himself is a southpaw. He carries himself like a boxer in an out of the ring, which is no small feat.

What stays with you when you leave the theatre is the Ward/Eklund family and the excellent portrayals of the dynamic and the visceral quality of the actual fights as well as the warmth and humour that bleeds through the actions of the main characters. It is well worth watching for anyone who is the least bit interested in boxing and who doesn’t mind rooting for the underdog.

The Fighter (2010) directed by David O. Russel stars Mark Wahlberg (Micky Ward), Christian Bale (Dicky Eklund), Amy Adams (Charlene Fleming), Melissa Leo (Alice Ward), Mickey O’Keefe (himself), Jack McGee (George Ward), Melissa McMeekin (‘Little Alice’ Eklund), Bianca Hunter (Cathy Eklund), Erica McDermott (Cindy Eklund), Jill Quigg (Donna Eklund Jaynes), Dendrie Taylor (Gail Eklund), Kate B. O’Brien (Phyllis Eklund), Jenna Lamia (Sherri Ward), Frank Renazulli (Sal Lanano), Chanry Sok (Karen) and Caitlin Dwyer (Kasie Ward).

Rescue Dawn – You’ve got to run through the jungle…

Article first published as Movie Review: Rescue Dawn – You’ve Got to Run Through the Jungle on Blogcritics.

This movie is based on Werner Herzog’s documentary “Little Dieter Needs to Fly” (1997).

Lt. Dieter Dengler (Christian Bale) is shot down over Laos and taken prisoner, probably by the North Vietnamese, but what with the nebulous character of the jungle and the long strange hike he is first put through, there is no way of knowing for sure where we are as we enter the prison camp. There is a distinctly hallucinatory quality to the whole movie, but the very sense of un-reality actually brings this all closer to home. Dengler is captured in the jungle by irregular soldiers, treated with a random cruelty that seems at times to be only for the captor’s amusement, and then brought to the prison camp where the lion’s part of the action takes place.

The other prisoners have been interred there for upwards of two years. They are Duane (Steve Zahn), Gene (Jeremy Davies), Y.C. (Galen Yuen) and Phisit (Abhijati ‘Meuk’ Jusakul). You can sense the tension and the strange and inevitable coping techniques they have adopted to survive the harsh conditions right from the get go. The guards are in an equally remarkable shape. Here is where things start taking an interesting turn for me and everything acquires a taste of Samuel Beckett. Holding someone captive in these harsh circumstance pretty much means that the captors are equally locked in the situation. When there is no food, there is no food for anyone.

Still, it’s worse for the prisoners. Of course it is. They grow more and more gaunt, and their situation becomes more and more desperate. The prison itself is just a compound made of bamboo and rope, and Dengler starts making plans for his escape almost immediately. But, as Gene (Jeremy Davies) puts it “the jungle is the prison”. The irony of the jungle is that it’s very difficult to find water unless it’s the rainy season.

The prisoners are held in a bamboo hut and at night they are put in shackles which means they can’t even go to the latrine. They stay locked down until day and the only reason they can start working on an escape is because Dengler is clever enough to fashion a lock-pick from an old nail, which enables him to open their handcuffs at night so they can gain a little more mobility, if not freedom.

The struggle to remain sane here is compelling.

To my mind the really good war movies, or anti-war movies, as the case might be, are the ones that manage to portray the arbitrary nature of ones fortune in a situation like this. Random violence, random kindness, random good fortune, the difference the slightest detail can make for your survival and the inherent surrealism of the nature of conflict in general should all be represented in there somewhere. This movie provides all that. And then there is the jungle.

In a movie like this the jungle is a character in its own right and that is hardly surprising considering the director. Herzog has been fighting his way through the jungle for most of his career. He has the ability to show the sheer size of the jungle, how dangerous it is, how hostile and impenetrable and somehow that means the individual struggling through the green is more vulnerable and at the same time shown as persevering.

Dengler’s will to survive seems to be the only thing holding him together as he and Duane (Steve Zahn) struggle to stay alive and escape the prison of the jungle, despite fatigue, starvation and being pursued by hostile natives. Duane doesn’t make it out, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still with Dengler, though whether he is a ghost or a hallucination is anyone’s guess.

There is comedy and misery and struggle and pure absurdist moments that make this immediate and personal and intimate. I have seen enough of Bale’s work to expect a stellar performance, and I was not disappointed, all the way through to his speech patterns which are carefully constructed. I was, however, surprised by Zahn, who has mostly worked in a lighter vein, but who holds his own admirably in this movie.

