One of the major themes running through Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Prestige is that many things in life (magic tricks, rivalry, love) retain their appeal only so long as there remains mystery about their inner workings. Knowing the secret of a trick renders it mundane.
I feel rather the same way about this film – although perhaps mundane is too harsh a word. Being familiar with Christopher Priest’s original novel, I sat through the film knowing what was going to happen when the magician pulled back the curtain and revealed “the prestige” and, as a result, I came out of the cinema rather less satisfied with my evening’s entertainment than my companions. Which is a shame because Nolan’s film is as sumptuous-looking and well-performed a piece of movie-making as I’ve watched this year.
Early in The Prestige, Cutter (Caine) narrates an explanation of the three stages of a great magic trick. In the pledge an audience is shown something ordinary, the turn has that ordinary object does something extraordinary and, finally, the prestige twists and shows the audience something they’ve never seen before. The audience, the narrator tells us, might look for the secret, but they never find it because they actually want to be fooled. The audience buy into the magic and become the magician’s accomplice.
This film follows a rather similar structure – the opening relationship between Borden (Bale) and Angier (Jackman) appears no more than a straightforward rivalry between young men in the same trade. However that rivalry quickly becomes obsessive, with both men injuring the other physically and emotionally in their attempts to come out on top. And the ending reveals that, in their obsession, both men have endured almost impossible sacrifice to achieve their goals.
But if an audience’s willing complicity is the sign of a great magic trick, then The Prestige, despite its many admirable qualities, falls someway short of greatness. Never, while watching it, did I find myself able to escape into the film – I was constantly on the outside, analysing Nolan’s technique, trying to work out how he made his tricks work. My problem, since watching the film, has been to work out why.
The Prestige’s faults are far from obvious. Both Bale and Jackman are excellent in the lead roles – Jackman is the more immediately likeable but the pair work well together with Bale’s working class cockney sparking brightly off Jackman’s smoother American character. Caine’s Cutter is the wise old head who grounds the film’s wilder moments. The women’s roles are slight but Olivia (Johansson – who has never looked more stunning in movie) and Sarah (Hall) do provide The Prestige with a sense of the emotional costs that obsession demands. David Bowie’s cameo as Tesla might have unbalanced another film – it is a weird and clipped performance – but it works rather well here. The only disappointment is that his faithful laboratory assistant Alley (Serkis) didn’t walk with a limp, speak with a lisp and say things like “Yerth Marthter!”
Nolan’s direction is superbly assured and precise – intertwining subtle flowing camera movement with moments of great stillness – and Pfister’s cinematography is lush without ever slipping into period cliché. The script by Nolan and his brother Jonathon, takes the essential elements of Priest’s novel, tosses them into the air and reassembles them, chopping up continuity but never leaving the viewer baffled and delivering an intelligent, twisting and very modern thriller.
The Prestige has all this going for it, and yet still I didn’t love it. Perhaps my reservations stem simply from the fact that I’ve never enjoyed magic shows, I always want to know exactly how the trick works – I never consent to being fooled. Or perhaps, in the end, this film is just too much about the prestige – the final revelation of the extraordinary – and that the characters’ obsessions allow too little space for the consequences of their actions to be really explored. I suspect, however, that my reaction simply comes down to the fact that knowing the secret robs the trick of its power. As such I have some sympathy with Nolan’s plea that the audience don’t read the novel before seeing the film (though I’m sure Christopher Priest would strongly disagree) as knowing how it’s all done did rob The Prestige of much of its dramatic power.
None of this should stop you from seeing the film. The Prestige belongs to a rare band of intelligent, technically brilliant and thematically faithful adaptations of top-rate science fiction novels – and as such it deserves to be cherished.
One of the major themes running through Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Prestige is that many things in life (magic tricks, rivalry, love) retain their appeal only so long as there remains mystery about their inner workings.
Knowing the secret of a trick renders it mundane.
I feel rather the same way about this film – although perhaps mundane is too harsh a word. Being familiar with Christopher Priest’s original novel, I sat through the film knowing what was going to happen when the magician pulled back the curtain and revealed “the prestige” and, as a result, I came out of the cinema rather less satisfied with my evening’s entertainment than my companions. Which is a shame because Nolan’s film is as sumptuous-looking and well-performed a piece of movie-making as I’ve watched this year.
Early in The Prestige, Cutter (Caine) narrates an explanation of the three stages of a great magic trick. In the pledge an audience is shown something ordinary, the turn has that ordinary object does something extraordinary and, finally, the prestige twists and shows the audience something they’ve never seen before. The audience, the narrator tells us, might look for the secret, but they never find it because they actually want to be fooled. The audience buy into the magic and become the magician’s accomplice.
This film follows a rather similar structure – the opening relationship between Borden (Bale) and Angier (Jackman) appears no more than a straightforward rivalry between young men in the same trade. However that rivalry quickly becomes obsessive, with both men injuring the other physically and emotionally in their attempts to come out on top. And the ending reveals that, in their obsession, both men have endured almost impossible sacrifice to achieve their goals.
But if an audience’s willing complicity is the sign of a great magic trick, then The Prestige, despite its many admirable qualities, falls someway short of greatness. Never, while watching it, did I find myself able to escape into the film – I was constantly on the outside, analysing Nolan’s technique, trying to work out how he made his tricks work. My problem, since watching the film, has been to work out why.
