Genre: Horror
Premise: A young priest who does not believe in the Devil travels to Rome to study at an Exorcism School.
About: Oh yeah baby. It’s Halloween Week! Why the hell was I thinking of reviewing Wanderlust on Halloween Week? Instead I’ve decided to review a more appropriate script, The Rite. The Rite will star Anthony Hopkins, Alice Braga, and an unknown actor in the starring role (at least he’s unknown to me). It’s directed by Michael Hafstrom, who directed 2007’s fun Steven King adaptation, 1408. Michael Petroni adapted the screenplay from a book by Matt Baglio. In 1994, Petroni moved to Los Angeles to study screenwriting at the AFI Conservatory, graduating in 1996. While at AFI, he wrote and directed his first feature, Till Human Voices Wake Us, starring Guy Pearce and Helena Bonham Carter. He also wrote The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys and the new upcoming Narnia flick, The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader.
Writer: Michael Petroni (based on the book by Matt Baglio)
Details: 123 pages – April 2008 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

No offense to some of the recent writers whose scripts I’ve reviewed, but man can you tell when someone knows how to write. Writing isn’t about dictating real life events word for word. It’s about constructing those events in a dramatically entertaining way for an audience. It’s about knowing when to step on the gas and when to ease up. It’s about ratcheting up the conflict when the audience wants it, and keeping it subtle in the meantime. Yesterday my reading experience was pure frustration. I kept thinking, “Is this good and I’m just not getting it?” Today reminded me what real writing reads like.

These days, all you need to do is look around to see to see how many people are acting out their most sinful thoughts. We’re devolving as a species, and the devil is using it as a means to get inside of us. Over 500,000 possessions were reported last year. Priests are our last line of defense against this growing problem. For that reason, in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI instructed all bishops of the Catholic Church to appoint an exorcist in every diocese world wide. But before these exorcists can operate, someone has to teach them.

Thomas is an intelligent 24 year old embalmer for his father’s lifelong business, a funeral home. Close to retirement, he wants Thomas to take over when he leaves. But Thomas has other plans. He wants to get an education. He wants to live a normal life.

But a normal life requires schooling, and his father has made it clear that you don’t need an education to run a funeral home. If Thomas is going to go to school, he’ll need to find the money himself. That’s when he comes up with a plan. If you pledge your life to God, the church will pay for your education. In a move that would surely guarantee his spot in Hell if Thomas believed in such a place, Thomas plans to get his four years of education, then, before taking his vows, say “thanks but no thanks.”

As the climax for his plan approaches, one of the priests sees Thomas perform an amazing act of God without a shred of fear. He believes Thomas is destined for bigger things and suggests he consider becoming an exorcist. Thomas is reluctant, but the priest convinces him to go to Exorcism School in Rome for two months. If he doesn’t like it, he’s lost nothing.

Once at this school, Thomas is thrust into lectures about exorcism protocol, exorcism subjects, and the spookiest of the teachings, documentation of past exorcisms. But even the most spectacular of cases – and some are truly horrifying – are yawn-inducing as far as Thomas is concerned. He knows there’s a rational explanation behind everything and all this nonsense about God and the Devil are clouding these priests’ ability to judge.

The head priest senses Thomas’ skepticism and decides to send him off to one of their more “unorthodox” priests who does his work off-campus.

Indeed Father Carmine lives by his own code. There’s a protocol to go through before performing exorcisms. You have to see if a patient is mentally unstable. You have to rule out multiple personalities or trauma or psychological issues. Carmine couldn’t care less about that shit. If he thinks someone’s possessed, it’s time to slam a cross onto their forehead and batter them with the word of God.

It just so happens Thomas walks in during one of Father Carmine’s exorcisms, a young 17 year old pregnant woman named Rosaria. The event is horrifying, this young girl doing and saying the most unimaginable things. But even after what he’s seen, Thomas still believes that her problems can be explained away through abuse and trauma.

The rest of the story centers on Thomas and Carmine’s relationship as Carmine takes him through the daily treatment of his clientele. Even when these subjects bring up personal issues about Thomas’ life, he is convinced they’ve either done research or heard information about him from other parties. He knows that it is impossible for a person to be possessed by the devil. Of course, at some point, this conviction will be tested, as he will have to perform the exorcism to end all exorcisms, a task so impossible he will need to believe if he has any chance in succeeding.