There has been some grumbling that Herzog sold out with this movie and “went Hollywood” but I seriously doubt that anyone who watches this will think that it is like anything else they’ve seen in the genre and that is a feat in itself.

It isn’t the easiest thing to watch, but it is thought provoking and interesting and heartbreaking in the best possible way. It shows what life is “near the bone, where it is sweetest” to quote Henry David Thoreau and how much the individual can withstand when there is no other choice but to keep struggling.

Rescue Dawn (2006) directed by Werner Herzog stars Christian Bale (Dieter Dengler), Steve Zahn (Duane), Jeremy Davies (Gene), Galen Yuen (Y.C.), Abhijati ‘Meuk’ Jusakul (Phisit), Teerawat Mulvilai (Little Hitler), Yuttana Muenwaja (Crazy Horse), Kriangsak Ming-olo (Jumbo), Somkuan Siroon (Nook the Rook), Chorn Solyda (Walkie Talkie), Toby Huss (Spook), Pat Healy (Norman) and Farkas (GQ).

Mule

Public Enemies – Dillinger, fedoras and Tommy guns

Public Enemies (2009) directed by Michael Mann stars Johnny Depp as Dillinger, Jason Clark (Red), Stephen Dorff (Homer Van Meter), Channing Tatum (Pretty Boy Floyd), James Russo (Walter), Christian Bale (Melvin Purvis), Billy Crudup (J. Edgar Hoover), Marion Cotillard (Billie Frechette), Stephen Graham (Baby Face Nelson), Lili Taylor (Sheriff Lillian Holley), Giovanni Ribisi (Alvin Karpis) and Branka Katic (Anna Sage).

It starts with a prison escape. It is fast and vicious and goes badly wrong as one of the escapees gets shot and never makes it out, left hanging on to Dillinger’s hand while dying as the get away car speeds off. That sets the tone.

This is one of those movies that is going to leave people a little puzzled. I have had that feeling quite a few times when watching Michael Mann’s work. I had it with Manhunter (1986), Heat (1995) and with The Insider (1999). Mann has this obvious thing about surface and visuals and it snags your attention, but you have to be cautious about that kind of thing. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

In Heat there is a specific scene, just a flash of seconds really, where Neil (Robert DeNiro) puts his gun down on a glass tabletop. Ten years later I can call up that scene and that sound with almost perfect recall. It’s a matter of texture and precision and a certain indulgence on the directors part, I suppose. It didn’t propel the action forwards or have any meaning in the larger sense, but it still left an imprint on this viewer that won’t go away.

Here we are dealing with a lead character that a lot of people will have heard of, at least to some extent. We also have a cast of spectacularly good actors, like in Heat and Manhunter (which I still say is the better version of that particular narrative, despite The Silence of the Lambs). There is always going to be the sense that the actors weren’t used to their full potential.

It’s 140 minutes long. It could easily have been twice that to my mind.

The era, the 1930s, lends itself beautifully to the big screen. The guys are in suits and fedoras, the girls are in pretty dresses, the cars have running boards and the weapon of choice is the Tommy gun. If you’ve seen the still frames, you know what I mean. This is as visually appealing as Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

We are also dealing with “real life”, although many small facts have been altered to fit the narrative here better. Despite that anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the lead character knows that he was shot to death by the FBI, actually on the night of July 22 in 1934. So we know how this is going to end right from the get go.

It sets up a sense of foreboding and inevitability right from that first prison break. That makes this a grim story for a lot of different reasons. There is also less of a glorification of the bank robbers than you would expect. They take hostages on their way out of banks in order to not get shot at by the law, and even though they mostly leave those people unharmed, they still use them as human shields, which must leave them deeply traumatized.

The representatives of the law are likewise not particularly easy to sympathize with. Hoover seems wound extremely tight and his go-to guy, Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) is a very serious young man. There is a rather unpleasant scene where Dillinger’s girl Billie gets slapped around by a G-man, and that leaves you feeling a little nauseous, despite how delicately it is handled.

When Dillinger’s body was lying in the street outside the Biograph theater, many onlookers dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood as a souvenir. This movie doesn’t do that exactly, but it gives you that same sense of distance, surface and grim interest.

It’s not hard to like a movie as consistent and as visually pleasing as this one. There are some very, very good actors at the core of it, the beautiful and talented Marion Cotillard, Johnny Depp playing a more subtle character than I have seen him do in a while, Christian Bale being a supporting actor and so on and so forth with guys like Billy Graham and Giovanni Ribisi.

