The Prestige – The Magic of Movies
Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film The Prestige is also his most underrated. When looking at rankings of his films, I never see this one near the top. However, I’d put it behind only Interstellar. It has great characters, amazing visuals, and an unforgettable storyline.
I was very happy to show this to Tori, as I had a feeling she would enjoy it. I’ll pass it over to her now.
Pre-viewing:
This was recently added to the list upon the suggestion of my mother-in-law. I don’t really know anything about this movie, but she really enjoyed watching it with Nick and thought I would as well. The same day we added it to the hat, I drew it to watch for the next week!
Post-viewing:
I enjoyed this movie quite a bit. I liked trying to figure out what the twists were and I wasn’t disappointed by the twists in this movie! I did struggle a little bit with recognizing some of the passages of time. Very obviously, many years had passed from the beginning of the film to the end, but I didn’t really recognize the small jumps in time. That’s not necessarily a terrible thing, but I did get a little confused at times. And maybe I just didn’t recognize something that is glaringly obvious to other people.
The symbolism was a high point of this movie and I enjoyed the discussion Nick and I had after it ended. I’ll let him take over and tell you a little more about that.
Nick’s thoughts:
Like I explained in my introduction, this is one of my favorite Nolan films. Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, and Scarlett Johansson were of course all stand outs, and I would be remised not to mention my favorite musician of all time, David Bowie, as the famed Nikola Tesla.
I think this was my third time seeing this film, and let me tell you: I think I enjoy it more each time. Knowing the twists and turns, I was able to see an incredible amount of foreshadowing and imagery that blew my mind. Nolan all but tells you the answers to both of the two major mysteries in the first few minutes of runtime, and even tells you he’s doing it with the opening narration of “Are you watching closely?” However, like the characters in the film will later say, the audience wants to be fooled, so it is easy to miss.
As Tori mentioned, we discussed the symbolism in the film. Without spoiling anything, there’s a great scene of a magic trick involving birds early on in the film that is a perfect metaphor for the rest of the film.
The theme of Bale and Jackman’s obsession of one-uping the other was fascinating to watch. Both were willing to make great sacrifices in their personal lives to best the other. I’m competitive, but damn!
