That Old Black Magic

Our plan for this evening was to knock another of our movies off of the list. Throughout the day, as we vacillated between Avatar and Up in the Air, both my husband and I grew sicker and sicker. As we tried to plan the evening, we had to dose ourselves with Sudafed and DayQuil. Fighting against the inevitability of our surrender, we looked up showtimes at local theaters, while simultaneously pulling the blankets more tightly around ourselves. In the end, we could not but succumb to the germs taking over our bodies.

Therefore, instead of choosing something new and award winning, my better half and I perused the contents of our DVD shelf. I believe that we all have these shelves, filled with DVDs that we buy and then never watch. Tonight we sifted through over one hundred movies and television series to determine what exactly would divert us. The three finalists were Season One of The West Wing, Bridget Jones' Diary, and The Prestige. While I am an inveterate fan of Bridget Jones' Diary, and Martin Sheen will always be my president, The Prestige was something new for me.

First, please allow me to state that Christian Bale is one of the most grievously underrated talents of our time-he also happens to be out of his ever loving mind. The transformations that he is willing to undergo to play a part convincingly are truly worthy of either the name magic or insanity. This is matched in Nolan's film, however, by the lengths to which each man goes to best the other. It suggests a determination that perhaps only a man can understand. At the risk of sounding sexist, I believe that (by and large) only men can be motivated by this need to be the best. Whether it is truly a gender based ability (probably fostered by societal expectations) or merely a perceived tendency, the proverbial pissing contest plays out better between two Y chromosomes than it would if a woman were involved.

My husband and my first kiss was over Steven Soderburgh's Ocean's 11. Several years later, my mother in law became enamored of the french film, A Very Long Engagement. Each of these follows to some degree the pattern of laying out the clues of a mystery in a sort of visual striptease enticing the audience to guess at what lies beneath only to reveal in the denouement how wrong we all were about what lay beneath those frocks. Some folks that I knew could not suss out A Very Long Engagement by themselves; most had difficulty with Ocean's 11 the first time around. The pledge, turn and prestige of Nolan's film out flank them all. They leave the audience questioning until the last ball bounces, who is the top magician? Are you watching closely?