Reflections on "The Prestige"

"Now you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled"

I saw The Prestige yesterday, and enjoyed it much more than the reviews had led me to expect. Christopher Nolan is a superb director.

The ending is intriguing and not entirely obvious. So I've been reading a lot of posts about exactly what happened. The IMDb FAQs do a good job of explaining in broad terms what we see and where the main issues of contention are amongst viewers. But I wanted to post a few reflections on my reactions to the film, before I forget. So go away now if you don't want spoilers!

*** SPOILERS FOLLOW ***

Here are my four thoughts...

1. I guessed that "Borden" might actually be twins about halfway through, which was great because I could then appreciate a lot of the hints dropped during the film. It also meant that I found the tragedy of the Bordens' relationships with Sarah and Olivia very moving.

Borden: I love you.
Sarah: You mean it today.
Borden: Of course.
Sarah: It just makes it so much harder when you don't.

2. I wrongly thought that Cutter was somehow manipulating the situation to steal all three men's tricks. I'm not sure this theory really hung together, but I do think Cutter is a more ambiguous character than he seems on the surface. His motivations for wanting Tesla's machine and for betraying Angier at the end are not clear cut.


3. I didn't foresee that Tesla's machine might actually work. I assumed that Tesla and his assistant were pulling a fast one on Angier (with "Edison's men" being part of the con); and when we see (in Caldlow's flashback) two Angiers appearing at the same time I was amazed, even more so when the camera pulls back to reveal many drowned Angiers in tanks in the abandoned theatre. I loved this twist.


4. After some reflection, I love the film even more, because it is also possible that Tesla's machine doesn't work. The inability to choose between the two possibilities is delicious.

---

This fourth point is the one I want to linger on slightly.

One view is to take everything at face value, to believe that Tesla's machine creates a duplicate, which is drowned and disposed of at the end of every performance. This works logically, and is satisfying emotionally, in that the tragedy of Angier's story is that he doesn't know if the machine transports-the-original-and-leaves-a-copy or leaves-the-original-and-creates-a-copy-elsewhere. Every night he doesn't know if he is to die horribly in the tank or take rapturous applause as the prestige. The Angier that comes out of the show believes he was transported, but he has no way of telling if his life actually began just moments ago. Every night, the prestige thinks "Transported again!" Every night, the man in the tank always thinks "WHY AM I IN THE TANK?! I WAS ALWAYS TRANSPORTED BEFORE! WHAT WENT WRONG TONIGHT?!"

In this view, Borden is simply stumbling across what happens every night. The blind stage hands take the tank containing the drowned Angier to the old theatre, whether Borden is there or not. No-one knows but Angier. Cutter discovers Borden trying to free Angier and believes that Borden was responsible for the tank being there. Cutter is puzzled as to why the stage hands had been taking the tanks away every night, but later discovers the reason: Tesla's machine works.

But there is another view.

Cutter: You're a magician, not a wizard.

What if the story of Tesla's machine is simply fiction, written by Angier to misdirect Borden? In fact, why did Angier give Tesla his "diary" in the first place? Borden's trick baffles Angier, and Borden's fake diary sends Angier halfway across the world. So Angier decides in turn to create an illusion that will baffle and obsess Borden, and thereby gain revenge for the humiliation.

Angier: [to Borden] You always were the better magician. We both know that. Whatever your secret was, you have to agree, mine is better.

The film begins with the line "Are you watching closely?" and ends with "Now you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled". We want to believe the science fiction ending. We want to believe that we've just seen proof of a strange inventor's amazing duplicating machine. And emotionally we want to believe that this story is about the tragedy of a man who is so obsessed with magic and revenge that he drowns himself nightly. We're not really looking. We don't really want to work it out. We want to be fooled.

Angier: You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special... you really don't know?... it was... it was the look on their faces...

So how does illusion work then?

I don't know. I'm not a magician. And before the film I couldn't have told you how the tricks with the caged bird were done. So what do I know?