If you are looking for a caper movie or an action movie, this is not the thing to watch. This is more of a character study. Many of the locations, like the lodge at Little Bohemia in Manitowish are the actual locations where scenes from Dillinger’s life took place. Rumour has it shell casings from that gunfight between the FBI and Dillinger’s gang can still be found in the woods surrounding the lodge. As a character study, though, it takes liberties with the truth as it has been documented.

I highly recommend it, none the less. I recommend it for the obvious tension in the narrative, for the visuals and the stellar cast. My only caution is that the fewer preconceived notions you have of what kind of movie this is the better you will fare and the more you will enjoy it.

Mule

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation (2009) directed by McG stars Christian Bale as John Connor, Sam Worthington as Marcus Wright, Moon Bloodgood as Blair Williams, Anton Yelchin as Kyle Reese and Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Serena Kogan.

Let me just start by saying that the first Terminator movie was a pretty big piece of the puzzle for me as a younger animal. It was one of the first times I started thinking about the structure of movies and not just their ability to entertain me. I honestly don’t know how many times I’ve seen it, but it was lots. So I have no intention of pretending that I am in any way impartial in my opinions – not that I ever am, but still.

It was always about two things for me – the apocalyptic future, and I like a good dystopia – and the relationship between man and machine. So – for me the first movie might still have been better if they had cast Lance Henriksen as the terminator, like they considered at the time. He would have played it like a praying mantis, which would have been wicked awesome, but we have Arnold, and that’s another take on it.

T2 had lots of things going for it. Linda Hamilton’s portrayal of a woman with a badly fractured psyche and a young Edward Furlong caught in what may very well just be his mother’s psychosis. I had a hard time forgiving the last two or three minutes – the thumbs up thing just made me cringe.

We will not speak of T3. The less said about that embarrassment, the better. Sorry.

All the previous movies have given us the events in sequence, but there has always been a liquid quality to the passage of time in this narrative and there’s been lots of discussion about that. So this feels like a prequel as well as a sequel, which is actually kind of cool if you think about it. Here we get into the narrative before John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time. Kyle is in his teens and in danger and if he doesn’t make it then the future is reset again and you really can break you brain thinking about stuff like that.

Bale plays John Connor as a soldier and a good one at that. He still has people to answer to and the chain of command goes all the way up to General Ashdown (Michael Ironside). He is spare and intense and not pleasant, but that is what can be expected.

The story does not start with him, though. It starts with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington) being executed for murder and giving his body to science. When he wakes up a long way off from where he fell asleep, he is unaware that he has been rebuilt anew. They’ve let him keep his mind and his heart, though, and that alone is enough for the academic body to hit the ground running on the old Descartian dichotomy of the head and the heart, emotions and rationality. I won’t though, because I am trying to keep this reasonably short.

Marcus teems up with the young Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) and again, this is a good casting choice. He is a grey hound in a world where machines are out to kill people in general and him in particular. He’s got survivor written all over him and still there is a heart there. He keeps company with a young mute, Star (Jadagrace),  so we get a glimpse of his care-taking qualities.

I have to say, that is one of the things I liked about this version of the future. We get a populous that actually represents the young and the old as well, not only the strongest survive, but those most fitted to their environment.

The machines – they are the real stars here – to my mind. We get to see a variety of model T’s – and they show the typical development, they start out clunky and heavy and grow lighter and more efficient as the model develops. That is very clever of the writers, I think.

We also have the big HKs and the smaller modo-terminators, a motorcycle variety, and a hydrobot. We also have the huge, big enormous destroyers and the smaller spies. All of these machines have various insect-like qualities, many mandibles and arms and a carapace.

Skynet was always clever enough to work its way around mankind and you have to think of the plot like you’d approach playing chess against a computer. It will sacrifice and it knows every variable, every play ever made and you will find fighting it a lesson in humility. The basic plot is that Skynet is laying a trap for the scraps of human Resistance still out there.

The Marcus character does signal what it is right from the get go, if you know what to look for, like the ability to make anything mechanical run, and just the speed and stance and the beatings he survives.

So all in all, I like the premises of the movie, I like the blasted desert version of the future. I think the key figures, John Connor and Kyle Reese are well represented. I think they could have done a better job on following up the tradition of a strong female character, because the female fighter pilot falls into some of the typical traps of the action genre. It’s not enough to make her a soldier, that does not a warrior make, as we all well know. And the token cute kid is mostly just there for form as far as I can see.

Worse, maybe just because I don’t like the delivery, is the “take my heart” moment towards the end. For those of you who have not yet seen it I won’t spoiler the thing, but it rivals the “thumbs up” in pure cliché to my mind.