I really really liked this screenplay. First of all, this is exactly what I was talking about when I reviewed our last exorcism script. In that review, I talked about how every exorcism movie is about some priest coming into a town to perform an exorcism on some woman. EVERY ONE! Borrr-ing. So taking the exorcism idea and coming at it from the angle of a school was, in many ways, genius. It’s a great reminder that finding a new angle to a tired subject matter just requires a little thought.

Also, as dumbed down as this sounds, this script proves how effective the “crazy mentor character” is. I was talking about this in my review of The King’s Speech the other day (with the part that Geoffrey Rush plays). There’s something about a mentor who does things “his own way” that’s simply fun to watch. It works here with Father Carmine, it worked in The King’s Speech, it’s one of the reasons Karate Kid is so popular. About the only time it hasn’t worked is in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins.

The construction of Thomas’ character here is also well done. We have a built in fatal flaw – he doesn’t believe. He has a complicated unresolved relationship with his father that we keep going back to. He’s resistant to the job, which infuses most of the scenes with conflict. We understand where the character’s been. We understand where the character wants to go. So many times I don’t know who a character is in a screenplay so it’s refreshing when the writer takes the time to map him out like he does Thomas here.

I think the one challenge for the script was the tricky notion of putting a priest in Exorcism School who didn’t believe in God. This was an essential component to the script working, yet not a logical situation. Petroni (or Baglio) decided to use this desire for education as the reasoning behind why someone who didn’t believe in God would join the priesthood, and it’s admittedly the one conceit you have to make in order to buy into the premise, but I think he gets away with it. And I have to admit, it was a lot more interesting than the tired choice we’re used to seeing , which is to have someone close to the priest die right as he’s starting his journey.

Another dramatic mainstay the screenwriting gurus will tell you is that your main character should have a goal and that that goal should drive the plot. So in The Exorcism, the goal is to exorcise the demon from the girl. In Borrelli’s script, it’s the same thing. This approach keeps the point of the story crystal clear to the audience. But The Rite doesn’t do this. There is no single goal for our protagonist, which gives the story an uncertain quality. We’re not quite sure where it’s going. Which is good if it works, but usually if this goes on for too long, an audience will check out. So how does The Rite make it work?

Well Petroni shifts the focus of the movie from a physical goal to an internal question. Will Thomas believe or not? The answer to that question becomes the driving force of the story. It’s a risky move that I see fail way more than I see succeed because it just doesn’t give the story the same driving force a goal does. But because the characters are so compelling here, because the situations are so interesting, and because we want to find out what happens with Thomas, Petroni makes it work.

If I had a beef with the script, it’s that the ending gets a little crazy. One of the effects of focusing on several exorcisms instead of one is that you have to resolve them all, and with Thomas running around at the end to see all these threads to their conclusion, the finale feels a little scattershot.

But overall, I enjoyed this way too much to let that bother me. A highly recommended read.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: A big reason why this script works is that it’s steeped in conflict. Thomas and his father don’t agree on his direction in life. Thomas doesn’t believe in God. Thomas doesn’t believe in Exorcism School. Thomas doesn’t agree with Carmine’s methods or practice. Everywhere you look in this script, two diametrically opposed ideas are colliding, and it’s the resulting conflict that brings so much entertainment to the ride. Remember, as a story teller, conflict is always your best friend!

Genre: Indie Drama
Premise: A man must deal with day to day life while fighting his crippling sex addiction.
About: This is the next project for rising star Michael Fassbender, who was said to have had the inside track to star in the new Total Recall remake, although now that role looks to have gone to Colin Farrell. The Inglorious Basterds vet has a role in the upcoming X-Men movie, and is said to have a part in the new Hobbit films, though I’m not sure what that part would be. The director and co-writer, Steve McQueen, is also a rising star who’s constantly looking to push the film medium. Many of his early films were made to be projected onto three walls instead of one. His style is very minimalist. His last film, “Hunger,” about Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, was well-received. His co-writer, Abi Morgan, is a successful TV writer who has recently segued into features.
Writers: Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan
Details: 119 pages, June 28th, 2010 draft (This is an early draft of the script. The situations, characters, and plot may change significantly by the time the film is released. This is not a definitive statement about the project, but rather an analysis of this unique draft as it pertains to the craft of screenwriting).

