The Prestige (2006) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Are you reading closely?

The Prestige is a fanciful and mysterious film about magic that creates a story that is as much of an illusion as the tricks performed by the magicians. It examines the lengths that magicians will go to to protect the secrets of their trick, regardless of the consequences, and creates a film steeped in a steampunk sci-fi aesthetic.

First Impressions

Nothing in the trailer for this film makes it known that The Prestige is a science-fiction film, and maybe that’s part of the trick. The preview shows the rivalry between two great magicians in old London, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. One of them has created the greatest trick ever, and there are a lot of tense moments and freaky imagery. Michael Caine’s voiceover talks about the three parts of the magic trick, The Pledge, the Turn, and The Prestige!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

The film is told in a nonlinear fashion, starting with the ending in the 1890s where Alfred Borden (Christina Bale) is in prison for killing Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman). The remainder of the film hops between this time and several other periods. Both men begin their careers as audience shills to Milton the Magician (Ricky Jay). Angier’s wife Julia (Piper Perabo) is Milton’s lovely assistant who dies during a water escape gone wrong. Angier blames Borden for Julia’s death due to the knot he tied–which Borden can’t remember. Thus begins the rivalry between these two London magicians.

Borden meets a young woman, Sarah (Rebecca Hall) when she brings her nephew to one of his solo performances of the Transported Man–a trick that is not fully shown. Meanwhile, Angier starts his own act, as the Great Danton, using tricks devised by Milton’s former ingenieur John Cutter (Michael Caine). Angier also hires Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson) as his new assistant. Borden devises a bullet catch trick, which Sarah warns him against using. One night, Angier–in disguise–is picked to be the shooter and places a real bullet in the gun, shooting off two of Borden’s fingers on his left hand. Later Borden returns the favor by ruining a trick on Angier’s and getting him fired from a fancy theater.

Angier, unable to devise the method of Borden’s Transported Man illusion (even though Cutter tells him Borden is using a double), conceives his version of the trick, The New Transported Man featuring Gerald Root (Hugh Jackman) as his double. Angier quickly becomes bitter about the trick, having to take the applause from under the stage, while Root basks in the limelight. He sends Olivia to infiltrate Borden’s act by telling him “the truth,” that she’s out to steal the secret of the trick. Borden sabotages the trick one evening, injuring Angier’s leg and his reputation. Olivia reluctantly provides a copy of Borden’s encrypted diary to Angier, even though she has fallen in love with Borden. Angier buries Borden’s stage engineer to get the secret code word.

Unlocking the diary leads Angier to Colorado Springs where he attempts to meet Nikola Tesla (David Bowie). Tesla’s assistant Alley (Andy Serkis) sends him away, but Angier stays in town eventually being able to get close to the inventor. Realizing that the diary is a ruse, Angier is frustrated, but finally gets his audience with Tesla and hires him to build a machine. The device initially appears to do nothing at all. A hat or a cat placed in the Tesla coils doesn’t disappear. But on his way out of the lab, Angier notices another identical cat outside surrounded by dozens of hats just like the one tested. Sometime later Angier takes delivery of the device after Tesla’s lab is burned down by supporters of Thomas Edison.

Angier returns to London with the new trick and a limited engagement of 100 shows. Meanwhile, Borden’s affair with Olivia and his erratic behavior with Sarah and daughter Jess (Samantha Mahurin) drive Sarah to commit suicide–never knowing which man will turn up, the one who loves her or the manic womanizer. Borden sneaks under the stage during Angier’s trick. Angier drops through a trap door into a water tank in which he drowns. Borden, being the only one at the scene of the crime, is arrested and sentenced to death. A solicitor (Roger Rees) approaches Borden in jail to purchase his tricks–and provide for Jess–at the behest of Lord Caldlow.