The Prestige’s faults are far from obvious. Both Bale and Jackman are excellent in the lead roles – Jackman is the more immediately likeable but the pair work well together with Bale’s working class cockney sparking brightly off Jackman’s smoother American character. Caine’s Cutter is the wise old head who grounds the film’s wilder moments. The women’s roles are slight but Olivia (Johansson – who has never looked more stunning in movie) and Sarah (Hall) do provide The Prestige with a sense of the emotional costs that obsession demands. David Bowie’s cameo as Tesla might have unbalanced another film – it is a weird and clipped performance – but it works rather well here. The only disappointment is that his faithful laboratory assistant Alley (Serkis) didn’t walk with a limp, speak with a lisp and say things like “Yerth Marthter!”
Nolan’s direction is superbly assured and precise – intertwining subtle flowing camera movement with moments of great stillness – and Pfister’s cinematography is lush without ever slipping into period cliché. The script by Nolan and his brother Jonathon, takes the essential elements of Priest’s novel, tosses them into the air and reassembles them, chopping up continuity but never leaving the viewer baffled and delivering an intelligent, twisting and very modern thriller.
The Prestige has all this going for it, and yet still I didn’t love it. Perhaps my reservations stem simply from the fact that I’ve never enjoyed magic shows, I always want to know exactly how the trick works – I never consent to being fooled. Or perhaps, in the end, this film is just too much about the prestige – the final revelation of the extraordinary – and that the characters’
One of the major themes running through Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Prestige is that many things in life (magic tricks, rivalry, love) retain their appeal only so long as there remains mystery about their inner workings.
Knowing the secret of a trick renders it mundane.
I feel rather the same way about this film – although perhaps mundane is too harsh a word. Being familiar with Christopher Priest’s original novel, I sat through the film knowing what was going to happen when the magician pulled back the curtain and revealed “the prestige” and, as a result, I came out of the cinema rather less satisfied with my evening’s entertainment than my companions. Which is a shame because Nolan’s film is as sumptuous-looking and well-performed a piece of movie-making as I’ve watched this year.
Early in The Prestige, Cutter (Caine) narrates an explanation of the three stages of a great magic trick. In the pledge an audience is shown something ordinary, the turn has that ordinary object does something extraordinary and, finally, the prestige twists and shows the audience something they’ve never seen before. The audience, the narrator tells us, might look for the secret, but they never find it because they actually want to be fooled. The audience buy into the magic and become the magician’s accomplice.
This film follows a rather similar structure – the opening relationship between Borden (Bale) and Angier (Jackman) appears no more than a straightforward rivalry between young men in the same trade. However that rivalry quickly becomes obsessive, with both men injuring the other physically and emotionally in their attempts to come out on top. And the ending reveals that, in their obsession, both men have endured almost impossible sacrifice to achieve their goals.
But if an audience’s willing complicity is the sign of a great magic trick, then The Prestige, despite its many admirable qualities, falls someway short of greatness. Never, while watching it, did I find myself able to escape into the film – I was constantly on the outside, analysing Nolan’s technique, trying to work out how he made his tricks work. My problem, since watching the film, has been to work out why.
The Prestige’s faults are far from obvious. Both Bale and Jackman are excellent in the lead roles – Jackman is the more immediately likeable but the pair work well together with Bale’s working class cockney sparking brightly off Jackman’s smoother American character. Caine’s Cutter is the wise old head who grounds the film’s wilder moments. The women’s roles are slight but Olivia (Johansson – who has never looked more stunning in movie) and Sarah (Hall) do provide The Prestige with a sense of the emotional costs that obsession demands. David Bowie’s cameo as Tesla might have unbalanced another film – it is a weird and clipped performance – but it works rather well here. The only disappointment is that his faithful laboratory assistant Alley (Serkis) didn’t walk with a limp, speak with a lisp and say things like “Yerth Marthter!”
Nolan’s direction is superbly assured and precise – intertwining subtle flowing camera movement with moments of great stillness – and Pfister’s cinematography is lush without ever slipping into period cliché. The script by Nolan and his brother Jonathon, takes the essential elements of Priest’s novel, tosses them into the air and reassembles them, chopping up continuity but never leaving the viewer baffled and delivering an intelligent, twisting and very modern thriller.
The Prestige has all this going for it, and yet still I didn’t love it. Perhaps my reservations stem simply from the fact that I’ve never enjoyed magic shows, I always want to know exactly how the trick works – I never consent to being fooled. Or perhaps, in the end, this film is just too much about the prestige – the final revelation of the extraordinary – and that the characters’ obsessions allow too little space for the consequences of their actions to be really explored. I suspect, however, that my reaction simply comes down to the fact that knowing the secret robs the trick of its power. As such I have some sympathy with Nolan’s plea that the audience don’t read the novel before seeing the film (though I’m sure Christopher Priest would strongly disagree) as knowing how it’s all done did rob The Prestige of much of its dramatic power.
None of this should stop you from seeing the film. The Prestige belongs to a rare band of intelligent, technically brilliant and thematically faithful adaptations of top-rate science fiction novels – and as such it deserves to be cherished.
obsessions allow too little space for the consequences of their actions to be really explored. I suspect, however, that my reaction simply comes down to the fact that knowing the secret robs the trick of its power. As such I have some sympathy with Nolan’s plea that the audience don’t read the novel before seeing the film (though I’m sure Christopher Priest would strongly disagree) as knowing how it’s all done did rob The Prestige of much of its dramatic power.
None of this should stop you from seeing the film. The Prestige belongs to a rare band of intelligent, technically brilliant and thematically faithful adaptations of top-rate science fiction novels – and as such it deserves to be cherished.