Indie movie scripts are kind of like Indian food. They’re either the best meal you’ve ever had or a horrible adventure that puts you in the bathroom all night. Okay, well, maybe that’s not the best analogy. But reading indie scripts always feels like a gamble to me. Before I open them I’m constantly saying to myself, “Please don’t be a pointless wandering character study where nothing happens. Please don’t be a pointless wandering character study where nothing happens.”

The big issue is that most of them tend to lack any drama, and it’s often hard to tell if it’s because the writer doesn’t know how to write or because they don’t believe in the conventions of artificially constructed conflict. There’s a lot of “real life is boring” as a rationalization for why 30 pages can go by with nothing happening. There’s definitely an audience for this, and the mumblecore movement proves it, but my feeling is that if you’re going to sit an audience down for a couple of hours, make something happen onscreen. We want to see some drama.

So, does Shame fall into that aforementioned category? Or does it rise above and become an interesting indie story?

Brandon is in his late-20s. By the way people treat him, we assume he’s good looking, but we never actually know because for some reason McQueen and Morgan keep that information a secret, limiting his description to his age. This was my first uncomfortable moment with the script.  It seems like in a movie about sex addiction, what the protagonist looks like, whether he’s ugly or handsome, would be an incredibly important detail to the story.  But I digress.

We follow Brandon through his mundane daily life, going to work, mulling through the streets, chilling at his apartment. McQueen’s minimalist tendencies are on full display here, as we rarely hear anyone even speak. And when someone does speak, it tends to be irrelevant to the story. It’s just people talking like they’d talk in real life, in chopped off phrases and random observations. On the one hand it’s frustrating but on the other, it creates a distance between you and the story that strangely helps you understand Brandon’s distant character better.

Eventually David’s sister, Sissy, arrives at his apartment, needing to stay for awhile. The two have a friendly if strange relationship, arguing often about petty things and resorting back to childlike tendencies such as calling each other names and tickle fights.

But the real issue here is that Sissy is intruding on Brandon’s secret. You see, Brandon is a sex addict. He goes to the bathroom at work any chance he gets in order to masturbate. He fills up his days with internet porn. The graphic outline of a female body on a shampoo bottle can get him off.

Alone, he can feed this addiction. But with his sister there, it starts putting undo pressure on this shameful side of him, which begins manifesting itself in his day to day life.

Eventually he meets Marianne, a new assistant at work. In a way, he sees her as his salvation. If he can find a way to have a normal relationship with a woman, maybe he can finally overcome these urges. However, like a lot of the script, it’s hard to get a feel for their relationship. Words are barely uttered between the two, giving us no insight into their characters. Again, I think it’s supposed to feel more like real life, but instead, the characters just feel thin.  I’m not looking for, “My dad died when I was six so I moved in with my grandparents and then got cancer at 13…” but how people talk and what people say and even a simple opinion here or there is what brings characters alive.  Without that, we don’t know these people.

Anyway, Brandon starts living this double life where he’s dating Marianne yet satisfying his insatiable sexual appetite with anyone else he can find. His sister is digging further and further into his condo, forcing Brandon to stay out later and later. Will Brandon overcome his sexual addition in time to save his relationship with Marianne or become a victim of it? “Shame” keeps you guessing til the end. 

If you’ve been paying attention, you probably already know my reaction to this. “Shame” is unapologetically minimalist. It’s indie to indie extreme. And like I mentioned at the beginning, I just don’t respond to that.

There were so many opportunities for conflict and drama here that were avoided, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. For example, there’s a subplot at work where Brandon’s been accumulating a lot of porn on his computer. He then comes to work one day to find out his computer has gone in for repair. They have to go through the hard drive and clean out some viruses.

This would appear to be the setup for a great dramatic sequence. How does he get the computer back before they find the porn? The stakes are pretty high as well. He might end up losing his job. But a few scenes later, the problem resolves itself. Brandon doesn’t have to do anything. Again, this may be how it happens in real life, but can’t we all agree that watching our protagonist try to solve a problem is way more interesting than it simply getting fixed on its own?

