The Prestige (3rd post) ~ the world is solid all the way through

___________________________new The Prestive post: Ebert's rvw: good sum esp of beginning of film (the two chars working as fake volunteers in Ricky Jay's char's show, where Cutter is also working as manager~ illusion designer), int re actual magicians actually before he turns to the movie itself , Ebert's disappointment w the machine as real (sci-fi style) *not* an illusion.


The Prestige :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews

We meet two apprentice magicians, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, who work as fake "volunteers" from the audience for Milton the Magician (the invaluable actual performing magician Ricky Jay). They assist in tying up a helpless damsel, in reality, Robert's wife, Julia (Piper Perabo) and lowering her into the Chinese Water Torture box. Concealed by curtains, she somehow escapes, as Houdini always did, but one night, Alfred ties her knots too tightly, she cannot escape, and by the time a manager (Michael Caine) rushes onstage with an ax, it is too late to save her from drowning.

This takes place in Victorian London, at a time and place where seances & magic were believed in by the credulous.
Somerset Maugham's novel The Magician captures that period perfectly in its fictional portrait of Aleister Crawley "the most evil man in the world" who created the illusion that he really was an occult practitioner of dark forces.
These days, when most of us are less superstitious, it is the technical craft of a David Copperfield that impresses us. We see the trick ie the feat? done, but do not for a moment believe it what we see (as a trick-magic or as a feat? I suppose Ebert is saying the latter. we do not believe he is capable of what we he see him to be doing) is happening.
Houdini, the great transitional figure between "magical" acts and ingenious tricks, was at pains to explain that everything he did was a trick; he offered rewards, never collected, for any "supernatural" act he could not explain. performed by him or by anyone? I assume the first (weren't there any others performing tricks he did not know the secret of? *a magician is a man with a secret*) so did Houdini actually explain all his tricks? I take it he did...
The Amazing Randi carries on in the same tradition, bending spoons as easily as Uri Geller. (how?)
And yet in Houdini's time, there were those who insisted he was doing real magic; how else could his effects be achieved? Daniel Mark Epstein wrote about the Houdini believers in a 1986 issue of the New Criterion, which I read as I read everything I can get my hands on about Houdini. huh. hm think I gave away my Adam Phillips book that was re Houdini, right? probably had int discussion of the performances (along with their use as a metaphor, juxtaposition w psychological performance 'magic tricks'). The thing was, Houdini really did free himself from those fetters & chains & sealed trunks dropped into the river how?! he explained?, and survived the Chinese Water Torture drowning tank (an effect used prominently in "The Prestige" night after night). But there were those who argued his tricks were physically impossible, and thus must be supernatural.
Houdini would have been active at the time of "The Prestige," but his insights would have been fatal to the movie's plot, which is the problem with the plot. ~nah. his insight, that the world is solid all through, is the point-of-view of the movie. it is all tricks, devices, the creation of illusions. that's even still Angier's point-of-view at the end, his final speech.
Ebert just d n like that movie includes *the introduction* into this point-of-view of a machine wh can do sth previously not tht possible (transportation by-and duplication). so, right, the Real Transported Man is not an illusion: the machine actually causes Angier to appear on the balcony, transported 50 yards in 1 second. but this does not change the point-of-view of the characters. it is a new fact introduced, encountered by them.
One can imagine Houdini discovering a physical (as here, electrical) capability not prvsly known.
It is not made impossible to discover sth just because one does not expect it, does not think it will be possible.
that's my point, over against Ebert.

and of course, more largely, this goes to one of my old fvr points, my old over against almost everybody points: the world that includes such a machine is still 'solid all the way through' as much as it ever was. electricity. gravity. which Newton could not believe was actually action at a distance, and therefore posited a fluid medium conveying the action, despite having no other reason to conceive of such a medium, other than to save his notion that all action is mediate, is through apparent matter. but how is one thing moving another by touching it any less 'magic' than moving it without touching it? only in that we've seen the former, we are used to it. Chesterton: fairy tales say rivers run with wine to make us realize it's remarkable that rivers run with water. the boy blows a horn and the witch disappears, and we do not imagine that this cause & effect is sth we can understand. like any cause & effect, we can only describe. we think that if we have described a mechanism, we have reduced it to something non-magic. but we have only reduced it to something we are used to: this gear moved this gear. but how does anything touch, how does anything move anything? describe: this does this which does this. how? the final answer is always: because that is how the world is. how we find the world to be.
and we discover new aspects of how the world is -magnetism, electricity, gravity- and we may call these new aspects 'magic' until we have described the actions we witness in terms of aspects of the world we are already familiar with. and then once we have described, we say that it is simple, solid all the way through. and it is, just as much as it is not-solid all the way through. Newton wants to explain all force as a quality of 'matter'. but could just as well, and I even prefer (since thinking at it this way d n puport to be the obvious, nautral, only way), to explain all matter as force. (whatshisname: Boscovich? ~ force atoms) you feel the table because it resists you reaching your hand down through it. it holds the drinkglass set on it bcs of the same ~upward pressure. you see the table because of an effect it has on your eyes. your experience of the table is because of its powers, its force, what it does. or you can call this its 'thereness' but that does not make it any simpler. matter is force, force matter.
"beauty is truth, truth beauty." ~to mind as a parallel just of cadence, though I suppose if wanted to could make the analogy btw supposedly simple beauty-matter and supposedly underlying truth-force. what you suppose is (conceive of as) the apparent aspect and what you suppose is (conceive of as) the underlying aspect are not always (stimes there is a distinction to be made, a mask on a face, one really is the outer and one the underlying) but often the same. matter, force. appearance, truth. it is what it is.
what is, is. *that* is as close to a final answer as I always, always come to.


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imdb faq: Why do people suggest that the Nolans cheated in this film?
R.J. Carter, a science fiction author, describes being cheated more explicitly than Ebert does.
Carter's review of the DVD: "So why do I feel cheated?... Because after committing so much time and faith to the plot, I find out that the story is one of science fiction. Don't get me wrong: I love a good science fiction story; just tell me in advance." you want to know in advance if the story is going to include sth as possible that is not possible in our world. fair enough I suppose. I do note again that the characters in the movie encounter it in the same way we do, as sth they do not know & do not believe to be possible, until they encounter it.