"The Prestige" and "The Queen"
Jan. 9th, 2007 11:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakTwo movies which arrived on these transatlantic shores with the usual delay: The Prestige and The Queen. One has Christopher Nolan directing and a fantastic cast headed by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman, the other is directed by Stephen Frears and also has a great ensemble, headed by the one and only Helen Mirren. Unspoilery: go watch both!
The Prestige is the third movie of Nolan's I've watched, after Insomnia (Al Pacino is a guilt-ridden cop, Robin Williams attempts to escape type casting as a psycho killer, and Alaska is truly eerie) and Batman Begins, and he's great both with the visuals and in coaxing excellent performances out of his actors. He's also clearly into obsessive types and unafraid to show the ugly, unromantic side of obsession, the slow draining away of humanity. The Prestige, a story about two stage magicians at the end of the Victorian era and start of the modern age, is based on a novel, which I haven't read, so I couldn't say how faithful or not it is, what was changed etc. But in terms of casting, it struck me that was with Williams as a psycho killer, Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman and the announced casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker, the way he uses Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman here is both designed to work with and against their image. Jackman is Angier (an alias as to not to embarass his family, as we're told right at the start, which it serves paying attention to), the upper class and charismatic showman; Bale is Borden, the working class and uncharismatic but definitely more talented craftsman. (Both are as anti-Wolverine and anti-Batman as you can get, incidentally, to name their actors most famous roles.) But that's not all they are. It's one of these films which, like The Sixth Sense, you might possibly enjoy even more the second time around, though I'd say the clues to that mystery of Borden's which drives Angier to increasingly vicious actions (which in turn trigger payback by Borden) are a bit more obvious. At one point, their mutual mistress tells one of them they deserve each other, which is true, with a caveat. The movie doesn't, until close to the end, root for one of them over the other - they both display engaging traits as well as callous and repellant ones - but one of them does cross ultimately cross a line the other did not, and as a consequence loses his humanity altogether. The supporting cast is fantastic - Michael Caine as Cutter, Angier's engineer and confidante; Andy "Gollum" Serkis and David Bowie as a wonderfully period team of scientist (Bowie) and sidekick (Serkis) which struck me as something Alan Moore might have invented. And the setting - that era of change, just when the world started to go electric - is used so well. In a film which by necessity often has to use the stage as a setting, you never feel staginess, i.e. that effect that sometimes comes when a play is translated to screen; as I said, the cinematography is striking. Definitely a movie I'll watch again.
From late Victorian England to the one just a decade ago:
Stephen Frears did a tv movie called The Deal about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before, and he kept his actor for Blair - Michael Sheen - and the same scriptwriter for this film, which deals essentially with the week following Diana's death. Like The Deal, it focusses on the two leads - in this case the Queen herself, played by Helen Mirren who deservedly won an award at the Venice Film Festival for this, and Tony Blair at the start of his time as Prime Minister - but unlike its predecessor, which arguably only fleshed out old Labour leader John Smith aside from Blair and Brown, offers the rest of the ensemble as three dimensional as well. One portrait it deliberately avoids is of Diana herself. She's present in newsclips, in snatches of those interviews and portraits played and repeated endlessly on tv following her death, but the script wisely doesn't try to tell us what the dead woman actually was like. Which isn't to say it doesn't play favourites, but in a very subtle way. I've read reviews before, and it amused me that while the New York Times thought it offered a skewering of the Royal Family, the Guardian thought, on the contrary, it was sympathetic to them and left one with the question "what on earth were we thinking back then?". My own impression was that it was balanced, with the balance slightly tilted in favour of the Queen, because all the anti arguments regarding her and her family ("emotional cripples", "retards", "doesn't have a heart" etc.) are voiced - aside from the actual tv clips from the time where bystanders are quoted - by Blair's staff, most of all Alistair Campbell and Cherie Blair, and as the first sees Diana's death most of all as a brilliant PR opportunity for his new PM and the second isn't exactly Mrs. Empathy herself, you're not exactly rooting for them. On the other hand, the film itself shows you that the emotional restraint chez Windsor can be chilling and close to dysfunctional as opposed to stoic and upholding, too, but subtly, in two awkward scenes between Charles and his mother; in the former, she makes the start of a motion to touch him but doesn't follow through, and in the second, he makes a pointed comment about Diana having been a wonderful mother to the boys, you know, warmhearted and physical. You can draw your own conclusions from that. (By contrast, the relationship between the Queen and the Queen Mother is presented as comfortable and supportive, though not physical, either.)