But it's far from impossible for this to be an illusion.

Firstly, Angier has a strong motive to create an illusion: the death of his wife, the humiliation of not knowing how Borden does his trick, compounded by the humiliation of being sent on a wild goose chase to visit Tesla.

Angier: The man stole my life. I steal his trick.

And again:

Angier: I don't care about my wife. I care about his secret.

Secondly, Angier has the means to create an illusion: He might, for example, have had waxworks created to be put in the tanks, hoping that Borden will follow them to the abandoned theatre and be mystified. He might have paid Root huge sums to have his features altered and to do the 100 shows without getting drunk. Root also has a motive: he was tricked by Borden into losing his lucrative gig, and tied-up and suspended on stage.

Root: Did you think you were unique, Mr Angier? I've been Caesar. I've played Faust. How hard could it possibly be to play the Great Danton?

Thirdly, events after Angier's return to London have the structure of an illusion, as described by Cutter:

The Pledge is the implicit one that that this is a magic show, like any other (with theatrics, trap doors and light effects). And yet there is a buzz that something more is going on: For example, there are only 100 shows; the impresario is apparently made to believe it is somehow "real" magic; the stage hands are blind; Angier does not allow his mentor Cutter backstage; and the ticket prices are astonishing. We are to believe that the explanation will be extraordinary rather than mundane.

Angier: No one cares about the man in the box, the man who disappears.

The Turn is the drowning of Root in front of Borden.

Judge: What a way to kill someone.
Cutter: They're magicians, your honor. Men who live by dressing up plain and simple truths to shock, to amaze.
Judge: Even without an audience?
Cutter: There was an audience. You see, this water tank was of particular significance to these two men. Particularly dreadful significance.

The misdirection is solidified in several ways. Root is no longer "mute, overweight, and... very drunk". Moreover, Cutter identifies the body in the mortuary as Angier. Even if Cutter wasn't fooled, he might have his own reasons for not revealing it was Root, such as not wishing to give away professional secrets, or loyalty to Angier, or blackmail. Furthermore the fake diary gives Borden a story of a real Tesla duplication machine.

And finally, the Prestige is Angier turning up at the prison. The man Borden saw die is alive after all.

In this view, the tragedy of Angier is that his elaborate illusion and murder - for an audience of one - is pointless. He gets the satisfaction of having fooled the hanged Borden twin, but here in front of the dying Angier is the face of his enemy, and his enemy's manner here suggests that he simply does not care about Angier's illusion. He has lost his brother and and he has lost Sarah, whom he "loves more than magic".

(By the way, and this is a really minor point, is that while I think it is likely that Angier set up Borden for the murder, it is also possible that he didn't. In the machine-works view, it is possible that Borden's arrival backstage was unanticipated. Angier might simply have taken advantage of the situation to let Borden hang. In the machine-is-a-fake view, Borden's arrival backstage was very much anticipated. It is the turn. But again there is no guarantee that it was part of Angier's plan for Borden to end up charged with murder.)

So which view is correct? The machine-works or the machine-is-a-fake? Each results in a very different interpretation of the ending, each tragic in its own way. I don't know. And it's not really the point. Nolan wouldn't have filled in the blanks of the machine-is-a-fake view for us anyway:

Borden: Never show anyone. They'll beg you and they'll flatter you for the secret, but as soon as you give it up... you'll be nothing to them.

The point is: were we even looking for a "mundane" solution? Wikipedia, for example, gives the impression that the magic is real, while IMDb doesn't question the veracity of the Tesla tale, even when describing alternative theories about the efficacy of the machine.

I believe that Nolan's film is illustrating the contention that we want to be fooled, and so we don't really look.

I didn't look.

Did you?

Liberal Democrat tribalism is the real danger

A Liberal Democrat friend was at a barbecue just before the AV referendum, and he was arguing (unsuccessfully) for a greater range of voices in politics.