Knowing he is innocent (the water tank was already in place when he arrived), Borden reads some of Angier’s journals, which end with the same reveal as Borden’s original diary–another ruse. He realizes he’s been had. Lord Caldlow arrives to gloat at Borden–revealing himself to be another identity of Robert Angier. Refusing to save Borden, but promising Jess would be looked after, Angier allows Borden to hang for his crime. Later at the theater, Angier is shot by a man revealed to be Borden. In fact, it is his twin. Two identical brothers that lived one life–one as the magician and one as the stage engineer Fallon–in order to hide the method of the trick. Angier feels stupid for failing to see Cutter was right. Angier’s method is also revealed. His Tesla machine duplicates himself each night. The Angier on the stage falls into a tank of water and drowns, while the clone of Angier continues to live the magician’s life. Borden picks up Jess from Cutter and goes off to live his full life.

“This is why no one can detect his method. Total devotion to his art. Utter self-sacrifice, you know?” – Alfred Borden

History in the Making

The Prestige was writer/director Christopher Nolan’s fifth film after his success with Memento, Insomnia, and his previous film, Batman Begins–which also featured Bale and Caine. The story comes from a 1995 novel by British author Christopher Priest, which is similar to the finished film, but told wholly via the journals and writings of the two main characters. The Prestige was the second of two period films released between September and October, 2006, that dealt with magicians and magic. The other film was The Illusionist, with Edward Norton which was a drama. Some may also consider Scoop, a Woody Allen romantic-comedy starring Scarlett Johansson and Hugh Jackman, as another film in this genre as it also deals with stage magicians. However, out of all these films, The Prestige is the only one that could be considered science-fiction.

Before getting into a discussion about why this film is considered sci-fi, let’s look at one of the more popular conceits of the film. Michael Caine’s Cutter explains the three parts of a magic trick, which are much like the three acts of a movie. The Pledge is the setup of the trick. The magician introduces you to an ordinary object, much as the filmmaker sets the plot and characters of a story. The second part is the Turn. This is where “the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary.” Filmmakers call this Act Two, which puts the characters in peril or changes something about the status quo. The final part, Cutter explains, is called the Prestige which is the finale of the trick. Restoring the thing that had disappeared, or creating the illusion of instantaneous transportation. It is the element that makes the audience wonder what they might have actually seen, as with this film. Yet all these terms, Pledge, Turn, and Prestige are only fiction created by the screenwriters for this film. These are not words used by actual magicians but used to provide an air of whimsy and mystery to a film about trickery and deceit.

Genre-fication

The Prestige may not be a film that audiences may immediately think is a science-fiction film. After all, it’s really a dramatic mystery film about the rivalries between two 19th-century magicians. But at its core, the trick that Angier seeks is no mere illusion and crosses over into the realms of science-fiction. As such, The Prestige becomes yet another early 21st-century film to deal with cloning after The 6th Day, Replicant, a Star Wars and a Star Trek film, The Island, and Æon Flux. While the word clone or cloning is never explicitly mentioned, it’s made obvious that the trick created by Tesla perfectly replicates hats, cats, and unscrupulous magicians.

But there’s another aspect of the film that gives it the sci-fi flare, which is its steampunk style. Since the technology to instantly produce duplicates of objects did not exist in the late Victorian era, the operation and style of the device recall elements of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells stories. This is the origin of the steampunk movement which is typified in such sci-fi classics as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine. The brass and copper look of machines that are powered by steam or rudimentary electricity is a hallmark of the genre. These types of films that have been inspired by this aesthetic span the gamut from western/comedy (Wild Wild West), horror film (Van Helsing), action/adventure (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), as well as many animated films (Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Howl’s Moving Castle being two excellent representatives).

Societal Commentary

Thematically Nolan deals with some heavy material. The main idea behind The Prestige is Angier’s obsession with understanding how Borden’s Transported Man trick works. He is unable to believe the simplest explanation, provided by Cutter, that Borden is using a double of some kind. Angier’s drive leads him to see Nikola Tesla who recognizes that self-same obsession–having been consumed by a similar drive in the scientific community. The perils of such an obsession are played out throughout the film. Angier destroys his own life (dozens of times through the use of the Tesla technology) as well as the life of the Borden brothers, Sarah, and Olivia. All because he was unable to let Borden’s original transgression–tying a knot his wife was unable to escape–go.