I think the most frustrating subplot of the script, however, is the sister Sissy. (Sorta spoiler) A ton of emphasis is put on this weird relationship between the two that’s full of tension and flirting and unfinished business. Coupled with Brandon’s uncontrollable sexual urges, it seems like 70 pages is all leading up to something happening between the two. And yet, it never does, making you wonder if the sister should’ve ever been introduced into the story in the first place.

I will concede that the last 30 pages pick up considerably. We watch Brandon’s addiction spiral out of control and to the writers’ credit, I don’t think it would’ve had quite the same punch if the script hadn’t been such the slow burn that it was.

But in the end, I think I have a different philosophy on telling stories than McQueen and Morgan. They wanted to convey real life. I wanted the drama that only a good fictional story can provide. I’m guessing some of you will really hate this and some of you will really like it. If you enjoy Soderbergh’s experimental films like Bubble and Keane (which he produced) or any Mumblecore films, you should give this a shot. But if you like a little more drama for your buck, like me, my advice is to pass.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The porn-at-work storyline really bothered me because you never want your protaginist’s problems to just solve themselves. It’s boring and feels like a cheat. The audience WANTS to see your character try to solve his/her problems. That’s what they come to watch. The character may not succeed. But you at least have to show them trying.

This is Nolan Theme Week, where we’ll be breaking down Christopher Nolan’s five most popular writing-directing efforts in hopes of learning something about how he crafts a story.  Monday Roger reviewed The Dark Knight.  Tuesday I took on Batman Begins.  Wednesday was The Prestige, which surprisingly has garnered some of the more heated talkback, Thursday was the film that put Nolan on the map, Memento. And today, to finish it all off, I’m of course reviewing the script for his most recent film, Inception!

Genre: Crime/Sci-Fi/Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) – In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a highly skilled thief is given a final chance at redemption which involves executing his toughest job till date, Inception.
About: Inception came out in the summer and is currently the 5th highest grossing film of the year behind Toy Story 3, Alice in Wonderland, Iron Man 2, and Eclipse. It cost 160 million dollars to make, opened with 62 million at the U.S. Box Office, finished with 290 million, and has made over 800 million worldwide, unheard of in this day and age for an original property (unless your name is James Cameron of course). Nolan is said to have worked on the script for ten years. When asked if he had done any dream research for the script, Nolan had a surprising response: “I don’t actually tend to do a lot of research when I’m writing. I took the approach in writing Inception that I did when I was writing Memento about memory and memory loss, which is I tend to just examine my own process of, in this case, dreaming, in Memento’s case, memory, and try and analyze how that works and how that might be changed and manipulated. How a rule set might emerge from my own process. I do know because I think a lot of what I find you want to do with research is just confirming things you want to do. If the research contradicts what you want to do, you tend to go ahead and do it anyway. So at a certain point I realized that if you’re trying to reach an audience, being as subjective as possible and really trying to write from something genuine is the way to go. Really it’s mostly from my own process, my own experience.”  For some further Nolan reading, there’s a nice profile on him at the New York Times.
Writer: Christopher Nolan
Details: 146 pages – shooting draft

Okay, if you’re a big fan of this film, you might want to steer clear of this review. I’m about to get into it with Inception because after watching Nolan’s five most popular movies this week, I’ve concluded that Inception is by far the weakest of the bunch. The attention to detail – the care he put into those other films – isn’t there in Inception. Things feel rushed, smooshed together, as if Warners gave him gobs of money with a note attached that said, “as long as you give it to us quickly.”

As I pointed out yesterday in my Memento review, Nolan was so careful and clever in how he slipped his exposition into the film. Here, it’s like he doesn’t even care, spraying it around like gang graffiti. This is the heart of my problem with the film, but there are plenty of other things to talk about so let’s quickly recap the plot.

Inception follows Dom Cobb, a “dream thief” who travels into people’s minds to steal information. Early on he’s approached by Saito, a man who owns one of the largest energy companies in the world, to break into his biggest competitor’s mind (a man named Robert Fischer) and plant a piece of information (an “inception”) in him that will eliminate him as a competitor. Cobb initially resists until Saito promises he can reunite him with his children, who he lost after being accused of his wife’s murder.

