Retro Review: The Prestige (5 out of 5)

If I learned anything from my little feud with Sam Juliano it is that one should never simply state their opinion without being prepared to back it up and argue it to the death. The majority of my posts this week have been on Inception since it is the hot topic but I've also mentioned how I think Inception doesn't compare to Christopher Nolan's best work, of which one of those titles in The Prestige. So I've decided to post my review from so many years ago.

The Prestige is about rival magicians who try and steal each others best tricks. I’ve always said that the greatest of horror and suspense film function like a great magic act: they distract us with the left hand while performing the trick with the right. By having The Prestige be about actual magicians, we can actually see how the art of suspense is rarely ever more complicated than this.

There are three acts to every magic trick tells Cutter (Michael Caine), a man who designs them. The first is the pledge in which a magician selects an ordinary object such as a bird or a person. The second is the turn, in which the magician does something extraordinary with the ordinary object, and the third is the prestige, because making something disappear is not enough, you must wow the audience by bringing it back. This last one is an interesting process because it diverts from the trick itself, which a magician must never give away.

The point of the prestige, it would seem, is to wow the audience into thinking something has happened which has not; something slightly outside of human possibility. By nature, humans search for complexities which do not exist and thus magic will forever feel slightly removed from reality. This is why a magician must never reveal his secrets. Once we understand how simple the explanations of most tricks are, they become possible and thus human. As long as magicians, and films for that matter, are able to fool us into thinking that something beyond our human capability has happened, we are dazzled

The story itself is about two magicians played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. After the wife of Angier (Jackman) drowns during a trick because of Borden (Bale), the two men separate. This creates a bitter rivalry as both magicians try to exact their revenge and become the best in England, even if it means stealing the others most prized tricks.

The Prestige is not so much a battle of wits as much as it is a fascinating portrait of two men who will make any sacrifice for a Darwinian order which doesn’t seem to exist. There is no such thing as survival of the fittest in magic because no matter how many variations different magicians do of the same trick, the prestige is always the same, which is that the pledge returns to its original state of normalcy. Therefore, it is not the trick which makes the best magician, but how well he performs it.

Borden’s best trick is named the Transported Man and features himself stepping into a box on one side of the stage and exiting from one on the opposite side. Angier, filled with obsession, wants desperately to recreate this trick but can’t quite figure out how. After using a double doesn’t quite work, he goes to extreme lengths that are so theoretically fascinating that I dare not say another word about the plot.

That The Prestige is also a fantastic noir picture on the surface almost undermines the films true intelligence. The truth about magic is that, outside of magicians who give away their tricks, there is no proof that magic does or does not exist, or at least that it isn’t possible. What happens if it is possible for magic to become real through scientific evolution? But what if there is no such thing as magic? What if there is no such thing as science? These are all questions that the film so magnificently raises which lead to a final scene that is so tricky, so mysterious, so thought provoking, and so true to the physical art of magic itself that I wish I could discuss it, as I’m sure many will want to immediately after seeing it.

Even though the film is structured more or less exactly like a magic trick with its twists and turns, and unreliable narrators narrating unreliable flashbacks, the true dramatic heart of the film lies in the obsession inherent in both of these men to become something beyond magic, beyond human possibility. The film was directed by Christopher Nolan who also directed Memento, a film much praised by everyone who is not me. Nolan, through his four other films has become a master of tone and mood, constantly fascinated by the noir hero. Like the best noir heroes, these are men caught in complex situations who dive so far past the brink of obsession that they are no longer able to decipher what is real and what is simply a trick of the mind. In this sense, magic is the best place for Nolan to be exploring these themes; a place in which men must make sacrifices to a point where reality and fiction begin to seem interchangeable.

It’s hard to talk about a film as rich and complex as this one, without giving too much away. I will leave you with a small anecdote though. Recently my roommate expressed dislike for The Prestige, claiming that its secret could be given away with one word. This might be true from a narrative standpoint, but the fact is that suspense works through a process of negation: the simpler the explanation, the more complex the plot seems. This concept is not far removed from magic itself. One of the many structural treasures of The Prestige is its ability to trick the audience into thinking that much more is at stake than there actually is…or is there? Is this not the very essence of a great magical act? Is this not the very essence of great suspense as well?