There are three steps to every magic trick, The first is called The Pledge; the magician shows you something ordinary. The second is called The Turn, where the magician makes the ordinary object disappear. But making something disapear is easy, thats why there is a third act called The Prestige, where you bring the ordinary something back. Now, your looking for the secret, but you won’t find it.
-Cutter
So begins The Prestige, a story about rival magicians in late 19th century London. Michael Caine plays Cutter, an inventor of gadgets and devices that magicians employ in their acts. He’s caught in the middle of a rivalry between Alfred Borden (Christian Bayle) and Robert Angier(Hugh Jackman), two magicians driven to one-up each other. There’s a history between these two men that I won’t reveal here, but it’s sufficient to say that one of them has reason to really dislike the other, and that leads to an obsession that drives much of the film.
The film works, but not for the reasons we might orginally have been lead to believe. Nolan works the movie much like Cutter’s description of the magic trick that opens the film. In fact, he’s worked us before we’ve even set down in the theater. The trailers and previews for The Prestige hint that Alfred may be in possession of “real magic”, the he can do things other magicians only pretend to do, and we’re lead to believe that Robert spends his obsession trying to figure out how he does it.
But the truth of the film is much different. In reality, the film is much more logical than we give it credit. It is no less interesting, but surprising. Like a good magic trick, the truth is more simple, plain and obvious than the fiction we let ourselves believe when we wish to be fooled by magic.
There’s a scene in the film when Robert explains a “bullet catch” trick to his young wife Sarah. Basically, he tips the barrel of the handgun so that the bullet falls into his hand before he hands the weapon to an audience member. When the person “shoots” him, he’s already got the bullet in his hand. After seeing the trick Sarah remarks something to the effect of, “It’s really rather obvious once you know how it works.” That, in a nutshell, is The Prestige. The trailer alone is enough to keep us thinking illogically, but if you follow the clues Nolan gives you the answers are revealed long before the movie reveals them to us.
However, unlike a movie such as M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, The Prestige doesn’t rely on its “reveal” at the end to carry it. Instead, the movie is much more about the story – the journey from point A to point B. While there are twists and turns – misdirection and “magic” tricks – the core of the film is a story about obsession and love, and what people will do when driven by their passions. The magic is a backdrop, albiet an interesting one.
Oh, and then there’s Nikolas Tesla. His presence in the film is rare, but his wake is necessary and adds the extra dimension to the film that it needs for the final 45 minutes. I can’t reveal what he does or provides for the movie without revealing the secrets of the film itself, but it is Tesla’s “device” that makes the second half of the movie work.
A final note: David Julyan does the score for the film and he’s very, very good. While watching the movie I thought the score sounded as well-placed as the one for The Descent, my favorite movie this summer. Julyan has a knack for figuring out exactly what a scene needs musically, and then doing no more than that. In this era of overblown scores that dominate the eardrums I find Julyan’s sparse, haunting themes to be the perfect counterpoint. Nolan has a good thing going with him, and I hope he starts lending his musical abilities to other filmmakers as well.
It’s difficult for me to put my finger on what exactly I liked about this movie, because with 45 minutes left to go I had it all figured out. But it wasn’t the reveal that made the movie work – it was watching Nolan walk us through the story that was so enchanting. M. Night Shyamalan has relied on his twists to carry his filmmaking from good to great. Nolan shows with The Prestige that he doesn’t need the twists to carry his films, he just needs an interesting enough vehicle to show us what a good storyteller he is.