By and large, though, the stoicism of the Queen is treated favourably; a relic of a past age, to be sure, but the film is distrustful of the world of polls and emotional speeches which has replaced it. The use of Blair here is fascinating; in a way, he's the embodiment of the new age, and yet despite moments of exasparation ("where to they find these people?"), he's increasingly seduced by the old one as embodied by the Queen. There is an odd couple structure here, and even if you like the structure of a (one sided) romance; the script has Cherie Blair starting by asking whether his being impressed by Elizabeth is "a mother thing" and ending by saying resignedly that all Labour Prime Ministers ultimately fall in love with the Queen. There is certainly a process of wooing going on, not just for damage control regarding the increasing hostility Elizabeth's refusal to leave Balmoral and grieve publically for Diana evokes; he alreay has the public on his side, but he desperately wants the Queen to like him as well. Not just to do what he urges her to do, but to like him. There is a another not so subtext here; the film is aware of the contrast of Blair then (at the start of his rule, incredibly popular, hailed as the people's voice and what not) with Blair now and can't resist letting it become text by letting the Queen observe wryly that he'll find out one day what it is like to be hated, too.
(Incidentally, that equation is one of the few things I'd fault the film for: becoming unpopular because you're refusing to go publically emo over the death of your ex-daughter-in-law isn't the same thing as becoming unpopular because you help Dubya invade a country under false pretenses.)
As is the case with most of Frears' films, this one is very witty. There is the comedy-of-manners element, of course, right at the start (before Diana's death) present when the Blairs after the election make their first official visit to Buckingham palace, but as mentioned before, the contrast between the formal and restrained world of the Royal Family and the modern world (not just of Blair & Co., though of course mainly embodied by them), where it's first names, outspoken emotions and full force pragmatism all the way is deadly serious as well as funny throughout the movie. And Frears relies on his actors; James Cromwell as Prince Philip, with that gentleman's talent of verbal blunders, nonetheless never descends into caricature. An embodiment of the mixture of funny, serious and the tricky area of showing these people privatly without coming across as visual cheap gossip or idealising them: a scene where the Queen, watching in puzzlement yet another Diana homage on tv, says to Philip that maybe they were partly to blame, since they were both so in favour of the match, and reminds him that he was quite enthusiastic about Diana at the start. Well, says Philip, she was a nice girl then, and besides, he thought Charles would either fall out of love with "the other one" or that Diana would adjust to her presence, because that's what women do. Whereupon he gets A Look from his wife. (Helen Mirren is a goddess.) Nothing more is said or hinted at, but you can draw your conclusions if you like.
(Oh, and my favourite black humour moment? When the Queen's secretary, trying to be tactful in the presence of the Queen Mother, says that Diana's funeral will be modelled on "Tray Bridge", whereupon the Queen Mother says, bewildered and a bit hurt, "but Tray Bridge is the code name for my funeral".)
Someone we see but not hear are "the boys", as they are usually referenced to, and it's done in a tactful way; we see them with their father and their grandfather, but usually at a distance or through a just opened or closing door. Which helps with the whole thing not feeling intrusive, since "the boys" are surely the ones with the greatest right to object. As with the camera drawing back and showing us Helen Mirren from behind, not in front, at the one moment where the Queen - when alone - ultimately does allow herself to cry (not necessarily about Diana herself as much as the whole disaster before and after), the film ultimately made at least this member of the audience feel that the Queen has a point: grief is better treated as a private thing.
