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Drama 2020 2 hr 10 min iTunes Available on iTunes Period thriller set in Edwardian London where two rival magicians, partners until the tragic death of an assistant during a show, feud bitterly after one of them performs the ultimate magic trick - teleportation.
- Christopher Nolan
- Hugh Jackman
Tenet: Directed by Christopher Nolan. With Juhan Ulfsak, Jefferson Hall, Ivo Uukkivi, Andrew Howard. Armed with only the word "Tenet," and fighting for the survival of the entire world, CIA operative, The Protagonist, journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a global mission that unfolds beyond real time.
- (603K)
- Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
- Christopher Nolan
- 2020-09-03
His rival tries desperately to uncover the secret of his routine, experimenting with dangerous new science as his quest takes him to the brink of insanity and jeopardises the lives of everyone around the pair. Drama 2020 2 hr 10 min. 77%. PG-13. Starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson.
- Christopher Nolan
- Hugh Jackman
- We continue our deep dive into Christopher Nolan’s films with The Prestige, which is filled with more guilt, more dead wives, more self-constructed identities, and even more timelines!
- A Three-Part Trick
- More From IGN's Christopher Nolan Retrospective
- Editing Time
- The Brutality of Creation
- Art vs. Family
By Siddhant Adlakha
Updated: Apr 28, 2021 7:31 pm
Posted: Aug 29, 2020 2:05 pm
As Tenet continues its release in international markets, we're taking a look back at filmmaker Christopher Nolan's entire feature-length filmography, exploring each of his films one day at a time. Today we continue with his fifth feature, The Prestige.
Full spoilers for The Prestige follow.
A leap back to his stellar Memento form, Christopher Nolan’s fifth feature is an incisive work about the nature of creative obsession. The film bursts forth fully formed, richly detailed, and with a keen eye toward Nolan’s usual brushstrokes. It features more guilt, more dead wives, more self-constructed identities, and even more timelines that jump back and forth; the film might have bordered on self-parody, were it not so clear-eyed and propulsive.
Set during the rivalry between Edison and Tesla — a backdrop that mirrors its tale of ruthless professional backstabbing — The Prestige begins with Michael Caine’s illusionist ingenieur John Cutter explaining the three stages of a magic trick. They are, in order, the pledge, the turn, and the prestige, though the way they’re contextualized in the film, they may as well be three acts of a Hollywood screenplay.
The pledge, or the first act, shows the audience something ordinary; the film’s earliest timeline centers on the fledgling careers of Robert Angier/The Great Danton (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden/The Professor (Christian Bale), up-and-coming stage magicians searching for ways to push themselves and find new limits to their art. The turn, or the second act, is about making that ordinary something disappear; after Borden causes the accidental death of Angier’s wife Julia (Piper Perabo), the dueling magicians lose themselves down a dark and winding road filled with personal and professional retribution. The prestige, a trick’s extraordinary final step, is about bringing that ordinary, disappeared something back; not only does the film’s final act feature two apparent resurrections, it also reveals dark and painful truths about what both men have been willing to sacrifice — to hurt each other, and to achieve success.
•Following and "Doodlebug": Setting a Course for Non-Linear Identity Crises
•Memento: The Inescapable Labyrinth
•Insomnia: An Imperfect Examination of Lies
•Batman Begins: Exploring the Dark Knight's Past and America’s Response to Tragedy
•The Dark Knight: Plummeting Into Real-World Terror
•Inception: Christopher Nolan's Self-Deconstruction
Perhaps Angier is right. Perhaps we want to be fooled, and so we suspend our disbelief, ignoring the discontinuous nature of editing and accepting, in its place, whatever version of time it presents us. Andy Serkis, David Bowie, and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige.How a trick is really performed isn’t nearly as engaging as the performance itself. This point is hammered home when a behind-the-scenes explanation of Angier’s new bird trick is cross-cut with that same illusion being performed on stage for the very first time. It’s as if Angier is picturing, in his mind’s eye, the delighted reactions of those who have only seen the end result (rather than seeing Cutter painstakingly strap him to a trick-achieving apparatus, like a stuntman). In fact, knowing the secrets behind a trick can be downright upsetting, like when the nephew of Borden’s love interest Sarah (Rebecca Hall) figures out that a bird disappearing and “reappearing” often involves two identical birds, one of which is killed — foreshadowing Borden’s own fate.
In The Prestige, the slow unraveling of each man’s diary, as read by the other, yields a greater emotional impact than simply cherry-picking vital developments. Each man constructs an enticing web of words; we cannot avoid becoming tangled in their narrative allure.
Each paragraph is a confession of sorts, since the diaries have a specific audience of one, and each man is forced to get inside the head of a man he despises. One beat in particular permeates all three timelines in quick succession. Borden, in the earliest timeline, writes that he truly doesn’t know which knot he tied on Julia’s wrists the night she drowned; upon reading this in Borden’s diary, Angier, in the “middle” timeline, expresses fury and dismay. “How could he not know?” he asks, and writes in his own diary; Angier’s rage reaches Borden’s ears once more, as Borden reads these words back in the “present” timeline. “How could he not know?” the film echoes.
