The Prestige is a 2006 film by Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Memento) and stars Hugh Jackman (X-Men) as Robert Angier and Christian Bale (The Dark Knight, American Psycho) as Alfred Borden, stage magicians battling over a specific trick, The Transported Man. The film is told in a nonlinear fashion and is mostly told from the perspective of two journals. The story itself begins with an old and fading magician and his two assistants, Angier and Borden. Borden is unsatisfied with the magician’s weak tricks and wants to spice up a water tank trick by tying a harder knot. The “lovely assistant” (Piper Perabo) is Angier’s wife and he does not approve of Borden’s knot idea. Regardless, Borden ties the knot and the assistant is unable to escape and drowns in the tank. Later on, the two magicians begin to do underground shows and Borden decides to take up a dangerous trick, a Bullet Catch. He picks a volunteer but soon realizes that it is Angier in disguise. Angier shoots at Borden as an attempt to avenge his wife but Borden’s illusion engineer, Fallon, hits Angier causing his shot to go awry and hit Borden’s leg. As time passes the two magicians make it to the big stage but Borden is having much more success with his mysterious trick, The Transported Man. Angier becomes obsessed with finding out how its done and refuses to believe his engineer, Cutter (Michael Caine) when he says it’s simply a body double. His obsession carries him all the way to Colorado where he meets with Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) who claims he can build a machine to do the trick.
As expected with a Jonathan Nolan script and a Christopher Nolan film, The Prestige is incredibly written and impeccably adapted. The nonlinear storytelling serves to fuel the audience’s desire to found out what will happen to the point that you will become obsessed, much like Angier, with finding out how everything is done. The character development is done very well especially the relationship between Angier and Borden. In the first chronological scene involving the two, we see a potential strain in their relationship over the knot tying for the water torture trick. As time goes by, jealously and lust for revenge develop into pure hatred that is reciprocated.
The acting is phenomenal. Hugh Jackman, who is known mostly for his action roles, performs wonderfully as Robert Angier. His showmanship and stage presence feels very professional and he pulls off the subtle line between obsession and insanity very well. Undoubtedly, Christian Bale was brilliant, although his extremely thick accent felt a bit fake (despite his Welsh origins). Michael Caine, who plays another Alfred-esque father figure type character, is excellent as usual and almost feels like the heart of the film. The emotions and though process that Caine’s character goes through perfectly mimic that of the average audience members mindset and Caine really makes that an easy connection to make. David Bowie as Tesla and Andy Serkis as his assistant have very little screen time but are great nonetheless. Scarlett Johansson feel a bit out of place in my opinion, but her acting is fine.
My favorite part of The Prestige is the twist ending and the fact that I can watch it again and still be impressed. Without revealing what the twist is, there are a noticeable amount of clues as to what will happen. Early on, when Bale performs a trick that involves killing a bird by flattening its cage and pulling an identical bird out, a child in the audience begins to cry. Bale tells him that the bird is fine but the child responds, “but where’s his brother.” Going back and watching it again, this scene is so important/incredible. There are other small cues, such as lingering camera shots and the fact that sometimes Bale wears his ring on one finger and sometimes on another.
The Prestige is a wonderfully crafted film by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan and I give it 9/10.