The Prestige is the third movie of Nolan's I've watched, after Insomnia (Al Pacino is a guilt-ridden cop, Robin Williams attempts to escape type casting as a psycho killer, and Alaska is truly eerie) and Batman Begins, and he's great both with the visuals and in coaxing excellent performances out of his actors. He's also clearly into obsessive types and unafraid to show the ugly, unromantic side of obsession, the slow draining away of humanity. The Prestige, a story about two stage magicians at the end of the Victorian era and start of the modern age, is based on a novel, which I haven't read, so I couldn't say how faithful or not it is, what was changed etc. But in terms of casting, it struck me that was with Williams as a psycho killer, Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman and the announced casting of Heath Ledger as the Joker, the way he uses Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman here is both designed to work with and against their image. Jackman is Angier (an alias as to not to embarass his family, as we're told right at the start, which it serves paying attention to), the upper class and charismatic showman; Bale is Borden, the working class and uncharismatic but definitely more talented craftsman. (Both are as anti-Wolverine and anti-Batman as you can get, incidentally, to name their actors most famous roles.) But that's not all they are. It's one of these films which, like The Sixth Sense, you might possibly enjoy even more the second time around, though I'd say the clues to that mystery of Borden's which drives Angier to increasingly vicious actions (which in turn trigger payback by Borden) are a bit more obvious. At one point, their mutual mistress tells one of them they deserve each other, which is true, with a caveat. The movie doesn't, until close to the end, root for one of them over the other - they both display engaging traits as well as callous and repellant ones - but one of them does cross ultimately cross a line the other did not, and as a consequence loses his humanity altogether. The supporting cast is fantastic - Michael Caine as Cutter, Angier's engineer and confidante; Andy "Gollum" Serkis and David Bowie as a wonderfully period team of scientist (Bowie) and sidekick (Serkis) which struck me as something Alan Moore might have invented. And the setting - that era of change, just when the world started to go electric - is used so well. In a film which by necessity often has to use the stage as a setting, you never feel staginess, i.e. that effect that sometimes comes when a play is translated to screen; as I said, the cinematography is striking. Definitely a movie I'll watch again.
From late Victorian England to the one just a decade ago:
Stephen Frears did a tv movie called The Deal about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before, and he kept his actor for Blair - Michael Sheen - and the same scriptwriter for this film, which deals essentially with the week following Diana's death. Like The Deal, it focusses on the two leads - in this case the Queen herself, played by Helen Mirren who deservedly won an award at the Venice Film Festival for this, and Tony Blair at the start of his time as Prime Minister - but unlike its predecessor, which arguably only fleshed out old Labour leader John Smith aside from Blair and Brown, offers the rest of the ensemble as three dimensional as well. One portrait it deliberately avoids is of Diana herself. She's present in newsclips, in snatches of those interviews and portraits played and repeated endlessly on tv following her death, but the script wisely doesn't try to tell us what the dead woman actually was like. Which isn't to say it doesn't play favourites, but in a very subtle way. I've read reviews before, and it amused me that while the New York Times thought it offered a skewering of the Royal Family, the Guardian thought, on the contrary, it was sympathetic to them and left one with the question "what on earth were we thinking back then?". My own impression was that it was balanced, with the balance slightly tilted in favour of the Queen, because all the anti arguments regarding her and her family ("emotional cripples", "retards", "doesn't have a heart" etc.) are voiced - aside from the actual tv clips from the time where bystanders are quoted - by Blair's staff, most of all Alistair Campbell and Cherie Blair, and as the first sees Diana's death most of all as a brilliant PR opportunity for his new PM and the second isn't exactly Mrs. Empathy herself, you're not exactly rooting for them. On the other hand, the film itself shows you that the emotional restraint chez Windsor can be chilling and close to dysfunctional as opposed to stoic and upholding, too, but subtly, in two awkward scenes between Charles and his mother; in the former, she makes the start of a motion to touch him but doesn't follow through, and in the second, he makes a pointed comment about Diana having been a wonderful mother to the boys, you know, warmhearted and physical. You can draw your own conclusions from that. (By contrast, the relationship between the Queen and the Queen Mother is presented as comfortable and supportive, though not physical, either.)