As far as the actual action is concerned I have less than no complaints, actually. These guys can blow stuff up with the best of them. McG has also made sure to reference the other movies in stylish shots, settings and a thousand other things (including the Gun’n'Roses song “You could be mine”) that makes my fan-ish side grin with glee. I happen to think the industrial site fights and the visual references (ah, the crushing of a human skull under a steel Terminator foot) work very well. It’s not lack of imagination, as some critics have suggested, it is homage. Homage is allowed, even if it is just an action movie, you know.

My overall impression is that this is the movie I wanted after T2. I might actually have wanted it after the first movie, come to think of it… That would have done interesting things to the ideas of time and narrative. But as things stand, it is a good movie, it is entertaining and thoughtprovoking, if you are of that bent and it is more true to the original concept than I had expected.

Also – there are explosions. Did I mention the explosions?

Mule

Harsh Times

Harsh Times (2005) by writer/director David Ayer stars Christian Bale as Jim Luther Davis, a former Ranger hourably discharged after six years of service. He is currently living in Los Angeles and wants a career in law enforcement. His best friend Mike Alonzo, played by Freddy Rodriguez, just wants a job so his wife Sylvia (Eva Longoria) will get off his back.

Jim has a girlfriend in Mexico, Martha (Tammy Trull) that he wants to marry and bring across the border. That is why he’s so desperate for work.

This is extremely fast paced, skillfully cut and very rough.  It gives an excellent impression of things spinning out of control, which they do for Jim.

While waiting to see if he’s been accepted into the LAPD Jim goes about his business,  which largely consists of petty crime, drinking, smoking pot, waving his gun around and getting his friend Mike into trouble.  Jim has the kind of bad dreams that you wake up from shaking, sweating and screaming, but insists that he’s fine.

Whatever his experiences were in the war they have certainly left him with a bad case of  post traumatic stress but judging from what his friends say about him he’s always been a little wild and this merely seems to add to that.

In comparison to the life Jim’s living in LA, the girlfriend Martha’s place in Mexico is very much a paradise. Low tech, few people, poor, but hopeful.

Watching Bale I am again amazed at how good he really is at this kind of thing. The Spanish is perfect, his accent never slips. He can portray a guy that goes crashing through five emotions in thirty seconds and lands at violence with diabolical accuracy. Jim loses control over small things, but remains disturbingly calm in the face of guns and violence, of which there is plenty.

His friend Mike only wants to get a job and make his wife happy, but you can see how he gets swept up in Jim’s wake. Rodriguez does a good job as well as the “straight man”, not that that’s a completely correct term here. But watching his reactions to Jim you can see how close to the whirlwind he’s standing and how it affects him. He comes close to losing his wife and everything he’s worked for as  a consequence of this friendship.

Right from the get go you get the sense that this is a downward spiral, spinning hard. Jim can’t wait to selfdestruct and the only question is how many he will take with him and that makes it painful to watch.

The brief respite Jim and Mike get in Mexico is as close to idyllic as anything can get, right up to the point where Jim’s demons take over. At that point he has been offered a job by the Feds as a “contact” in Colombia and he refers to himself as “a soldier of the apocalypse”. He has been adviced that he shouldn’t marry, so he’s going to have to forsake the only good thing in his life, Martha, in order to get a job.

His friends tell him that he’s making the wrong choice. It’s obvious to anyone that he’s making the wrong choice.

At the same time there is no way he’s going to be able to hold on to the normal life he thought he wanted, too badly damaged already. He makes the choice most likely to get him killed and even then it can’t seem to happen fast enough.When Martha tells him she’s pregnant, he snaps.

In the end Jim never even makes it to the training facility in Georgia, circumstance eat him alive before then. And it has some very bad ramifications for Mike as well.

All in all, this is a movie for those who don’t have a problem with violence and moral ambiguity, or a lead character who is actually not very likable. The dialogue is rife with derogatory comments on any- and everything, up to and including the law enforcement, which is not portrayed in a very favourable light here.

To me this movie stands and falls with Bale and Rodriguez. Had it not been for these two actors this could have been a total dud.

Mule

3:10 to Yuma

Director James Mangold has made an interesting movie in 3:10 to Yuma (2007). Russel Crowe stars as Ben Wade, Christian Bale is Dan Evans, Logan Lerman is the young William Evans.

The action starts in Bisbee, Arizona – and those of us who have an ill mind such as my own will remember that that’s where the Veronica Lake look-a-like (Kim Basinger) in L.A. Confidential was from. And that’s where Crowe made his Hollywood-bones. But I digress.

