The Prestige - Cinemas Greatest Magic Trick
The prestige is my favorite Nolan film, and one of my top five favorite movies of all time. It’s an enduring classic and displays the best rivalry on screen as well as making one of the most profound statements about mankind in cinema.
The two rivals are Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman). And their differences are displayed early in the film. While Watching Chung Ling Soo perform a water trick that depends on Ling Soo keeping up pretense even off stage of being crippled. Borden notes, “Total devotion to his art, utter self sacrifice” At first glance, what we have is a contest between showmanship (Angier) and authenticity (Borden), craftsmanship (Angier) and artistry (Borden). They’re two magicians with two entirely different approaches to the game.
Movies themselves are a magic trick. And the Nolan brothers crafted a structure to their film as an homage to that reality. With twists and 4 different time lines, it took the Nolan’s up until 3 days before shooting to finish the script. The magic trick structure goes like this— First, the pledge: show the audience something ordinary. Second, the turn: make that something ordinary, do something extraordinary (like disappear). Third, the prestige, bring back whatever was made extraordinary back to ordinary. As you watch the film you realize at the end how you’ve been duped... and you loved it!
Chris Nolan has rightfully stated that all films are a statement about human nature and the last line of the movie does indeed give insight into our nature, “Now you’re looking for the secret, but you won’t find it because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know, you want to be fooled.” Yes indeed, if the movies have taught us anything, it’s that Human kind loves to be fooled. But that love of being tricked goes beyond the cinema, it permeates every faucet of our lives. In fact if Romans 1 is to be believed, then it says we’d rather surround ourselves with lies then truth. Looks like Nolan indeed hits human natures tendencies right on the head.
Since this movie contains my favorite twist in a film here’s A final note about twists: #1 A twist makes what you’ve seen before better. When a twist does this I have to rewatch. And upon rewatching the Prestige I found a favorite line. When Borden performs a magic trick of killing a bird and little boy sees through the trick and knows he killed the bird. The boy is crying and Borden consoles him, showing the boy a bird. The boy then asks “But where’s its brother?” That line takes on a whole new meaning once you’ve seen the end! #2 A twist shows you two things that look different but then reveals they’re actually the same thing. I could list off every movie with a twist and show that this is true. But I’ll use one classic example. Darth Vader in Empire strikes back. Vader is evil, Luke’s father is good. The twist is that these two people who we thought were different are actually the same thing: Luke’s father is Vader. Every twist fits this mold (psycho, sixth sense, interstellar, vertigo, the village, etc.). The prestige does both of these amazingly well and it’s what makes this movie incredible!