I watched The Prestige for the 1st time since I've seen it in the cinema.
Sometimes, there are movies that make such an effect at their end, with a "twist" so impressive that it could be easy to discard them as being based solely on their final trick. That would theoritically make them totally inefficient when you watch them again.
Like a magic trick that loses all interest when you know how it's done.
As they say in that movie, "the secret is everything".
Then again, not always.
I know that the kind of magic I personnally enjoy the most is the kind that requires actual skill (like sleight of hand, for example), that makes it impossible for anyone to do it, if they don't put the efforts required to actually master the technique.
To palm a coin for example: you can know how to do it, if you don't work on the technique, you'll never be able to do it. That makes the trick still wonderful...
"Twist" movies can be like that too. The Prestige is one. Usual Suspect is another. Fight Club yet another. Memento, Following...
Movies that are so exceptionnally crafted that even when you know how they work, you can't stop but be astonished at how good they are.
You can start looking for the perfect tiny details, the hints that you were given that could have given the trick away when you didn't know it, but that you couldn't see, because "you weren't really watching". And they are plenty here: birds in cages, bouncing balls... All hinting at the solution, always obvious when you know it. It was all right in front of your nose and you didn't see it. You were fooled. Then again you wanted to be fooled. And all this makes that you still want to be fooled.
And there's also the fact that beyond all the trickery, there's something more. There's this wonderful and cruel tale of deceipt and revenge. And real and complex characters. A story that deals with issues that are profoundly human and that in a indirect way makes you think.
And also send a chill down your spine.
That's what makes movies special.
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