It’s a seemingly minor occurrence, but this emotional domino effect — a causal ripple between timelines — is emblematic of so much of Nolan’s work with editor Lee Smith. It follows a similar structure to the action in Dunkirk (separate war stories whose climaxes are made to align, even though in reality, they impact each other several hours apart) and Inception (simultaneous “kicks” permeating several dream layers, from one to the next).
There’s little difference between self-sacrifice and outward violence for Borden and Angier; for both men, performance is an act of masochism.
In an act of vengeance, Angier sabotages Borden’s bullet-catch trick by shooting off two of his fingers; later, Borden lobs off two fingers from his secret twin, so that both men can pull off their teleportation trick (and continue taking turns living as Borden and his engineer Fallon). Similarly, the first time Angier experiments with the transportation device built by Nikola Tesla (David Bowie), it creates an exact replica of him, who he promptly shoots dead, the way he tried to shoot Borden. And finally, in the film’s most macabre twist (or prestige), it turns out Angier has been creating these clones of himself as part of his stage act night after night, disposing of his “original” self by drowning him in a tank — not unlike the tank his wife Julia drowned in after Borden’s apparent mistake. (In fact, Angier’s final act of drowning, meant to frame Borden for his murder, involves the very same tank). Christian Bale works his magic.The very violence enacted against each man, which set them down paths of ruthless vengeance, becomes violence they enact on themselves (and on extensions of themselves) night after night, for the delight of the crowd.
Vengeance drives both men to tear themselves apart. Borden, in order to maintain his illusion and outdo Angier, lives an unfulfilled double life, with each Borden twin leading only half an existence. Angier, meanwhile, splits his very being, creating a physical replica of himself which he then mercilessly drowns (again and again), lest someone discover his secret. In a somewhat blunt artistic statement, both men are essentially killing themselves for their art — but they’re also killing those around them in the process.
Sarah, who goes on to marry Borden, spends her life with two different men, always suspecting something is deeply wrong, but never knowing exactly what. She eventually hangs herself. Upon re-watching The Prestige, it becomes clearer to us as outside observers that there are, in fact, two different Alfred Bordens; not only do their appearances differ at times (one appears to be slightly more gaunt) but as the film goes on, their attitude towards Sarah oscillates between loving and antagonistic.
The split between Borden and “Fallon” isn’t the film’s only duality that speaks to the perils of obsession. Borden and Angier are also sides to a coin, a dichotomy best exemplified by the film’s ending. For most of the story, Angier has fought in pursuit of vengeance, and his passions have led to his demise — many times over, and ultimately, at the hands of Borden. However this Borden, the one who survives, returns home to his daughter Jess.
The Prestige, not unlike Inception and Interstellar after it, notably ends with a man walking through Hell in order to get back to his child.
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While both men’s obsessions led them down self-destructive paths, Angier eventually fought, and created, for vengeance alone, casting aside both the love of his assistant Olivia (Scarlett Johansson) and the memory of his wife. However, while Angier’s passions were selfish, Borden’s final trick — his big reveal, after one of “him” had to die — was always informed by the passion that was his daughter.
The oldest of Nolan’s four children, his only daughter, was born in 2002, shortly before he embarked on his journey to make Batman Begins (his first big-budget summer blockbuster). Since then, his films have gotten larger in scale, and have involved shooting in numerous cities around the globe. This seemed to mark a shift in the way Nolan would approach his characters’ outlooks. His prior films centered on men driven by selfish goals whose journeys ended nihilistically, if not outright tragically. Following’s anonymous lead presumably ends up in prison; Memento’s Leonard Shelby sends himself on a never-ending quest for vengeance; Insomnia’s Detective Dormer is killed in a distinctly inglorious manner. These men’s missions never extended beyond themselves — until Batman Begins, in which Nolan creates a Batman who, unlike prior iterations of the character, wants to pursue his mission until he’s no longer needed. Throughout the Dark Knight Trilogy, his Batman wants to hang up the cowl and live a life of fulfilment. After Insomnia, Nolan envisioned a life after tragedy for his characters, and a life after their missions; his most recent film before Tenet, Dunkirk, is about men surviving war and returning home.
The Prestige, not unlike Inception and Interstellar after it, notably ends with a man walking through Hell in order to get back to his child.
- Siddhant Adlakha
The Prestige: Rival Magicians. (written by my 9yo son) This movie is interesting because it teachers you really advanced tricks. It shows you tricks that look impossible. It talks about dangerous magic tricks going wrong. Some parts with fatal tricks might scare kids. A drowning scene is shown several times.
- Christopher Nolan
- Cynthia Fuchs
- Touchstone Pictures
The Prestige PG-13 , 2h 10m Drama,Fantasy,Mystery & Thriller Directed By ... 2020. Siddhant Adlakha IGN Movies A leap back to his stellar Memento form, Christopher Nolan's fifth feature is an ...
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PG-13 • 9. IGN Rating. Where to Watch ... Nolan’s The Prestige Has More: More Guilt, More Dead Wives, More Timelines! Aug 29, 2020 - We continue our deep dive into Christopher Nolan’s films ...
