The Prestige uses magic to tell a very human cautionary tale about how the only thing that corrupts more than power is the pride that often fuels man’s efforts to attain it.
The prideful men at the center of Christopher Nolan’s underrated 2006 masterpiece are two rival London magicians whose respective obsessions with the illusionist’s tradecraft consume their lives both on and offstage. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a charming and kind magician unaware of how total his want to be the best is, in ways that make his likable, Vegas showman act feel like a vulnerable facade; a mask hiding a truer, darker self that its wearer is unaware of. On the flip side of that trick coin is Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), who is less interested in the fame and prestige that comes with 19th Century magic acts and more concerned with making his mark in a way that can support his wife and his daughter. That is until his rivalry with Angiers escalates into more complicated places, with a big sci-fi twist involving the inventor Tesla (!) and one hell of a climatic magic trick that forever alters both their lives and that of Borden’s twin, also played by Bale.
Twists like these, coupled with a keep-the-plates-spinning tension, are what audiences expect from Nolan’s work. But what is unexpected here, in all the best ways, is how Nolan grounds all the fantastic on the backs of relatable characters who feel fully tangible despite their dedication to smoke and mirrors. But the brilliance of Nolan’s script for The Prestige — co-written by Nolan and his brother, Jonathan, based on the novel by Christopher Priest — is the level of emotional storytelling the filmmakers apply when all of that smoke and those mirrors collapse into one frame, and spark a series of very real and tragic consequences for the men who spend entire careers cheating such things to the tune of enabling applause.
But all the ovations are drowned out by the loss of life brought on by the trick that both makes and breaks Angier’s career: “The Disappearing Man.” Angier finds the reclusive inventor Tesla to convince him to apply his work with electricity to pull something more than endless scarves out of his sleeve. Despite Tesla’s reservations, the inventor creates a “magic box” that, at first, seems like more smoke and mirrors, albeit very high-tech. But soon, Angier realizes that the device can clone and teleport its user. So Angier eventually doubles himself, more than once, as Borden uses his twin to perform some double-crosses of his own. Caught in the middle of this epic, cruel game of one-upmanship are the women in Angier and Borden’s lives. The first tragedy is Angier’s wife (Piper Perabo), whose death gives birth to the film’s central rivalry. Then, an aspiring assistant (Scarlet Johansson) has her heart broken by both Angier and Borden (and Borden’s twin) but has enough integrity to vacate her role in this reckless sideshow.
But the suicide of Borden’s wife (Rebecca Hall), brought on by the emotional yo-yo her partner and his twin kept him on, is the emotional gut punch that seals Angier and Borden’s fate. Before this moment, Nolan’s Prestige is like an illusionist’s version of The Sting, a long con with dark detours along what is mostly a fairly entertaining road. But Nolan wisely, effortlessly, turns the screw and tugs on our heartstrings by showing us that not even those that wield magic are immune to mortality.
From here, The Prestige ratchets up its slow-burn tension and commits fully to being a 19th Century version of a feature-length episode of The Twilight Zone. And it is this commitment where Nolan excels; as great as Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are, they don’t hold a candle to the god-tier level of character-first storytelling Nolan is executing here. We are never ahead of the characters, which makes the revelation behind Angier’s master illusion all the more jaw-dropping — and the fate he suffers all the more bittersweet. When Angier first puts himself through the Disappearing Man, you can argue the original never achieved the very prestige he risked his life for. It seems that the original Angier died in the process, with his clone coming out on top to receive the applause Angier always wanted but never had. (That interpretation seems most fitting with Nolan’s unwavering approach to his story’s tragic underpinnings.) And from there, with all subsequent uses of the Disappearing Man, nothing but copies of a copy go in and exit the device. And each night Angier executes the trick, the curtain closes on a different version of the same man who is far removed from the smiling romantic we first met.
While Borden survives this whole ordeal (well, half of him, anyway), he does not get to walk away unscathed. Physically and emotionally scarred, Borden manages to watch his rival die at the hands of his life’s mission — one Nolan argues is the path to nothing but tragedy. And loss. That one’s dreams can not exceed their values and morals — or risk courting unavoidable nightmares and ruin. The moment one’s professional passions overtake life’s more meaningful pursuits is the moment when neither can sustain the other.
As talented a storyteller as Nolan is, no other film on his CV feels as complete or as resonant as The Prestige does. In these final scenes, with these final twists, Nolan’s considerable talents are at their peak. Especially when it comes to emotional storytelling. He ties up all the loose ends in ways that make you want to go back and re-examine what you just witnessed, just like an audience member would at a magic show. You can’t believe your eyes, but you can believe what they make you feel after seeing the film’s final, haunting image.
And like all great films, this one sticks with you long after the end credits roll.
The Prestige is currently available on Movies Anywhere and is Screen Pass-eligible so you can share the magic with a friend.
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