The Prestige: Nolan’s Greatest Masterpiece
Words can’t describe how amazing a director Christopher Nolan really is. We’ve seen him direct some of the best films made in the 21st century that went on to smash box office records with the likes of Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight trilogy and most recently, Dunkirk. All of these movies combine intricate story telling and suspenseful nonlinear stories that leave the audience feeling the way people look at solving cross word puzzles. In my very first article on my blog, I will be taking a closer and detailed look at a movie that is set during the Victorian Era, a film that can be said to have been adapted from a novel by Christopher Priest, a film quite simply the best that he’s made in his storied career as a director, “The Prestige”
“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course… it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. 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. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.”
These lines were uttered by John Cutter, a famed ingenieur in the movie played by the great Michael Caine at the start of the film to the daughter of Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) using a bird to explain the simple yet complex nature of a magic trick. These lines during the opening scene are quite simply the beginning and the ending of the film. The movie revolves around the rivalry that exists between two young aspiring magicians, Alfred Borden and Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) in their quest to perform and better the prestige of the trick, “The Transported Man”. The movie starts off with Robert Angier, who called himself the Great Danton, performing the greatest magic trick, titled “The Real Transported Man” in front of a sold out theatre. Alfred Borden was on stage to examine the machine that Angier used, disguising his appearance before sneaking under the stage and watches him drown in a tank. Using this evidence, John Cutter testifies at the court detailing how Borden placed the tank beneath the stage at Borden’s murder trial with Fallon, Borden’s ingenieur and Jess, Borden’s daughter present.
In prison, Borden was visited by the agent of Lord Caldlow, who offered to take care of Borden’s daughter in exchange for his tricks. Borden then provided all of his tricks with The Pledge and The Turn to the agent before asking him to bring his daughter if he wanted the Prestige for all the tricks. Borden was offered Angier’s notebook, which he reads when he returns to his cell. At this particular juncture of the movie, Nolan tries to introduce a story that flashes back to the old days where Borden and Angier worked together for Milton the magician alongside Cutter and assistant Julia, Angier’s wife. Milton was the famed magician whose greatest trick was the water tank escape, in which Julia tries to slip off knots tied by both Borden and Angier. It was the same method that ultimately killed Julia as she drowns inside the tank trying to escape, and also prompted Angier to fuel his deep and heated grudge towards Borden. Borden, after Julia’s death, sought to remember the knot that he tied her arms and was left confused as he couldn’t recall the one he used.
Borden then goes to launch his own career as a magician and hires Fallon as his ingenieur while marrying Sarah and had a daughter named, Jess. During this stretch of the movie, Borden develops a strained relationship with Sarah, who felt Borden was disingenuine with his feelings towards her. Borden, in his attempt to springboard his career, tries a spectacular bullet catch trick in a show, which Angier costs him his two fingers. Angier wanted to avenge his wife’s death on Borden and did so by shooting at Borden’s hand. Angier then launches his career as a magician hiring Cutter to be his ingenieur, who then brings Olivia (Scarlett Johanssen) to be Angier’s assistant. Angier adopts the nickname, The Great Danton, and learns a new act, the bird cage act, which a disguised Borden uncovers the trick and together ruins his reputation in front a maimed audience.
Angier, who was stunned by the newest trick of Borden, steals his trick and goes on to accept an alcoholic actor, Root to be his double, groomed by Cutter for the trick. Feeling displeased by the fact Root was basking in applause, Angier sends his assistant, Olivia to spy on Borden. Borden’s act was revamped with the help of Olivia and Borden then sabotages Angier’s show leaving Angier with a permanent limp. Olivia confesses the truth of falling in love with Borden and hands Angier his personal diary in which the contents are scrambled by a coded cypher. Angier successfully finds the so called code word to Borden’s tricks by kidnapping and burying him alive in a cemetery before setting off on his journey to meet Nikola Tesla. Sarah, Borden’s wife, confused with his divided personality falls into depression and commits suicide.
Angier returned to his American roots and asked Tesla to build a machine to perform the Real Transported Man while continuing to decipher Borden’s fraudulent diary. Angier, knowing the truth that Tesla didn’t build any machine of sorts for Borden, confronts Tesla before Tesla delivered on his promise to build a replica machine, in which Tesla instructs Angier to destroy it. Angier returns to London for his final act to perform his “The Real Transported Man” trick in which he vanishes within the electrical field and presents atop the balcony at the back of the hall. Borden, baffled by the brilliance of the method, returns a few nights later to only see his rival drown inside the water tank under the stage, and tries to help him escape the water tank. Cutter gets the wrong idea and sends Borden to jail while confirming the death of Angier. Borden completes reading the diary of Angier which he found was fake which blamed him for the death. Borden was called out his cell to say goodbyes to his daughter, Jess before realizing the collector who was interested in buying his secrets, was Angier who had then turned himself into Lord Caldlow. Borden was dismayed that Angier involved his child in their rivalry with Angier claiming his trick was “better”.