The next strongest theme is one of self-sacrifice. Many characters in the film depict this notion. The first example is Chung Ling Soo, the Chinese magician who vanishes a large goldfish bowl full of water. Borden and Angier struggle to understand his method (the way he performs the trick) on stage. As they watch the feeble man struggle to get in his carriage Borden finally understands the magician. “This is the performance right here,” Borden states. Soo has been pretending to be crippled in his personal life in order to sell the one moment of his one trick on stage where he must strap a heavy goldfish bowl between his legs. So too does Borden give into a similar notion. He and his brother share one life, on stage and at home, in order to utterly commit to the necessity of a single man transporting between two cabinets. Angier, as a man of privilege (he’s always been Lord Caldlow, he says), and as such is unable to believe that this level of commitment is possible until he adopts the Tesla trick. He then commits the ultimate self-sacrifice, by sacrificing himself, again and again.

The Science in The Fiction

It’s interesting that in a film about magicians, a distinction is made about wizards. There are two mentions of wizards in the film equating them as superior magical beings or, in one case, scientists. The first is at the beginning of the film when Cutter tells the judge that he didn’t make Angier’s device. It was made by a wizard, “a man who can actually do what magicians pretend to do.” Later, in one of the flashbacks, Cutter chides Angier that he’s a magician and not a wizard when he mentions he doesn’t want to kill any doves. That he must get his “hands dirty” if he’s “going to achieve the impossible.” The distinction is that a wizard would actually be able to vanish doves without resorting to killing them. Scientifically speaking, Tesla’s science was light years beyond anything understood by even the inventor. Cutter’s distinction of this science being “wizardry” is reminiscent of the famous Arthur C. Clarke quote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” And that’s what Angier uses it for, magic. But at a great cost to his humanity.

The backdrop for all this scientific achievement is the “current wars,” as it has been called, between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. In the late 19th Century Tesla was working on delivering electricity via alternating current (AC) while Edison was a proponent of direct current (DC). The rivalry between the two is akin to the rivalry between the two magicians in the film and is used by Nolan to represent a real-world example of the obsessive nature of such a rivalry. In the end, Tesla’s AC won out, yet he was relegated to obscurity by the money and charisma of Edison, much as Angier’s money and influence as Lord Caldlow eventually did to Borden.

The Final Frontier

Are you watching closely? This phrase is the first word of the film and begins the last monologue that closes out the film. It’s said a total of four times throughout the movie, repeated to remind the audience that there’s a trick occurring and they need to pay attention. While audiences might not recognize these clues on first viewing, Nolan puts quite a number of references to twins throughout the film. Sarah’s nephew is distraught when he watches Borden vanish the canary, certain that the magician has killed it. When the bird is (purportedly) revealed as unharmed, the little boy asks, “But where’s his brother?” Borden also shows the lad a trick with a coin that has two identical heads. Both of these scenes represent the life of Borden. He has a twin brother who takes his place when the two of them share one side of the same coin in their life with Sarah. There’s also Root, who is a non-related doppelganger for Angier (with some minor differences). This double does not work as well for him, since he’s not the same as Angier. Root has his own desires and wants, which is why Angier believes he finds his answer with the cloning machine, not realizing the part of his soul that it will cost him.

The Prestige is a fascinating film that holds up to repeat viewings. Like other Nolan films, such as Memento and Tenet, audiences may be inclined to watch the movie again immediately at getting the twist at the end of the film in hopes of understanding it better. It provides an interesting parable about the perils of obsession and becoming too fixated on a single point of view. Understanding that there are different approaches to the same problem, a hallmark of science as well as magic, benefits everyone. And by all means, pay attention. That’s the real trick.

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