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prestigitation
Wednesday, 21 February 2007 11:31 amWith typical wibbly ambivalence, I both love and hate stage magic. I love the willing suspension of disbelief, the way in which a master magician can sweep the audience up, temporarily, into a moment's soaring participation in the possibility of the impossible. I love the skill, the craftedness of the moment, and the idea that someone could pour all that obsessive time and dedication into becoming wonderful at precise, specific, fiendishly difficult actions in the service of illusion and spectacle so removed from anything of significance in the real world. I love the sheer, bravura, human ingenuity of the tricks, but if I try to guess how a trick is done, it's always after the fact, not during the moment. During the moment, I'd rather believe in magic.
But I also live the experience in horrible tension between desire to succumb to the illusion, and fear that it'll somehow go wrong - I suppose, that technical gremlins or a moment's inexcellence on the part of the magician will burst my magic bubble. In a strange way, the skill and abstract ingenuity of the trick is such a perfect pleasure that I continually fear a merely mortal magician will never live up to it; the pleasure of the completed illusion is always tinged with relief. As a result of this, you may well imagine that seeing The Prestige last night was, while an enjoyable experience of a very good film, not an entirely unalloyed pleasure. ( Further (spoilery) analysis follows. Do not read unless you're the kind of person who likes to know how a magic trick is done. )
Prestige came attached to the trailer for Music & Lyrics, which, while it's a fluffy romcom HughGrantMobile I will probably live content having never seen, does contain scenes of big-hair cheesy 80s pop which are nostalgically irresistible to one of my vintage. Courtesy of Whatever, a scarily realistic fake 80s pop video, notable not only for its loving parody of the time, but for the rather attractive spectacle of Hugh Grant taking the mickey out of himself.
But I also live the experience in horrible tension between desire to succumb to the illusion, and fear that it'll somehow go wrong - I suppose, that technical gremlins or a moment's inexcellence on the part of the magician will burst my magic bubble. In a strange way, the skill and abstract ingenuity of the trick is such a perfect pleasure that I continually fear a merely mortal magician will never live up to it; the pleasure of the completed illusion is always tinged with relief. As a result of this, you may well imagine that seeing The Prestige last night was, while an enjoyable experience of a very good film, not an entirely unalloyed pleasure. ( Further (spoilery) analysis follows. Do not read unless you're the kind of person who likes to know how a magic trick is done. )
Prestige came attached to the trailer for Music & Lyrics, which, while it's a fluffy romcom HughGrantMobile I will probably live content having never seen, does contain scenes of big-hair cheesy 80s pop which are nostalgically irresistible to one of my vintage. Courtesy of Whatever, a scarily realistic fake 80s pop video, notable not only for its loving parody of the time, but for the rather attractive spectacle of Hugh Grant taking the mickey out of himself.
 | Bunny Threat Level: notwithstanding, or possibly because of, the arrival of a new volume of Angela Carter criticism yesterday: low. |