This is a straight up Wild West story. Wade is the outlaw robbing coaches, and when he gets caught Evans signs up to take him to the train in Yuma. The 3:10 to Yuma is supposed to carry him to the prison there.

So far so good.

Wade is by his own admission a bad man. He makes a point of it several times. That does not mean he doesn’t have his moments. Crowe is good at this sort of thing. He portrays a strong, charismatic leader who has the ability to make brutal decisions and kill without hesitation while keeping his eye on the good of the group. Wade does these things for his own benefit. And the guys who ride with him are all bad, bad men. They are kept in check like a pack of dogs by the alpha, being Wade.

Dan Evans is a family man trying to survive hard times on his little plot of land. He has been wounded in the war and lost a leg, but he struggles on. You can see the traces of hard living on his face and in his eyes. The family is short on money and even though Evans knows that it’s blood money he takes the only chance he gets to make the money he so desperately needs.

There is plenty of blood, blazing guns, horses and hard men in this story. Women are mostly staffage in the time honored tradition. And just like always we have the dutiful wife struggling on the farm alongside her man and the saloon girl living wild and loose. So any interaction of interest takes place between Wade and Evans. Seeing Wade sprawled on a hotel room bed (in the bridal suite no less) offering money in honeyed seduction to Evans if he would only let him go underpins the basic theme. Outlaw life is sexy in that dark and fucked-up way we know from tradition. Wade even wear a black hat. Evans refusing and being stalwart fits pattern too.

Caught between these too is Evans young son,  deep in the adolescent funk of living at home and working the farm he naturally gravitates towards the charismatic Wade and does not see the dark side of the life until he has been exposed to it. Logan Lerman does a good job portraying that interest.

Postmodern times take a certain toll on the imagery, though. We can’t really relate to cowboy movies the way we used to, not after Silverado,  The Proposition, Brokeback Mountain, Lone Star and all the others. There is just too much subtext for anything to be simple.

I enjoy the chemistry between Bale and Crowe. Bale portrays a quiet stubbornness and reluctant hero with perfect sensibility. Crowe is good as a quiet psychopath, all charm and venom. And the movie is beautifully shot and fast paced. It doesn’t bother with realism and that helps. In that sense it is more of a classical western. People get shot, electrocuted and knocked down and come out of it with maybe one handsome bruise.

And that is just the way it should be.

Mule

The Prestige – Illusions are everything

The Prestige (2006) is directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Hugh Jackman, Christopher Bale, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine and also has a wonderfully obscure David Bowie in the role of Tesla.

The two young magicians Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) start out as friends and colleagues working the magic circle of late nineteen century London under the watchful eye of the experienced Cutter (Caine). One night an illusion goes horribly wrong and Angier’s wife dies on stage. Angier and Borden become bitter enemies and rivals stopping at almost nothing to sabotage each other’s acts and lives.

The setting is frankly sumptuous. It’s a dream London where even the nasty bits look gorgeous. This could have been a price of baroque gothic if it hadn’t been for the stellar performances of the main cast. One of the best tricks to get away with a movie like this is to get actors who will commit to their roles. Angier and Borden are set up as opposites in almost every respect, including social backgrounds, but they share one overriding passion – magic. Or, perhaps more correctly, illusions.

The basic premise for watching a magician is what the poet Coleridge termed “the willing suspension of disbelief”. We all know there is no such thing as magic. Still, the illusionists job is to sow the tiniest little doubt and make us go Oooooh. This might take hours and hours of practice and any number of tricks and trapdoors and slight of hand. For me the biggest parallel is of course self-referential. Illusions and movies are the same thing. Keep that in mind when the veteran actor Caine talks of magic and it will all make beautiful sense – all the way to the end.

The McGuffin of the plot is the magic trick Borden uses in his act that Angier tries to replicate. Angier goes so far as to hire the scientist Tesla played by Bowie. And here you really have to let the suspension of disbelief get to work, but frankly I don’t mind. Especially not when Bowie as Tesla delivers the brilliant line “Exact science, Mr Angier, is not an exact science.” What Angier forgets is how deeply obsessed illusionists get – and Borden is no exception to that rule.

It’s difficult to speak of the actual plot of the movie without giving away the ending. And the beginning. And, actually, some of the middle bits… Suffice to say you can watch it twice and enjoy it twice. And it’s beautiful and masterly. Movies and illusions. Same thing. This one definitely makes you go Oooooh.

Mule