Prestige pertains to glamour. In magic, it is the part when the audience applauds the magician for an awesome and baffling performance. This reminds me of how much I enjoyed watching The Prestige starred by Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Cane, Piper Perabo, and Scarlet Johansen among others, about three years ago.
The movie involves great cast and the plot was well-planned. I never got to a conclusion that The Professor really had a twin. I think this is the part where the character of Michael Cane would tell me “I told you so!” Well, aside from its magical treats and the beauties of Piper and Scarlet, I think the movie tells us so many things about life. One is life is full of magic. Cliché. It tackles subject about achieving ambitions and how it can be a danger to oneself if not checked. It talks about relationships created and broken in the name of ambition. It talks about revenge. It talks about loyalty. And it can go on and on…
I would like to put the spotlight on ambition. So, to what extent is ambition healthy? And what are the signs to know that it is not?
Ambition is good. It becomes a guide as we journey in this life. It becomes the Polaris and we are all bound to follow it, lest we get lost. Look at yourself right now, are you following the North Star, are you wondering which of the stars in the sky is North Star, or are you pretending to be following the North Star even though you know it’s the northern tip of the Southern Cross? We get lost as we live, and we get by easily if we try to find the North Star again. So, what is your ambition? Many dreams of achieving the top and as they do, they perform their task extraordinarily well to get a breath of the air on top. You see, you work hard for the ambition to happen. This means, ambition motivates us. It gives us fuel to go on even if the only reason to continue is the ambition itself and nothing else.
I have a friend, who is so conscious in her romantic life even though she doesn’t have one. She is an introvert and holds on to her conservative principles amidst the liberated world. She sometimes pity herself because what come to her are (let me think of kinder words to describe them.. aha!) men who are ugly in all aspects. Jerks they call it. I know she is not desperate although all signs point that she is. Well, one day she met an old friend and told her about a person who can be a probable prospect (if there’s such a phrase probable prospect). Now, she got excited about it and started asking me about this guy and somehow the circumstance led me into inviting “the person” in Facebook to be my friend because he is an acquaintance of mine and then suggesting her to him. To make the story short, because of her ambition to have a boyfriend so badly, she invited “the person”. She didn’t wait for a facebook match-making application. She had an ambition, and she does things that lead her to achieving that goal. We don’t know the ending of HER love story but we learn that ambition is something good. It pushes us to do something that we would have not done without ambition. As of this writing, she sent me a message saying “OMG! He sent me a message! My crush sent me a message!*panics*” You see my point.
So this is the part where I lay my opinion on how ambition becomes unhealthy. It has always been a fundamental fact that indulgence of something too much doesn’t give anyone any good. A lot of movies have portrayed the wrath of too much – of obsession. Let’s take it from The Prestige. Both The Great Danton and The Professor are guilty of obsession. Danton was obsessed to be a few steps ahead of The Professor. So he searched everywhere to get hold of the ultimate magic. True he got hold of the machine that duplicates anyone or anything that gets hit with its whipping voltage but on the process, he threw away his relationships with his loyal friend and illusion consultant and the love of his beautiful assistant. In the end, he died ungracefully. The professor on the other hand, in the aim of protecting his “Act” he never revealed to his wife that it is his twin brother that sometimes takes over his place in the family which becomes the cause of tension because his twin brother does not love his wife. This reaches to the point where The Professor’s wife hangs herself. In the end, as events turned into a complex web, The Professor died along with his greatest trick.
To wrap up, ambition can be our driving force or can be our force of destruction. Whichever force you prefer, your choice.
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