Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) is an unpleasant and unlikable aid to an older magician. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman), who may or may not be unpleasant and unlikable, but becomes so after his wife dies, is a second aid. When the aforementioned wife drowns during a trick, most likely due to Borden’s tying a knot too tightly, the two enter into an insufferable competition, to be the best magician and to hurt the other. Borden acquires a wife and child. Angier picks up the old magician’s trick designer, Cutter (Michael Caine) and an assistant, Olivia (Scarlett Johansson). After a series of unpleasant events, Angier comes to believe that Tesla (David Bowie) built Borden’s greatest trick so goes off to get his own copy. And if things weren’t bleak enough before, they are from that point on.
(Spoilers for the second act)
The Prestige is a cheat in a cheat wrapped in a cheat. Some of those cheats are clever. Some aren’t. But they are all cheats that rip the foundation of the film apart. One of those cheats is why I’m reviewing the film. I don’t generally review period dramas, so there’s obviously something else going on. And that something else is real magic dressed up as science fiction. Angier believes that Tesla can build a devise that will allow the appearance of teleportation, but that turns out to be one of the many twists as he was fooled into that assumption. But wouldn’t you know it, Tesla actually can create an actual teleportation machine. So a movie that demands that all is real, and insists that you watch very closely to see how everything is truly being done just sticks in a teleporter that has a very specific glitch (but that’s an additional spoiler…).
Christopher Nolan, who played a clever trick on his audience with Memento just goes nuts with The Prestige. It’s not surprising that a film about stage magicians has a few twists but I must say The Prestige really outdoes any other film I can think of. And a majority of those twists are also cheats. He is so intent on showing you how clever he is—which the teleporter destroys—that he never bothers to think about if it makes any sense or would work. The teleporter is the only entry into science fiction or real magic, but it isn’t the hardest thing to believe. That would be a twist that involves Victorian-era makeup being far superior to anything we know now. OK, I take back my science fiction comment. The only way the makeup trick would work is if we are in the distant future of Mission Impossible mask making. Plus… No, too many spoilers. Just assume that if it is a twist, it probably is a cheat, and it probably won’t hold up to any kind of inspection. And yes, most films have a hole or two, but most films don’t demand that you study them looking for the oh-so-clever bread crumbs laid out for you.
And all of that makes the film sound both worse and better than it is. As I said, some of those twists and cheats are fun. It is a bizarrely literal film—that’s part of Nolan playing clever. Outside of the teleporter, every other twist is literally told to you. But, Nolan rightly thinks you won’t believe what you are told. And, that’s smart, or would be in a different film. Some of the ideas are good as long as there’s no world around them or time to dwell. The thing about an idea is that an idea does not make a feature film. An idea is the heart of a short story, not a novel, and so, is the basis for short film. You want a feature, you think about character. Nolan has ideas for two or three great ten minute shorts.
All the plot cheats wouldn’t damn the film if the characters could carry it. But they can’t. Borden (or Bale, I really can’t tell the difference) is distasteful to watch. There’s no character depth or anything interesting about him—by design as all is illusion—so we’re left with a lousy person doing repulsive things. As for Angier, I spent over two hours just wanting to slap him. And both of these characters should have been sympathetic—perhaps not likeable, but sympathetic. For God’s sake, Angier’s wife died. I am the easiest audience in existence for a man in mourning and I wanted to push him down a flight of stairs. If Nolan couldn’t manage sympathetic, then he absolutely had to make them compelling, but they aren’t. There’s no stakes in their feud, not for the audience. Who cares who wins? Who cares who get the greatest trick or who destroys whom? We are given no reason to care.
I can put up with a lot of inconsistency and foolishness in a film if you give me some characters I want to follow. And those ideas, even the ones that fail, make me want to like The Prestige, but it is a bad time at the theater.
The film makes a big deal out of the rules for any magic trick. It must have three parts: 1) The Presentation where all looks normal; 2) The Turn where the impossible happens; 3) The Prestige where all is returned to normalcy. This is meant to apply not only to the tricks, but to this film. But The Prestige has no prestige. It shows the world, mucks things up, and then ends. For a time I was sure that we had an unreliable narrator as that’s the only way this could work, but that’s pulled out from under our feet. Nope. What we see is what we get, and what we get is senseless and a chore to sit through.