Underrated classics: THE PRESTIGE!

As reinventions go, Christopher Nolan’s Batman rising from the garishly multi-coloured ashes of Joel Schumacher’s not-so-dark knight to become the second most successful movie ever made is probably somewhere near the top. It’s a difficult thing to step out of the shadow of, but Nolan is not the kind of man to rest on his laurels. In fact, many were surprised at his attachment to 2005’s Batman Begins, a superhero film, what with his background in dark psychological thrillers like Memento and Insomnia. However, this new angle of psychosis and fear is exactly what the Batman franchise needed to reignite its potential, eventually culminating in 2008’s masterpiece The Dark Knight.

Yet to me, a film that ended up grossing over $1 billion dollars is not Nolan’s crowning achievement. Nor is Inception. Nestled between Batman outings lies Nolan’s best work, and one of the most underrated films of the past 10 years – a story of fear, love, devotion and obsession told with Kubrick-like precision and with Spielbergian wonder.

The very plot of The Prestige is enough to pique the interest of most – two Victorian-era stage magicians (Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale) live out a fierce personal rivalry, each obsessed with finding out the method for the greatest magic trick ever produced: The Transported Man. Yet this is not simply a period drama with impressive illusions. Nolan takes Christopher Priest’s source novel and rips it back to its bare essentials, exploring how the obsessions of Jackman’s Robert Angier and Bale’s Alfred Borden destroy not only the lives of everyone around them, but their very souls in the process.

Stage magic is an art, as Michael Caine’s opening voiceover intones. A trick is split into 3 parts or acts, much like a film, known as the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige - “it’s not enough to make something disappear... you have to bring it back”. Therein lies the skill, in showing the audience that the woman wasn’t really sawn in half, and which is followed by wonder and applause. It is only after multiple viewings that it becomes apparent, but Nolan structures his film similarly. We see the character’s ordinary lives and relationships, and the beginnings of their hatred for one another in act one, followed by the development of two different versions of The Transported Man in act two. But it is the reveal of act three, the Prestige of a film wound with all the clockwork precision of a successful magic trick, that leads to true wonder and astonishment. Not until then do we realise how deep both Angier and Borden’s obsessions ran, taking over every aspect, every minute of their lives, leaving the audience to wonder if what they have just learned is possible. Can two people become so obsessed with outdoing the other that they would have allowed their souls to become so twisted and fragmented? Why would they do such a thing? Angier’s answer is simple and powerful: “it was the look on their faces”.

Wonder, true astonishment, has become something as elusive as real magic. Angier, Borden and Nolan understand and embrace this: if you can fool your audience, even for a second, then it was all worth it. I have seen this film many times with many different people, and so far none have even tried to figure out the ending. It is a mystery that you want to know the answer to as soon as Borden asks “Are you watching closely?” over the film’s ominous 5 second opening shot, but of course you aren’t really looking. Nolan understands how to surprise us (did any of you see the end of Memento coming? Or the fact that Liam Neeson was in fact Ra’s Al Ghul? The whole of Inception?)  and unlike many modern filmmakers is able to understand the subtlety that requires.  Everything about a film must be crafted and fine-tuned to produce a desired effect from an audience – witness the opening bank job of The Dark Knight, where the crooks end up killing each other until the only one left is revealed as some who believes that “whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you... stranger”. The reveal of that scene is unexpected, the Joker’s cold malice evident as the robbers kill each other according to his plan without them even knowing it. His scars and make-up are truly shocking and disturbing, in enormous close up as he grotesquely lick his lips, we are truly marvelling at the wonder of cinema at that moment.

Yet where The Dark Knight has its moments of wonder, The Prestige leaves you with a feeling that you have just experienced something special, maybe even real magic. It is very rare for a modern film to provide such character depth and complexity, explore themes of obsession and sacrifice so clearly and passionately, and to be so brilliantly constructed as to reflect the main conceit of the film itself, as well as just being plain cool at the same time. It’s about magicians. It’s Batman vs. Wolverine. It’s got Scarlett Johansson. In a corset.

Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to provide a more detailed analysis of the complexity and richness of The Prestige without completely ruining the ending, and this is an ending that you will not see coming (in fact, many of the people I have spoken to still can’t quite believe it). The Prestige is a magic trick in the form of a film, a true undiscovered gem and one that deserves to be found by as wide an audience as Nolan’s last film was. Obsession to an art is something that many people struggle to understand, but by the final scene Nolan has made it undeniably clear: it’s for the looks on our faces.