Directed by:
Christopher NolanCinematography:
Wally PfisterComposer:
David JulyanCast:
Christian Bale, Hugh Jackman, Michael Caine, Piper Perabo, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie, Andy Serkis, Daniel Davis, Christopher Neame (more)VOD (2)
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Two young, passionate magicians, Robert Angier (Jackman), a charismatic showman, and Alfred Borden (Bale), a gifted illusionist, are friends and partners until one fateful night when their biggest trick goes terribly wrong. Now the bitterest of enemies, they will stop at nothing to learn each other's secrets. As their rivalry escalates into a total obsession full of deceit and sabotage, they risk everything to become the greatest magician of all time. But nothing is as it seems, so watch closely. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (10)
Christopher Nolan is slowly but surely becoming one of my favourite directors. The Prestige is sharing with Memento the position of his best film (at least for me). I like his more intimate thrillers a bit more than Batman. The actors are superb, with a Christian Bale a lot more convincing than in Batman Begins and The Dark Night. The script is awesome, packed with minor turns and impressive situations and scenes, and by the end it delivers an unexpected twist that, although not as brilliant as Memento’s, makes everything fall into place and make perfect sense. I hope Nolan will take a break from Batman so we can get again something smaller.
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Christopher Nolan didn't win me over as a great director with his Batman films (which were really great), but he did win me over with his perfect and well thought out masterpieces Inception and The Prestige. The film has an incredibly well thought out plot and very well done time shifts that you don’t get lost. And the director loves ambiguous endings, he's a real genius at that. The Prestige is great in every way. It has a strong premise (which is a bit like The Illusionist, but at the same time completely different), it doesn't lack action, romance and mystery, and it blew me away as a viewer - what more could I ask for? In short, I don't know what or how to write to lift the film to the heights ... so I simply applaud.
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"Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back." Obsession with anything can lead anyone to ruin, but what if the inevitable and dark outcome of your efforts is neither death nor salvation? I don't like self-serving twists, I don't like reveals sucked out of the fingers, and I especially don't like the feeling when the creators try to cheaply outsmart me. But what if someone presents a few exhausting twists that don't tire you out and instead leave you wanting more? Now I understand why it took Christopher and Jonathan Nolan so long to develop this screenplay, because thinking through the story (even when it's based on a novel) to all its consequences must have taken a lot of effort. And observing the eternal feud between Borden and Angier is the pinnacle of viewer delight. I thank the creators that the perfect line "Are you watching closely?" is not an audiovisual question, but rather a thoughtful one. If it only depended on discovering a few images, the trick couldn't work a second time, but this way everything truly depends only on the storytellers. The viewer then remains helpless, like a prisoner locked in a water tank.
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Clever. Very clever. I much admire the storytelling method used by Nolan to present us the story of two illusionists who dedicated their whole lives to magic. Hats off to him, because to stick to the storyline while various time lines layer up on each other is a work of mastership. Both Bale and Jackman, who are responsible for making the main characters so convincing, made perfect work of their roles. But if the screenplay weren’t so cleverly written, The Prestige would have commanded much less prestige :). I love it when a picture plays tricks on you, and of everything I have ever seen and probably will ever see, I admire filmmakers playing games with the viewer the highest. That’s why I forgive Nolan for the so much criticized explanatory part (and in my opinion even that is delivered gracefully). He didn’t do it for himself, but for some people in the audience. People who don’t want to see tricks, but to discover the secret behind them.
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A film that seemed like a one-time magic trick the first time I watched it. I even doubted I would ever return to it. Since then, I've been doing it every year, and this sparkling narrative play, which juggles storytelling perspective and excitingly thematizes the mystery of creation and the fragile bond between the illusionist and the audience, has ultimately shown greater vitality than any other Nolan film. The architecture of the storytelling serves the characters more than anywhere else. With each change in perspective, the viewer's relationship to them changes, and the evaluation of their obsession and emotional attunement to the main motives. The point with the "aquarium-secret" may be modest, but is, at its core, ingenious. The work of a real magician. Continuous grower.
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