"For example, I might not agree with everything the Greens want to do" he was saying, "and I certainly don't have much in common with UKIP, but a lot of people in this country do like what the Greens and UKIP are saying, and I think it's important those voices are heard."

There a little silence in the crowd, and then a cocky Labour voice quipped "I don't see why we need to hear the Greens or UKIP for christ's sake !!!"

Then Labour and Conservative supporters alike guffawed heartily in agreement together at the cheeky bravado of admitting to this in public.

I'm reminded of the pigs and the humans at the end of Animal Farm (oops, spoiler!)

And in fact we now know the AV referendum was won by an alliance of partisans, and not the gentle pluralists.

Don't you just hate the Labservatives? Don't you just hate all those who oppose progress? Don't you just wish a plague on both their unapologetically authoritarian houses?

Well, er... actually, no...

Over the past year, the Liberal Democrats have been on the receiving end of so much undisguised tribalist hatred that it sometimes seems impossible to ignore the bile. And the referendum and recent elections, gaffes and scandals have added to the misery. So it feels great to let loose a fusillade against the unprogressive majority.

But I think this might be a profound mistake.

It's true that despite being the junior partner, opposed on both sides by the sizable authoritarian elements within both the Labour and Conservative ranks, the Liberal Democrats are managing to be nimble about helping to encourage policies in liberal and social democratic directions.

There are many examples of positive achievements...

• the pupil premium
• the higher income tax threshold
• halting ID cards
• higher Capital Gains Tax
• the restoration of the earnings link for pensions
• the Great Repeal Bill
• ending the practice of imprisoning the children of asylum-seekers
• maintaining NHS spending
• prison reform

... and many examples of defensive achievements, in the sense of forestalling potential illiberal initiatives such as:

• more PFI
• enforcement of the Digital Economy Act
• new and worse kinds of control orders and imprisonment without trial
• upfront university tuition fees
• the enfeebling of local government
• another illegal war
• NHS dismemberment
• knee-jerk law-making
• secret support for torture

But this state of affairs is only possible (paradoxically) because of traditional Conservative discipline in following the party leader. Cameron, for all his faults, has set a mostly liberal Conservative agenda, and has been a man of his word in keeping to the Coalition Agreement. And this state of affairs is also only possible because the Labour leadership has decided to indulge in gratuitously oppositional politics, so that it has been easy for the Conservatives to maintain party discipline.

Coalition intensely irritates the tribalists within the Conservatives and Labour because it sidelines the Conservative right-wing and obliges Conservative ministers to negotiate formally with Liberal Democrat ministers rather than to make backroom deals with the authoritarian elements in Labour.

Of course, given the nature of Coalition, triumphs are rarely unalloyed. For example:

• It would be better to repeal the DE Act and start again, but authoritarian elements within Conservatives and Labour would resist this.
• The funding of Higher Education in England is a mess: there has been a huge leap in tuition fees; and while the repayment plan is better for students, it is far worse for the taxpayer. All parties are now however committed to the fees principle for this Parliament.
• Reforms of the libel and privacy laws are moving slowly, shaped more by the judiciary than politicians. Over-regulation of media activities is a risk. As too is under-regulation of media ownership.
• Conservatives and tribalists within Labour united to defeat the AV referendum.
• Conservative traditionalists and Labour tribalists will again unite to try to defeat the introduction of democracy into the House of Lords.

However, if the diverse authoritarian or partisan elements within the Conservatives and Labour were able to maintain common cause over the course of this Parliament, as they did successfully over AV, the liberal and social democratic agendas would be lost. Moreover, if the next election sees the (unwarranted) smashing of the Liberal Democrats, only the liberal and social democratic elements of the Conservative and Labour parties can keep alive liberal and social democratic influences over law-making.

So despite a good record in government over the last year (for which they will never gain credit) Liberal Democrats do not have the luxury of mopping up the middle ground by antagonising supporters of Labour and Conservatives. Liberal Democrats need to foster liberal and social democratic elements in the other parties. Building common cause, not indulging in tribalism, is the only way to keep these ideals alive.