By and large, though, the stoicism of the Queen is treated favourably; a relic of a past age, to be sure, but the film is distrustful of the world of polls and emotional speeches which has replaced it. The use of Blair here is fascinating; in a way, he's the embodiment of the new age, and yet despite moments of exasparation ("where to they find these people?"), he's increasingly seduced by the old one as embodied by the Queen. There is an odd couple structure here, and even if you like the structure of a (one sided) romance; the script has Cherie Blair starting by asking whether his being impressed by Elizabeth is "a mother thing" and ending by saying resignedly that all Labour Prime Ministers ultimately fall in love with the Queen. There is certainly a process of wooing going on, not just for damage control regarding the increasing hostility Elizabeth's refusal to leave Balmoral and grieve publically for Diana evokes; he alreay has the public on his side, but he desperately wants the Queen to like him as well. Not just to do what he urges her to do, but to like him. There is a another not so subtext here; the film is aware of the contrast of Blair then (at the start of his rule, incredibly popular, hailed as the people's voice and what not) with Blair now and can't resist letting it become text by letting the Queen observe wryly that he'll find out one day what it is like to be hated, too.
(Incidentally, that equation is one of the few things I'd fault the film for: becoming unpopular because you're refusing to go publically emo over the death of your ex-daughter-in-law isn't the same thing as becoming unpopular because you help Dubya invade a country under false pretenses.)
As is the case with most of Frears' films, this one is very witty. There is the comedy-of-manners element, of course, right at the start (before Diana's death) present when the Blairs after the election make their first official visit to Buckingham palace, but as mentioned before, the contrast between the formal and restrained world of the Royal Family and the modern world (not just of Blair & Co., though of course mainly embodied by them), where it's first names, outspoken emotions and full force pragmatism all the way is deadly serious as well as funny throughout the movie. And Frears relies on his actors; James Cromwell as Prince Philip, with that gentleman's talent of verbal blunders, nonetheless never descends into caricature. An embodiment of the mixture of funny, serious and the tricky area of showing these people privatly without coming across as visual cheap gossip or idealising them: a scene where the Queen, watching in puzzlement yet another Diana homage on tv, says to Philip that maybe they were partly to blame, since they were both so in favour of the match, and reminds him that he was quite enthusiastic about Diana at the start. Well, says Philip, she was a nice girl then, and besides, he thought Charles would either fall out of love with "the other one" or that Diana would adjust to her presence, because that's what women do. Whereupon he gets A Look from his wife. (Helen Mirren is a goddess.) Nothing more is said or hinted at, but you can draw your conclusions if you like.
(Oh, and my favourite black humour moment? When the Queen's secretary, trying to be tactful in the presence of the Queen Mother, says that Diana's funeral will be modelled on "Tray Bridge", whereupon the Queen Mother says, bewildered and a bit hurt, "but Tray Bridge is the code name for my funeral".)
Someone we see but not hear are "the boys", as they are usually referenced to, and it's done in a tactful way; we see them with their father and their grandfather, but usually at a distance or through a just opened or closing door. Which helps with the whole thing not feeling intrusive, since "the boys" are surely the ones with the greatest right to object. As with the camera drawing back and showing us Helen Mirren from behind, not in front, at the one moment where the Queen - when alone - ultimately does allow herself to cry (not necessarily about Diana herself as much as the whole disaster before and after), the film ultimately made at least this member of the audience feel that the Queen has a point: grief is better treated as a private thing.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 10:37 am (UTC)Fabulous wasn't it. We're very keen to watch it again and pick up on the clues we missed the first time round (though I did remember about Angier being a stage name *g*). What really impressed me was that I was never for a moment confused by the shifting backwards and forwards in time narration despite all the other tricks that were going on. Christopher Nolan is definitely one of those directors where I'll go and see a film on the strength of his name alone.
