Movie Review: The Prestige

By Anne Brodie Oct 19, 2006, 10:11 GMT

From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan ("Memento," "Batman Begins"), comes a mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences. From the time that they first met as young magicians on the rise, Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) were competitors. However, their friendly competition evolves into a bitter rivalry making ...more

The first great film of the year brims with passion creativity and richly coloured history. A pair of deadly rivals, master magicians in London, circa 1900, uses the art of illusion to destroy each other.

While The Prestige will undoubtedly draw comparisons to The Illusionist, also about turn of the century magic, The Prestige is a cut above, even though The Illusionist was remarkably good.

Isn’t it interesting to watch accidentally, nearly identical film releases? It sometimes happens that two films on the same subject come out within months of each other, for instance, ‘Truman’ and ‘Infamous’, those Robin Hood films and now a pair of magic outings.

The Prestige has a stellar cast in Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie and Andy Serkis.

It has mystery of epic proportion and a larger-than-life story.

It is layered with surprises, unpeeling like an onion.

There is an end to an onion, not so the events here.

Based on Christopher Priest’s novel, Nolan tells a Byzantine tale of revenge and obsession. The players are two magicians, the Great Danton Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) who studied magic together and became famous illusionists.

As apprentices, they learned that magic has three stages- the opening Pledge, the Turn and the third act pay off, The Prestige.

That is how the film is structured.

Angier and Borden’s need to amaze and confound each other not just onstage but in life.

Events launch them into a vendetta, as each tries to surpass the other through devilish cunning, fired by hatred. It’s a poisonous professional rivalry made worse when love intrudes. Or so it seems.

Angier travels from London to Colorado in search of new tricks, a small mountain town already outfitted with electricity, at that time limited to only major cities.  That’s where reclusive scientists study the alchemy of electricity, in tableaux big enough to give the film a steam punk nod.

Angier collaborates with Nikola Tesla (Bowie) a real life inventor in electricity and magnetism, credited with ‘inventing the twentieth century’. He made extensive contributions to wireless communication, ballistics, computer science, nuclear and theoretical physics and more, yet he is virtually unknown.

The film suggests that Thomas Edison’s ‘men’ were out to get Tesla, in an interesting side story. By then Edison was a powerful brand, and Tesla a threat to Edison’s supremacy. Their rivalry is as deadly as the magicians’ are.

Angier is desperate to learn the key to the Transporting Man trick to outwit Borden, who has mastered the trick. Angier has good reason; Borden is a far better magician.

The film is so dense and rich with detail that it’s impossible to sum it up in a review. A stirring human story, a celebration of the Industrial Revolution, the machine age, seeped in history, the arcane science of trickery, not to mention the beautiful natural backdrops of Colorado and fin de siecle London.

Priests’ novel and Nolan’s expert film techniques, as seen in Memento, have combined to create a film force, its own chimera, illusion versus reality.

Nolan manipulates our emotions like a magician, again using the elements of a trick, the pledge, the turn and the prestige.

Angier stirs our loyalty with his seeming vulnerability, against Borden’s cocksure hostility. But through the film timeline, our loyalties shift, from one magician to the other, as they conjure one dilatory snare after another.

We are constantly judging, looking, on our toes, as illusion and reality fail to answer our questions.

True and false have no meaning; it is all about the trick, not the disappearance but the re-appearance. The dead and lost return. What is real?

The Prestige is an intellectual exercise and rollicking good story, a superior character study and maddeningly engaging game.

Opens USA Oct 20.  MPAA: Rated PG-13 for violence and disturbing images.