Cobb recruits the perfect team to complete the task and constructs a multi-layered dream within a dream within a dream approach to get to the center of the mark’s subconscious. Complicating the mission is Cobb’s wife, who has died in the real world but who still lives inside Cobb’s dreams. If he’s going to succeed with the inception, he’ll need to reconcile his relations with her first.

Okay, so I’ve seen Inception twice now and read the script once. While the most important viewing of any movie is the first, Nolan’s films are constructed to be viewed multiple times, in my opinion not only to make for a richer viewing experience, but to make him and the studio richer. On that front, compared to the rest of his films, Inception is a failure.

Why?

One word. Exposition.

One of the reasons we’re repeatedly told as writers to hide our exposition is because bad exposition is one of the quickest ways to alert an audience that what they’re watching isn’t real. If you hear someone say, “We gotta go here to do this and then we gotta go there to do that and we only have 3 hours to do it or we all die unless Joey can somehow deliver the money to Frankie in time,” you say, “Oh yeah, this is a movie.” Why? Because people don’t talk that way.  Because it’s not real life. It’s the mechanics of the plot translated into words in order to condense key plot points for the audience’s benefit.

So what you do is two things. You hide it as much as you can. And you only tell the absolute minimum of what you have to. Now there are a lot of ways to hide exposition. Back to The Future is pure exposition, but it’s hidden in comedy. We’re more focused on these two bickering back and forth than we are on that everything they say is so the audience knows what’s going on.

But that first rule, keeping exposition to a minimum, that doesn’t require nearly as much skill – just discipline. You’re simply looking to keep things short. That’s it. Nolan completely ignores this rule here, spending not one scene, not two, not three, but a full one hour of scenes on exposition. And he doesn’t stop there either!  We are getting exposition all the way into the 120s!  For that reason, when you try and watch this movie a second time, you are bored to death during the opening hour of the film.

I mean I’m just shocked at how sloppy it all is.

Now the script definitely picks up, and all of that explanation enables us to enjoy the complicated second half of the story, but I don’t think you ever really feel immersed in this movie the way you do in Memento or Batman Begins because the opening hour is essentially Christopher Nolan onscreen reading you the rules of his universe from a notepad. There’s no subtlety, no attempt to suspend your disbelief, and that’s probably why Inception feels less satisfying than his other films.

Having said that, it’s interesting to note that all the classic Nolan-isms are at play here, particularly his patented triple-crossing narrative opening to the film. This time we’re cutting between Cobb visiting an older Asian man, Cobb asleep in a hotel room with an approaching group of rioters, and Cobb asleep on a train. What I find fascinating here is that Nolan’s taken this device to its extreme. The opening of Inception is so confusing and so weird that we absolutely have to pay attention to keep up. It’s proof positive, as he’s done this now 5 times, how effective the device is.

Another thing I find interesting about Inception is that there’s no villain and there’s no love interest. In fact, what Nolan tries to do is insert both of these into a single character, Cobb’s wife. She’s this kind of fucked up love interest as well as a villain – the biggest obstacle to him achieving his goal. All the other “bad guys” in the film are essentially faceless. Unfortunately it doesn’t work, as Mal’s character in general is more of a confusing idea than a well-formed character.

The fact that our main character does not encounter these two dynamics (love or hate) in the story, is the reason I believe the film lacks any emotional resonance with the audience. And it seems like it shouldn’t be that way because Cobb himself is feeling SO MUCH emotion during this story.  But since we never see him have someone to love, since we never see him have someone to hate, we never feel any of that emotion ourselves. The emotional core of the movie is limited to Cobb trying to find closure with this woman who, for all intents and purposes (at least from how we see her), is kind of a bitch. Am I supposed to be emotionally connected to that?

In fact, this gets into a much deeper issue, which is that Cobb is the only character Nolan has put any effort into. We know barely anyting about Joseph-Gordon Levitt’s character. We know barely anything about Ellen Page’s character. Tom Hardy and the Indian Guy? I still don’t even know why they were in the movie! We’re talking about a 150 minute movie here, and only a single character is being explored on a deeper level. There’s no other reason to HAVE a 150 minute movie than to use that time to explore a bunch of characters!