I haven't seen The Queen yet, but you make it sound really fascinating. I thought the period after Diana's death was completely insane so it will be interesting to see it through the eyes of a film-maker.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:18 pm (UTC)I thought the period after Diana's death was completely insane so it will be interesting to see it through the eyes of a film-maker.
I think you'll be impressed, but then, Stephen Frears is another director whose films I tend to watch on the strength of his name (though in this case, Helen Mirren was another inducement).
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 11:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 12:35 pm (UTC)(SPOILERY)
About the Transported Man, another good metaphor - Angier says he would never know if he would wake up in the box or onstage. Does he remain the same person throughout, do you think? Or does it even matter, as Tesla says "They're ALL your hat"? Good evidence at any rate of Angier's escalating ability to kill himself, from shying away to being able to do it many, many times.
Full o' Spoilers
Date: 2007-01-09 05:47 pm (UTC)Yes, multiple suicide and multiple murder.
What I also find extremely well done is how the doppelganger theme plays out. Angier's first one, Root, would even have stopped working out if Borden hadn't interfered because Angier couldn't stand not being able to take the applause. "Nobody cares about the man below the stage." Whereas the reason nobody ever suspected the Borden twins of not being one person and why that act worked was that they really could share everything, as fucked up as that was, that not one of them got the applause/success and the other didn't but both did (and both took turns as the guy in the shadows). And that's why Angier didn't suspect - he couldn't imagine someone being voluntarily the man below stage and sharing the applause. Which results in the man below stage finally finishing him of.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 01:21 pm (UTC)Oh, and it's not Peter Mandelson you mean, who's not in the credits; it's Alastair Campbell, Blairite spin-doctor-in-chief.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 01:34 pm (UTC)I wasn't there, but I had two grandmothers who insisted on watching all the time, and since they were both staying with us because my father has his birthday on Sep. 6th, Diana's funeral day, what I remember most of all was his massive effort to drag the grannies away from the tv...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 01:45 pm (UTC)Funnily enough, the day of the funeral I was in Weimar with a friend, and I recall staying in the hotel room (the Dorotheenhof, strongly recommended) watching TV until about 11:00 am, when we decided we REALLY weren't there to look at a silly screen, and tore ourselves to go out visiting (I love Weimar.) Finally got home arund 9:00 pm and guess what was playing in a loop on CNN? Yup, Elton John singing Goodbye English Rose, the Westmister Abbey madness, etc. In a loop.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 06:58 pm (UTC)As for "The Queen" - I hadn't even heard of this movie before but now I want very much to see it!
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-10 02:18 am (UTC)Tesla is endlessly fascinating.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-11 05:08 pm (UTC)YES. Everyone must do this, OMG.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:25 pm (UTC)I liked "The Prestige" though it didn't translate into "love" the way I thought it would -- it was one of those films that felt like it should have hit all my kinks and didn't quite. So you haven't seen "Memento"? It's still my favorite of Nolan's films, probably.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:34 pm (UTC)And if you saw it dubbed, I think, you were deprived of a clue. Angier speaks with an American accent and I remember thinking it was odd that they had made the character American -- and then it turned out to be a fake identity.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:40 pm (UTC)I didn't get the Logan impression, but then again, I do agree Christian Bale, despite less make-up, is completely free of Batman associations.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 07:47 pm (UTC)*fangirls your icon*
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 09:30 pm (UTC)Also, you're both wrong: the most awesome image AXM #17 has is Kitty with the axe in Peter's brain.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 09:31 pm (UTC)