It means looking for those at the barbecue who are not guffawing quite so loudly with Napoleon and Pilkington... those who are, deep down, a bit uncomfortable with a simple binary divide of all political thought... those who would like to hear what others have to say.


Credits: Photo "Kitbash Mercenary" by Shaun Wong

Not voting in the referendum? What's the worst that could happen, eh?

Right, first ignore all that guff from the YES and NO campaigns about MPs working harder, losers winning, 50% to win, some people getting more votes than others, safe seats, Australian surveys, swing voters, more coalitions, 1951, the BNP, £250m, more choice, Papua New Guinea, blah blah blah blah...

Well maybe don't ignore that stuff completely: there are nuggets of good arguments in there. But they're oversimplified and oversold.

But if you want to know why it's not cool to miss the referendum, you need to understand what's wrong with the current voting system, First Past The Post (FPTP).

The best account I've found is by Dan Snow. It's 3 minutes long. You can afford 3 minutes, no?




Or to sum up Dan's point in a picture:


(Sorry, I don't who created this picture. I'll credit them when I find out.)

So the problem is:
Under the current voting system a candidate is often elected even though most people prefer a different candidate.

So what? Why does this matter?

There are two reasons why this matters:

1. It means that, over time, people get more and more disillusioned with democracy. Why bother participating in a democracy if it's common for the person elected as your MP to be less popular than one of the other candidates?
2. In order to try to beat this problem, we've learned to vote tactically: "Don't vote for The Green Man (even though you prefer that pub). That's a wasted vote. You'll just let the Coffee Shop win." And so it is often rational to vote for a party that is not your first choice. Our votes are an attempt to second-guess how others will vote, to try to stop the candidate we hate. We're not free to vote for the candidate we really want, and so this again breeds disillusionment.

Our current crop of politicians have been successful under the existing voting system. Why should they want to change it?

Your current MP might be great. If so, you're lucky, and I can see why you might not care too much about changing the voting system.

But if you've ever wondered why so many people say "politicians are all the same", "they never listen", and "they're just in it for themselves", ask yourself whether this disillusionment with democracy is good for the country.

AV isn't perfect by any means, but it's better than FPTP. And if you don't vote for change on 5 May, it'll be no use complaining about "our awful politicians" ever again.

Coalition with the Devil

I'm really starting to really appreciate the Coalition.

Not especially for what it's doing. (Although I'm not knocking the pupil premium, the higher income tax threshold, higher Capital Gains Tax, the restoration of the earnings link for pensions, and the Great Repeal Bill)

More for what it's not doing.

A minority Conservatives government would have been able to win Commons votes thanks to the sizable authoritarian cohorts within the Labour ranks. Whatever the 2010 Conservative manifesto might have said, who knows what right-wing initiatives would have sprung up by now? A renaissance for ID cards, PFI and the DE Act? New and worse kinds of imprisonment without trial and control orders? Upfront university tuition fees? The enfeebling of local government? Another illegal war? Secret support for torture?

Of course Labour could have chosen to play silly politics by opposing all Tory bills on principle, good or bad. But if one believes (as I do) that this particular Labour tendency is motivated more by honest conviction rather than by low politics, it's quite likely that such initiatives, originated under a Labour government, would by now be becoming embedded under a minority Tory government.

Instead, the Coalition is constantly forcing the Conservatives to negotiate formally with the Liberal Democrats rather than making deals with the Labour authoritarian tendency.

This is such a good thing.

Of course this liberal moderating influence of the Liberal Democrats is making the Conservative Party a better party than it would otherwise be. That's good for the country. Not so good for the electoral prospects of the Lib Dems in 2015. And not as good for Labour in 2015 as it could otherwise be. No wonder Coalition upsets the tribalists.

But what are the limits of this? Should, for example, the Social Democrat Party of Germany have joined a Coalition with Hitler in the 1930s, to act as a "moderating influence"? No, obviously not.