So how did this happen? I’ll give you a guess. That’s right, because Nolan wasted the first hour of his film having his characters spout exposition! We can’t learn about characters if their only function is to explain things or ask questions!

Look, I enjoyed this movie. Nolan does enough right here to make the film work. The score alone is worth the price of admission (easily the best of the year – maybe the last five years). And as long as I’m bashing some of his writing mistakes, I have to give him props for how he wrote the dream within a dream within a dream climax.  I can imagine how complicated that must have been and yet it definitely holds our interest.  But when you read this script on the page, you really start to see its weaknesses. When it’s all said and done, I’d say this is his second worst film (behind Insomnia).

Although I can’t share the script, it is available, with concept art storyboards and handwritten notes by Nolan. 

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The biggest lesson I learned after watching Nolan’s films this week is to challenge the audience. There’s a misconception out there that the audience is dumb, that you need to serve them everything on a platter. Audiences are smarter than you think and they want to be challenged. Just know that there is a skill behind this and that skill is built through a ton of writing and a bunch of trial and error. You have to find out what works for you. You can’t just say, “Well Nolan cuts between 3 different storylines so I’m going to cut between 5!” and assume you’ve created a masterpiece. Being different, pushing boundaries, has great rewards, but it also means failing a lot bigger and more frequently. If you’re okay with that, then it may be something you want to try.

This is Nolan Theme Week, where we’ll be breaking down Christopher Nolan’s five most popular writing-directing efforts in hopes of learning something about how he crafts a story.  Monday Roger reviewed The Dark Knight.  Yesterday I took on Batman Begins.  Today, I review The Prestige.

Genre: Period/Drama/Supernatural
Premise: Two obsessed magicians engage in a dangerous rivalry.
About: The Prestige was Christopher Nolan’s fifth film and fourth writing-directing effort. It was the follow-up to his first bonafied hit, Batman Begins. On the structure of The Prestige, Nolan said, “It was quite challenging to find the right structure and it took a lot of time. We really spent years working on the script. It required interlocking framing devices and interlocking voiceovers, combined with the notion of structuring using the three act structure of the trick. It took a long time, the key being the need to express multiple points of view purposefully and clearly. It was a difficult script to write.”
Writers: Christopher and Jonathan Nolan (based on the book by Christopher Priest).
Details: 128 pages

I’m going to make a pretty outrageous statement here but hey, what’s a Theme Week without a controversial statement or two? I think that if you reversed the releases of The Prestige and Inception, that you would also exchange the box office takes of each film. In other words, if The Prestige had been released this summer, it would’ve made 300 million dollars, with Inception making 53 million back in 2006.

Now part of that has to do with Nolan reaching the apex of his popularity and talent in 2010, with his fans fervent anticipation for his follow-up to The Dark Knight, and a studio willing to back anything he came up with every resource they had. But it also has to do with the fact that The Prestige is the best movie Nolan’s ever made, and I think it’s the best he’s ever made by far.

The story follows two magicians, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) who start out as partners, but after Borden accidentally kills Angier’s wife during a trick, they separate and become rivals.

Angier, a great showman with a lack of ingenuity, becomes increasingly obsessed with whether Borden, an ingenious magician with a lack of showmanship, killed his wife or not. He begins stalking Borden’s shows, looking for ways to trip him up. Borden follows suit, doing the same to Angier.

The story hits its stride when Borden creates one of the greatest tricks in the world, “The Transporting Man,” in which he’s able to transport himself from one side of the stage to the other. The trick stumps Angier, resulting in him going to the ends of the earth to match the trick, and ultimately top it.

The greatest thing about The Prestige, for me, is that the premise – two dangerously obsessed magicians trying to outdo one another– gives you exactly what you’re hoping for. One of the biggest problems I run into when I read amateur screenplays is an inability to deliver on the concept. Most writers can mine a high concept premise through one act, but almost invariably run out of ideas and simply draw upon previous movies and TV shows to finish the final two.

Nolan does not have that problem here.

As every good writer knows, the concept opens the story. It’s what hooks the readers. But if you want them to stay around, you have to create fascinating characters. That middle act is your character’s main stage.  It’s when the concept exits left and they take over the play.  If you don’t have your characters worked out, if they’re not deep and complex and interesting, your script will end up like the amateur ones I mentioned above.

