by Allan Fish
(USA 2006 131m) DVD1/2
Are you watching closely?
p Christopher Nolan, Aaron Ryder, Emma Thomas d Christopher Nolan w Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan novel Christopher Priest ph Wally Pfister ed Lee Smith m David Julyan art Nathan Crowley cos Joan Bergin
Christian Bale (Alfred Borden), Hugh Jackman (Robert Angier/Gerald Root), Michael Caine (John Cutter), Scarlett Johansson (Olivia Wenscombe), Rebecca Hall (Sarah), Piper Perabo (Julia McCullough), David Bowie (Nikola Tesla), Andy Serkis (Alley), Samantha Mahurin (Jess), Roger Rees (Owens), Ricky Jay (Milton),
Christopher Nolan’s fifth film was met with muted applause on its release in 2006. Many critics were impressed by it, yet at the same time maddened by it. Others didn’t rate it at all and couldn’t take it seriously. The reasons for ironically slighting this sleight of cinematic hand were numerous, but mostly centred around several factors, the biggest being the release earlier that year of similar magic trick The Illusionist – backed up by the fact that in the UK the earlier film came out afterwards, and received the fate Nolan’s film had received in the US. That other film was a fine film in its own right, but once the trick is unravelled, there’s not much else to it, while it’s never explained how its protagonist managed to make himself incorporeal. There is nothing in Nolan’s film that isn’t explained, and yet for all that, it remains enigmatic, multi-textured and involving no matter how many times you see it. This is not merely a case of pulling the rug out from under the audience, but convincing them that the rug was never there in the first place.
Set around the turn of the century, Robert Angier and Alfred Borden are two rival up and coming magicians working the theatres of London. Their semi-friendship is blown asunder when Angier’s beloved Julia is drowned on stage in an accident which might have been caused by Borden. Blaming him for her death, Angier swears to make him pay, and their professional rivalry reaches new levels when Borden introduces his long cherished new trick, The Transported Man, onto the London stage, and leaves Angier obsessed with how he did it.
The Prestige is not a film to take lightly, dabbling on the fringes of the occult and sci-fi, it’s impossible to categorise. It’s a mystery, yes, but one that isn’t just interested in how certain things happened, but also making sure the audience doesn’t see it. And, rather than hide the truth at every step, the easier way to do it, it rather uncovers a piece of it on a regular basis to the point where, upon each viewing, fresh clues and nuances are revealed. Whole scenes find themselves playing completely differently to how one didn’t only first see them, as second, third and fourth, too. It plays with you, torments you, and leaves you as hungry for answers as the driven Angier. It dares to have its protagonists cold and obsessive, yet one empathises with each of them. The very nature of show-business is encapsulated on the disparate characteristics of the two men, one a great showman with no talent as a magician, the other a master magician who lacks charisma. It’s that same lack of emotional resonance that many critics railed against, but when has that been a pre-requisite? The fact is these people are driven men, and if the women in their lives seem merely sideshows, that’s what they were to them.
Thus the women in the film are there merely for distraction – and in Johansson’s case, in corset and stockings, a very pleasurable distraction for many – but the film itself tells you that’s what they are there for in the act, and Nolan’s film is one massive magic act, using the film-maker’s box of tricks, as opposed to a stage. There’s fine supporting work from Caine, while Jackman is truly revelatory in what amounts to a man adopting the façade of another man, while also playing another man, hired to act as the façade’s double. Bale also relishes another opportunity to work with Nolan away from Gotham City. I haven’t even begun to mention the incredible visual texture – take a bow, Wally Pfister. The truth is, however, I don’t want to give too much away, even though, as we are told, “the secret impresses no-one; the trick you use it for is everything.”
Allan,
Thank for this review, I have seen this film a number of times, I think I watched it twice in the first viewing or at least within days because it just wouldn’t leave my mind.
I enjoyed everything about it. I had seen The Illusionist sometime after which I did not care for as much even through I have followed Edward Norton’s films rather closely.
There is great magic in the creating and producing this film, the performances of the Jackman and Bale are wonderful to watch even wondering who is the bad guy here.
I will continue to view this film for sometime!
A stupendous review by Allan Fish. It took some time, but I now appreciate this film more than The Illusionist, a film it often compared and contrasted with. A tricky, challenging film.
Initially I regarded THE ILLUSIONIST as the stronger film, feeling as I did it was so ravishing to behold, and that THE PRESTIGE contained more than its share of convolution. But I have come around to the opposite way of thinking – THE PRESTIGE does evince more intellectual heft, and provides for the challenges that aren’t park of THE ILLUSIONIST package. Allan has long been proud of this review which is a masterpiece of scholarship.
I have a personal connection with this movie. Thanks to a friendship with its author, Christopher Priest, I got one of the first review copies of his novel The Prestige. I read the thing in a day — 400 pages as I recall — and that evening wrote my review. I’ve rarely been so knocked out by a novel.
Alas, my review appeared not in the TLS or the NYT but in a then extant horror fanzine called Samhain. It was, I think, the novel’s first-published review. Since I regard Priest as one of the most significant writers of the latter part of the 20th century (and I’m far from alone in this; forget yer Ian McEwans, Sam), the review was not unsurprisingly a good one.
Scroll along quite a few years, and here’s the movie. I assumed it’d be a disaster and so we didn’t go to see it when it was on at the local fleapit. But then it came on cable and . . .
Nolan caught the spirit of the novel quite perfectly. There are moments in the movie, just as in the novel, when you have you have to turn away because of the gaucheness of the stage performers; but that’s exactly how conjurers are. It’s part of their — and this movie’s – genius.
I’ve never been a fan of this one. I honestly don’t particularly see this being much more than a trifle. There’s just not much to it. Nolan has his fans, but his stuff is a mixed bag.
Me neither. It’s one of the few surprise driven films where I felt like I was foreseeing the twists in real time.
An excellent review of an excellent film. I consider The Prestige to be one of Nolan’s 3 masterpieces (along with Memento and The Dark Knight), and it ought to be exhibit A in response to those who believe Nolan cannot tell a story through images. Of course there’s plenty of talk, but the film navigates through an incredibly dense plot with an intricate editing scheme and carefully thought-out camera-placement and image-making that even David Bordwell has singled out for praise. Moreover, it leaves the viewer with quite a bit of ambiguity regarding the plot and the themes involved–which nicely counters those who believe Nolan’s plots are too literal and absolute. It seems a little strange to see it in a countdown of science fiction movies, but it does qualify. And casting David Bowie as Nikola Tesla was a masterstroke that now feels all too melancholy after Bowie’s death in January.
Anyway, I consider this a highly underrated movie, and am always pleased to find others who agree with me!
It seems a little strange to see it in a countdown of science fiction movies
On the other hand, it’s based with reasonable fidelity on a science-fiction novel by science-fiction writer Christopher Priest . . .
Its a really underrated movie.