Cutter, who was interested in buying the machine from Lord Caldlow, finds out that Angier was actually still alive. Cutter tries to convince Angier to destroy the machine and fails to do so. Back in prison, Borden was visited by Fallon, and tells him to go live the life “for both of us”. Cutter helps Angier to transfer the machine into a secret place, and as he leaves Angier, Fallon emerges. The movie was intercut with the scene of Borden being brought to the place he was to be hanged. Borden dies at the same time Angier was shot by Fallon. Angier, while dying, finally realized the secret of Borden’s trick was simple as Borden had a twin brother and they took turns back and forth. Angier, who only ever cared about the glory of wowing an audience, went too far more terrible extremes. In his “New Transported Man,” he knowingly created a double of himself every time he used Tesla’s machine, and he rigged the trap-door to drown the one on stage. He never knew if he would be the prestige or the man in the box. The room where the machine is being kept is filled with water tanks, all of which hold a drowned double of Angier for every time he performed the trick. Several times, he mutters to himself a line we’ve heard before in a different context: “No one cares about the man in the box.” Angier falls and kicks over a lantern as he dies from the gunshot and the resulting fire demolishes the entire evidence. The movie then returns back to the opening scene where Cutter reiterates the three stages of a magic trick. On cue, Borden reappears, and Jess runs back to his father. The movie ends with Borden and Cutter exchanging nods.
There is a moment during Christopher Nolan’s film version of The Prestige when the screen is filled with a close-up image of a hand. A ball, of the sort used in old muzzle-loading pistols, nestles in the palm of the hand. Another hand sweeps across it, once, twice, and the ball has disappeared. The second-hand returns and the ball reappears. It is a symbolic moment in a film almost overloaded with symbols. On a simple level, we see Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) preparing to disrupt Alfred Borden’s (Christian Bale) bullet-catching trick and so launch (or escalate, depending on your point of view) the lethal rivalry that exists between these two early twentieth-century stage magicians. On another level, we are watching one of the most familiar of magic tricks, palming, in the way that magicians always want us to see them: up close. So close that everything else is blotted out of our view. We watch closely — the first words of the film, spoken in voice-over by Borden, are: “Are you watching closely?”, a mantra that is repeated several times during what follows. Like the audience of any magic show we watch, knowing that we are about to be tricked, wanting to be deceived, looking for the trickery but not really wanting to see it. We examine the close-up hands for any muscle contraction, but see none; we examine the film for any cut that might indicate camera trickery but see none. And all the time we miss what is happening beyond the frame where the greater deception is being perpetrated.
The Prestige is a film in close-up, a confined and confining film set in narrow streets, in small, dark rooms, in prison cells, a film that directs where we look and so guides what we do not see. We watch a drama — at times violent, always compelling — but the real story is something we construct only later when the mysteries of the plot slot neatly and satisfyingly into place. The Prestige is a film of many secrets: much is hidden, much of the film is deliberate misdirection. It follows the mechanics of a magic trick where we see very clearly what is happening but don’t understand the significance. Even when all is revealed at the end (the secrets we have been staring at all the way through: “Are you watching closely?”), it is a moment of pure wonder. The film is immaculately assembled with magnificently stylised sets by production designer Nathan Crowley, acute editing by Lee Smith and wonderfully atmospheric but wholly unaffected photography by Wally Pfister. They’ve all previously collaborated with Nolan, in Pfister’s case on all his pictures since Following, which Nolan himself photographed. The performances of Bale and Jackman complement each other superbly and Caine brings a seriousness and dignity to Cutter. As in earlier Nolan films, the women’s roles are unrewarding, though Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson do well enough as Borden’s naïve wife and Angier’s duplicitous stage assistant.
After a single viewing, I’m not sure I could describe the order of events in Nolan’s film. Yet though one may be puzzled, just as one is by an illusionist, everything seems lucid and leads to a succession of revelations that left me stunned. I was still working out their implications long after watching it for the first time. The Prestige is a dazzling piece of work that left me eager to see it again. If I have given the impression that the film is unduly cerebral or opaque, let me say that in addition to the intellectual or philosophical excitement it engenders, The Prestige is gripping, suspenseful, mysterious, moving and often darkly funny. Christopher Nolan is a master of cinematic misdirection, and he uses it to best effect, appropriately, in his movie about dueling magicians, The Prestige. Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, adapted their screenplay from a novel by Christopher Priest, and while they made a number of significant changes (resulting in the movie having a radically different ending from the book), one of the narrative elements they chose to keep involve a secret that’s much easier to conceal on the page than it is on the screen. One could argue that it’s not strictly necessary to conceal it — and, indeed, The Prestige becomes a much richer experience on second viewing, when you know what’s going on and can start to wrap your head around the sacrifices made by both Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).
“The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you wont find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
These lines from the novel in which the movie was adapted, explained just the way I felt throughout the film, for I don’t know, how many times watching it again. Let me just go ahead and say this, it was full of twists and turns, The Prestige is a dazzling period piece that never stops challenging the audience.