Borden and Angier are the epitome of this complexity.  Each one has reversals and surprises and secrets and grow and regress and change and have so many sides to them that we don’t even remember what the concept to the film was.  We’re just engaged in these two battling each other.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a movie where a writer pushes his characters as far to the extreme as Nolan does these two. It’s really great character work.

Just like he did with Batman (and in a theme I’ll be pointing out all week), Nolan once again starts his film with a tapestry of cross-cutting storylines that confuse the audience, which, as we discussed yesterday, is a unique way to get them to pay attention.

The first is a court case in which the only thing we know is that Borden is on trial for killing someone. The second is a limping Angier travelling to a mysterious mansion in the woods. And the third is both Borden and Angier working together as young magicians.

It’s almost uncanny how similar the set ups are between this and Batman Begins. Indeed it speaks to a larger theme in Nolan’s work. I think one of the reasons he likes to confuse the audience and pack so much plot into his movies is so that you’ll come back again. He knows that if you don’t catch it all the first time out, you’re going to want to see it again. This is by no means a radical concept, but I don’t think I know a filmmaker who covets it as aggressively as Nolan. And hey, it’s working.  You don’t get to 1.8 billion on your last two films if people are only going to see them once.

What I think sets The Prestige above the rest of his work, however, is the attention he gives to his main character’s fatal flaws. Borden’s flaw is that he puts magic above everything else in his life, even his own wife and kid. Whenever you give a character a “fatal” flaw like this, you want to create a scenario in which they either overcome the flaw and reap the benefits, or refuse to change and suffer the consequences. Borden has that opportunity. (spoilers) He can give up his best trick, finally putting life above his magic, or he can continue to keep it a secret. He chooses to keep the secret and suffers the consequences. Death.

Angier’s flaw, on the other hand, is that he won’t get dirty. The reason Borden is a better magician than him is because he’s willing to do anything for the trick, a talent Angier does not have. Later, Angier is given a choice, continue with what he has and be a marginal but ultimately empty success, or “get dirty” with the most dangerous trick ever performed. He “overcomes” his flaw by choosing to perform the trick.

What makes Angier’s character exploration so interesting, however, is that normally when someone “overcomes” their flaw, they find happiness. When Luke finally believes in himself, he’s able to destroy the Death Star. When Shrek finally opens himself up to others, he finds friendship and love. But what’s unique here is that Angier’s gain after overcoming his flaw is a false one. He finds happiness, but the consequences of that happiness outweigh the happiness itself.

Like I always say, how compelling your character is rises in direct proportion with how difficult you make their choices. (spoilers) Angier is faced with the ultimate choice – a choice that will determine how much he cares about his job – Is he willing to die for it? Not once but every single day? A character that’s faced with that choice, who ultimately chooses to die, is infinitely more interesting than a character who’s never been presented with that choice at all. That’s why fatal flaws are so important for characters. If you don’t know what their flaw is, you don’t know what kind of choice to present them with later in the story.

There’s a small segment in The Prestige, after Scarlett Johansen’s character has joined Borden, where the script gets repetitive. Again, at 130 minutes, Nolan is going with a screenplay that’s 10-15 minutes too long – and this portion is exactly why it feels that way. But outside of that small hiccup, this is a really great movie, one that if you haven’t checked out, you definitely should.

Script link: The Prestige

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I think the opening of The Prestige is better than the opening of Batman Begins and here’s why. When Nolan was cross-cutting between the three storylines in Batman begins, he doesn’t set up a mystery, doesn’t insert a clear question in the audience’s mind that they want answered. Without that question, the cutting feels random (which is why I referred to it as random yesterday). But if a mystery is presented, the audience is then looking for an answer, and that allows them to participate in the surrounding scenes. So in The Prestige, we get a court scene where Borden is being accused of murder. The mystery is, who did he kill? When we’re watching the early scenes where Borden and Angier are working together now, they take on a heightened level of suspense. We know someone gets murdered. But who? When? We get to participate in that mystery.  As a result the opening is still scattershot, but executed in a much more skillful way than in Batman.
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