This review of "The Prestige" will included spoilers regarding the end of the film. Proceed at your own risk.
As we´re told in the trailers and several times through "The Prestige", there are three acts to a magic trick: "the pledge", in which the magician makes a promise to the audience about a seemingly ordinary object; "the turn", where that object does something completely unexpected; and "the prestige", or, in other words, the climax.
In "The Prestige", two magicians (played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman) continually try to one-up each other in terms of their performances after the tragic death of Angier´s (Jackman) wife. A series of double-crosses, risks and deaths later, one does emerge victorious. But the question remains: does the result justify everything that came before?
Every couple of years, Hollywood unleashes two similarly themed films within weeks of each other. 1998 saw the release of "Armageddon" and the vastly superior "Deep Impact". And this year we get the already released "The Illusionist" and now this production. For whatever reason, both of these films have roughly the same structure and themes: the story is mostly told in flashback and the overriding theme is that of revenge. Perfectly valid ideas for a movie, right?
Sure, if a movie set in the same exact genre, using the same exact themes and the same exact story structure didn´t come out two months beforehand. See, the biggest thing (the dubious science and morality aside) going against "The Prestige" is that "The Illusionist´ is a far superior movie in every way.
The central issue within the film is that Alfred Bordon (Bale) is accused of murdering Angier following a botched magic act. The constant one-upsmanship is unimportant suffice to say both men do their best to prove he is the bigger magician and, by extension, the bigger man. That´s all this movie is: two little boys on the schoolyard competing with each other to see who can get the most people to watch them.
Eventually, this newfangled contraption called electricity comes into play when Angier employs a machine designed by Nikola Tesla (a real human being!) to perform the final iteration of The Transported Man, a trick in which he can move from a stage to a balcony in a second. All of this is told in flashback, of course, since Bordon is sitting on death row. The thing only Angier knows is that the machine he has creates clones (yes, clones…doubles…copies), thus allowing him to perform his trick flawlessly.
In a final desperate act, he kills a clone and frames Bordon. Ah, but Bordon has a trick of his own. While he sits on death row and ultimately hangs (a scene we´re never sure is going to happen until it actually does), Bordon has a brother-a twin-of his own. An exactly identical twin…all the way down to the two missing fingers on his left hand.
How Bordon´s wife and his mistress never know they are sleeping with different men is beyond me. Why no one in their reality put two and two together is quite simple: this plot "twist" makes zero sense and reeks of absolute desperation. (To be fair, director Chris Nolan and his brother Jonathan adapted this story from a novel by Christopher Priest.) However, there is a clue-if it can be considered a clue-to this twist.
Sarah does mention several times she knows when he is and is not in love with her. One assumes before the big reveal at the end that he´s in love with her during the good times and, conversely, falls out of love during the bad. However, the idea is perverted into the explanation of the brothers. Now, no matter how identical two people are, there are always some differences-even subtle ones-someone like a wife should be able to notice. It speaks volumes about the relationship that Sarah doesn´t.
I do want to get back to the clone idea for a second. This is a movie steeped in reality. Every trick the pair performs has a basis in reality: no camera tricks. no hocus pocus, just good old-fashioned sleight of hand and misdirection. So when this idea is introduced, whatever credibility the film has built up to this point completely evaporates. We know there is no cloning technology as was depicted in the movie. It didn´t exist in 1899 and it doesn´t exist today. Yet it is the other major conceit at the end of the film. The real Angier didn´t die; he continually killed his clones during The Transported Man routine. It was his final stab at Bordon.
Alas, in the final stages of the film, Bordon reveals himself to be an exact twin after killing Angier. Because director Nolan and writer Nolan feared the audience would be caught off guard by both of these revelations, there is a nifty flashback explaining each of the twists while the characters talk about them. If the conclusion to the film is so dense and out of left field that you feel possessed to show the audience the relevant parts of the movie again, then the movie is a failure and the story is a failure.
What else in "The Prestige" is a failure? Well, there´s the laughable idea that Angier´s assistant-turned-Bordon´s lover falls in love with him and him with her. Fine. Show us this. Prior to this revelation, there are two scenes between Alfred and Olivia (the assistant). There´s no inkling that they love each other or have anything besides-perhaps-an active sex life. I guess it´s all part of the twist about the brother in the end.
The biggest problem with "The Prestige" is that the narrative jumps time frames, locations and participants so many times that it is impossible for anyone to understand what´s going on without a roadmap and explicit instructions. While the narrative fails on nearly every level, other parts of the film keep it barely afloat. The aforementioned acting is a strong point; however, considering the participants, what else should we really expect? Also, the period production design is just as strong, giving us a glimpse into turn of the century London from yet a different perspective.
And the film is nothing if not ambitious. There can´t have been studios and financiers banging at the doors to get on board with this production. As a viewer and film lover, it hurts to demean a well made film, but the fact remains the story lets the rest of the material down. I have a feeling someone thought they were incredibly smart to continually mention that the prestige portion of a trick where the twists and turns come into play and you see things you´ve never seen before.
At least a portion of that is true: I don´t think we´ve ever seen a movie implode so badly within five minutes of the credits rolling as this one does. On a scale of 1 to 10, "The Prestige" earns a 4, with all the kudos going to aspects of the production having nothing to do with the script.