So there are bound to be circumstances in which a shared programme for Government, mutual trust and effective inter-party communication are impossible to develop. Labour wasn't ready for Coalition in 2010, for instance. But provided the conditions are propitious, Coalitions can help minimise the chances of parties energetically pursuing sudden and under-considered brainwaves.

Coalition with the Devil? No. But Coalition with Occasionally Redeemable Sinners - that'll do me.

Why I think the Yes2AV campaign will fail

The Yes2AV campaign has the best of the intellectual arguments, the most thoughtful people and a timely anti-sleaze message. But I think Yes2AV will fail.

Having looked at the options carefully, I think the AV electoral system is preferable to the current FPTP system. Nearly everyone I respect politically also thinks AV is preferable to FPTP. The anti-AV arguments I've seen are nearly all spurious, weak or ad hominem.

But my gut feeling is that the 5 May referendum is heading for a No2AV result.

Why?

Firstly, many people I've come across simply don't care. Maybe that will change nearer the date, but I suspect not.

Secondly, even if they've heard some of the headline arguments, it sounds a minor, nerdy proposal that seems unlikely to solve the disillusion many feel about politics right now. Many won't turn up.

Thirdly, the No2AV campaign has deployed so much chaff about AV - a lot of it neatly collated in David Cameron's speech last month - that voting No will seem to many like the safe, default option when the arguments appear to be balanced. FPTP has a simple, familiar metaphor - the running race - for people to cling to. AV doesn't seem to have crystallised one. The interview panel? The X Factor eliminations? The pub that runs out of Carlsberg? It doesn't matter that FPTP is nothing like a race, or that the arguments against AV are actually pretty weak. There's sufficient chaff to obscure the clear advantages of AV and create worry.

Finally, many of the most tribal Conservatives and Labour supporters are in the No camp, for obvious reasons if you consider that FPTP favours tribalism. Such tribalists will use their dominant share of the newspaper market to affirm disaster scenarios if AV wins:

• "BNP VOTERS TO GET THEIR VOTES COUNTED MORE!!"
• "Do you want Nick Clegg in power FOREVER?!"
• "SLEAZE: PRO-AV OPERATION BANKROLLED BY COUNTING MACHINE FIRM"
• "87% of polling officers confused on AV rules, exclusive survey reveals"
• "Greens, SNP & Plaid to be wiped out, experts say"
• "UK TO BECOME LAUGHING STOCK IF PAPUA NEW GUINEA SYSTEM IMPOSED HERE"
• "Do you want a Parliament of second choices? WE DON'T."
• "AV WOULD GIVE BRITAIN NAZI-STYLE DICTATORSHIPS!!!!!"

This newspaper onslaught will happen either on the day of the vote or the day before, to minimise the chances of Yes2AV rebuttals or a thinking through of how realistic these scenarios actually are. Readers will either be stirred to vote No, or stay away so that they can avoid voter guilt if these scenarios were to come true.

As with all my predictions, the above is to be taken with a pinch of salt. I'm usually wrong in my predictions. So here's hoping my gut is wrong again!

Reflections on The End of Lost

Finally finished watching Lost.

(+++ Spoilers below +++ obviously)

The whole six series turned out to be slightly less of a shaggy dog story than I'd always suspected.

I cried, for instance, at the revelation that the ecstatic flashsideways events were simply Jack's limbo (or Heaven's Waiting Room, or however you want to interpret it); and then felt slightly ashamed at having done so, given the blatant contrivance. Rather than series-long teasing, hinting at deep parallels and ironies, much more satisfying, I think, would have been a 10 minute Last Temptation of Christ style interlude, as Jack lay dying in the Cave of Light, in which we're not sure whether the characters' lives were rebooting.

Nonetheless, by the end, we actually got some answers: e.g. the identities of "Adam and Eve", the cause of the whispering, the source of the island's power, Richard Alpert's agelessness, the purpose of the Swan station, the appearance of dead people, the nature of the smoke monster. But even these answers are ultimately unsatisfactory. What powers does the island's Protector actually have? Why did Mother behave the way she did? How was the cave constructed? Why should the donkey wheel, healing and time dilation work like that? Why are dead people appearing? Etc., etc., etc...

