Prestige Piece

I recently enjoyed watching Christopher Nolan's film "The Prestige". I find it rare that a movie will keep my interest for the entire running time, but when this one was over, I found myself revelling in all the intricacies of the plot and the precision of the performances. It provided a nice palate-cleansing sorbet for that afternoon's viewing of "The Spiderwick Chronicles", which tested my patience from the very first reel.
My fascination with "The Prestige" probably stems from my childhood fascination with magic. While I was never particularly adept at sleight of hand or card manipulation, I appreciated a good trick, and I remain a good audience for the better-than-average conjurer. This is because, in my youth, I was regularly called upon to "pick" my friend's tricks. He would usually spend an hour or two practicing on his own after returning from The Wizard, Boulder's downtown magic shop. Even if I had gone to the store with him, he would insist on this brief period of rehearsal before showing me his new illusion. I was the litmus test. If I could figure out how the trick was done, then he was due for a few more hours in front of the mirror before he was ready to trot it out in public.
From elementary school and into junior high, I served as the quality control for prestidigitation on my street. If I could see the flip or the switch, the bit was not ready for the stage, or the living room as was most often the case. I learned to ignore the misdirection and focus on the downstage hand. There was always a reason for a magician to stand awkwardly: it wasn't mysterious, it was just awkward and it was almost always hiding something.
I'm still a tough audience. Doug Henning and David Copperfield only impressed me with their willingness to spend money to create bigger and better illusions. Penn and Teller are infinitely more interesting to me, since they spend most of their act telling you exactly how they do a trick, and then right at the end kick it up an Emeril notch, and sending me scurrying to the possible explanations.
For a short period of time, David Blaine occupied this same spot, as he wandered around the streets of these United States asking people if they wanted "to see something weird." Somewhere along the line, David turned into more of a geek show than a magic act, and his stuff has become more tedious than anything else. And don't get me started on Chris Angel - Mind Freak. If you take away the eye liner and marginally hip haircut, you've still got the president of your high school's magic club. His image is his biggest illusion.
I look for the strings, watch for the trap doors, and am always suspicious of a dimly lit stage. Still, in the end, it is as Michael Caine's character says at the end of "The Prestige": "Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it because you're not really looking. You don't really want to know the secret... You want to be fooled."