The Prestige - 4.5 / The Illusionist - 6.5

The comparisons are inevitable: Both newcomer Neil Burger’s The Illusionist and Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige feature Victorian-era magicians, testerone-driven rivalries, hapless heroines, and twisty-turny outcomes.  They also happen to star two of today’s best actors, Edward Norton and Christian Bale, who share the rare ability to transform any career choice into something worth seeing.  With the larger budget, glitzier cast, and Nolan’s past successes with Memento (2000) and Batman Begins (2005), The Prestige would seem to have the upper hand here.  Unfortunately, Nolan appears to have forgotten what it was that made Memento such a remarkable success: Not the thrill alone of its climactic revelation, so much as what the twist meant for that film’s hero.  When Memento reveals its hand, its hero, Leonard (played so wonderfully by Guy Pearce), has already earned our sympathy, which makes the final scene - in which we see him slip back into his doomed forgetfulness - truly heartbreaking.  The Prestige aspires to a similar level of tragedy, but like a comedian too impatient to work up to his punchline, it barely skims the surface of its narrative backstory before rushing into the machinations of its climax.  Memento’s depth of emotion was a rare feat for a film so clever, and one that The Prestige resoundingly fails to reproduce.

Nolan barely wastes time establishing the rivalry between Bale’s Alfred Borden and Hugh Jackman’s Roger Angier (Borden indirectly kills Angier’s wife during a performance, but come on, the bitch basically brings it on herself) before the two magicians are waging an increasingly ridiculous battle of magic tricks, loading prop guns with real bullets, stealing each other’s secrets, and reviving real-life historical figures - in this case, Nikola Tesla, played by a frighteningly well-preserved David Bowie - to account for some highly dubious science fiction.  Throughout, Jackman doesn’t act so much as wish really, really hard that he could, so the task of carrying the film falls squarely on Bale, who bravely subverts his physical gorgeousness with a raw, slightly unpleasant intensity, like a hunter coaxing his prey.  Still, even he can’t save the film from its paper-thin character development, sagging middle chapters, and over-long finale.  To quote the film itself, it’s a prime example of a work whose reach exceeds its grasp.

The Illusionist, on the other hand, enjoys an “Honorable Mention”-level of success by setting its sights relatively low: It features a dirt-simple love story, a bloodless rivalry, and a painless “twist” that should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the basic science of potions circa Romeo & Juliet.  Norton plays the fictitious Viennese magician Eisenheim, who finds himself the rival of the Crown Prince Leopold (perennial sourpuss Rufus Sewell) for the affections of his childhood friend, Sophie (played for no good reason at all by Jessica Biel).  The magic here is much more of the polite, garden-party variety than The Prestige’s violent mad-science, but it’s perfectly at home in the film’s dollhouse scale.  Norton’s deceptive delicateness is also an ideal fit for Eisenheim’s quick-handed magic and sly charm, and the film has a pretty, turn-of-the-century patina to it that leaves a dreamy, pleasant impression.  Both films are easily passable, but The Illusionist remains a welcome alternative to the thudding soullessness of its rival this movie season, even if its pleasures are light and forgettable as air.