And many central mysteries - the "numbers", the "rules", the origins of the island's powers, the motivations of "The Others", the "infection", to name just a few - are deliberately left as mysterious.

Some people have decried the writers for making it up as they go along. To some extent that's fair. What might have worked neatly in two series was padded out to six; some characters and storylines struck a chord, others didn't, or didn't work out; and keeping the audience guessing led to several over-elaborate detours. But one has to admire the ambition of incorporating so many potentially profound themes within a mainstream show, whilst continuing to rack up the tension.

Part of the writers' skill in sustaining audience interest lay in selectively dripping answers while also striking out in new directions, without appearing to do so. The writers were somewhat protected from egregious narrative incoherence by their creation itself: a world in which all certainties are constantly undermined by the characters' propensities for deception and shifting motivations, and by hallucinations, ghosts and bodily impersonation. They were also aided in no small part by what ranks among the most effective use of music I've ever come across.

It's an incredible skill to keep the audience teetering on the edge, trying to avoid burning curiosity spill over into frustration. And leaving loose ends is not in itself a bad thing. Part of the fun of this show has been the wild speculation it permits. Moreover there's a justification for not explaining too much, in that one of the key themes of Lost was the tension between faith and science in grappling with a world full of events that might or might not be explicable by as-yet-unknown forces. It's not the forces themselves that were the point, but the characters' struggles to make sense of these events.

But, ultimately, stories don't add up to much more than something told in a beautiful way unless most mysteries and motivations are seen to resolve to a very small number of irreducible givens that one has to accept for the sake of the narrative.

The writers of Lost chose not to take that path. And that's why I say it was a shaggy dog story.

The Archers: Poor Nigel

It's all been said now. The speculation, the tweetfest, and the dissection of the 60th anniversary episode of The Archers are over.

On the whole, I think David Aaronovitch of the Times had the best post-mortem (as it were). Elisabeth Mahoney of the Grauniad was also very good. The Telegraph and the Mail were just nasty.

A few reflections:

Before the episode I was unsettled by Vanessa Whitburn promising an episode that would "shake Ambridge to the core" (#SATTC). I don't like spoilers. I think they ultimately damage drama. On the other hand, they can bring in new or lapsed listeners.

During the episode I felt that we were being teased. A number of threats were dangled, none too subtly, including the banner, Helen's health, Elizabeth's heart condition, Tony's drive to the hospital, and the emergency Caesarean. This made it hard to suspend disbelief.

I took part in the tweeting, which was great fun, but again helped to undermine the suspension of disbelief. Unlike some people, my enjoyment comes from pretending it's real, not from critiquing the craft.

Credibility was also undermined by the crude run-up to the accident - the alcohol, Lizzie's warning, David's "man or mouse" jibe, the wind, the frost, the wind, the dark, and Nigel's final melodramatic speech on the roof. I love The Archers and this episode did it no credit I think.

However, Nigel's scream, from someone we've followed for many years and who has nearly always been extremely calm and cheerful was, for me, terrifying:



I was definitely shaken by Nigel's death, if not the build-up, and I can see how the slow-burn repercussions of this event will indeed shake Ambridge for years to come. Mahoney's conclusion in the Guardian is spot-on that the "real drama will unfold from now".

One last thought: Everyone seems to hate Helen Archer (even Qwerty of the excellent pauseliveaction); but I think she's the most gorgeously self-destructive character on The Archers. She unwittingly accrues and generates misery relentlessly, and her story of constantly thwarted epiphanies is top-notch tragedy. Now that Ed and Emma Grundy have lost their zing, it's tragic Helen, scheming Matt Crawford and the deliciously dysfunctional Aldridges who are providing the best stories. But I suspect Lizzie Pargetter maybe returning to centre-stage...