The Prestige

Warning: Spoilers ahead!


The Prestige. A good movie, I think, that anyone could enjoy. If you like to analyze movies after you watch them, this is the movie for you. I watched this movie a while back, pushed it out of my head and wrote it off as "another movie watched." My mind can only absorb so much when I'm watching approximately 3 movies each week/weekend. While eating dinner with a friend the other day, the movie came up and we discussed it. Ever since, the movie has stayed with me so I decided to look into it further.

To quickly summarize, the movie is about two magicians (played by Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman) who were friends turned rivals. Their rivalry became deadly. If you have not seen the movie, plan to watch it and do not want to know the ending, stop reading now. Otherwise, keep reading to see why I think this movie was magically (ha-ha) entertaining.

Upon doing research on this movie, I had found that the three "acts" of the movie mirror the three acts of magic. Which makes sense - it's a movie about magicians after all. The first act is called "The Pledge." This is where the magician shows the audience something simply ordinary. Because part of the ending is shown at the beginning (without revealing anything), the movie's "ordinary" is that the mystery surrounding these two friends will be explained. The other "ordinary" thing is the characters themselves. Angier is considered a showman and very sophisticated. He called himself 'The Great Danton.' Borden is very methodical in his approach and aptly named himself 'The Professor.' This foreshadows the lengths that both magicians will go and how they plan/execute their tricks.

The second phase of the magic act (and movie) is "The Turn." This is the 'extra'ordinary part of the act. The magician turns away from the audience to perform his next trick. In this movie, the "turn" is the invention of the Teleportation Device and The Transported Man trick. By this time, Angier was obsessed with Borden because Borden made a mistake in tying a knot that accidentally killed Angier's wife while performing a trick. The Transported Man trick won Borden recognition and plenty of fans, which fueled Angier's obsession. Determined to outperform Borden, Angier sets out to copy the famed "The Transported Man" illusion and comes up with his own method.

The final part of the magic trick is called "The Prestige", for which the movie (and book) is aptly named after. Ideally, the trick is completed and the illusion is revealed. As the movie progresses, we see Borden becoming more and more obsessed with Angier because Angier has come up with another way to perform The Transported Man. Anxious to find out how Angier is copying his trick, Borden sneaks backstage to discover the secret - which will lead to his downfall. The conclusion of the movie brings us with the conviction and execution of Borden (for murdering Angier), but - staying true to the magic industry - it is revealed that Angier's death was an illusion.

Cutter: Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why very magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige".

This movie is unlike any other. Every story, in both books and movies, the storyteller gives the audience hints about what is to come. This is called foreshadowing. In some cases, it is easy to identify the foreshadowing scene, however, in my opinion, The Prestige did an excellent job of providing lots of foreshadowing without letting us know at all. It would not be possible to explain each foreshadowing and give them all justice - but here are a few memorable examples...

The first foreshadowing that we see gives us a hint about Borden's identity. During a magic trick in which Borden and Angier worked together, Borden tied a knot which resulted in Angier's wife's death. The knot was encouraged by Angier's wife because she felt that their usual was too easy. Angered by his wife's death, Angier pesters Borden and asks which knot he tied. Borden's answer was "I don't know." The audience and Angier could not possibly fathom how Borden could have forgotten which knot he tied, however the answer would be later revealed and everything would make sense.

Borden: He came in to demand an answer and I told him the truth. That I have fought with myself over that night, one half of me swearing blind that I tied a simple slipknot, the other half convinced that I tied the Langford double. I can never know for sure.

The second foreshadowing that was done exceptionally well also had to do with Borden's identity. Borden and Angier comes across a magician performing a trick with a fishbowl full of water. Being magicians themselves, they could not figure out how the trick was performed. Later, they find out that the magician (whom they thought was a true cripple) had lived his life out as a cripple solely for the ability to carry the fishbowl between his legs (under his costume) without people assuming anything. Borden (and Angier) becomes fascinated by this magician, and comments what great commitment the man has to the craft. Later, we find out that Borden has the same kind of commitment.

Angier: He lives his act.

The final foreshadowing worth mentioning is Borden's relationship with his wife, Sarah. Throughout the movie, we see Borden behaving suspiciously. The behavior is typical of a man who is cheating on his wife. It is apparent that he may be falling in love (or is already in love) with another woman - a woman who works with Angier. In the back of our minds, we wonder whether he has an ulterior motive for his behavior. Is he misleading Angier's woman on purpose? Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, right? Or is he really falling in love with her? We see that Borden's wife acknowledges this odd behavior and on some days, she feels that he does not love her at all. She begins to feel lonely and wonders if this is even the life she wants: living with a husband that only loves her some of the time. This ultimately leads to her suicide. This is an excellent foreshadowing of Borden's identity. Only after the audience sees the conclusion of the movie that they begin to realize why Borden behaved this way with his wife. The key thing to remember here is that he never cheated.

Sarah: Do you love me?
Borden: Not today. No.

Anytime a book is made into a movie, changes are made. Like any movie, The Prestige made changes - and lots of it. While gathering information about the book, I have found that the movie does not resemble the book, not even close. The characters are different, the plot is different and even the ending is different. Whenever I watch a movie and thoroughly enjoy it, I try to read the book it came from. However, in this scenario, I am not quite sure whether I want to read the book. The movie was sufficiently pleasing. As I was looking around for specific changes that were made to the story, I found one that was particularly interesting.

In the story, it is revealed how Angier is able to perform The Transported Man act. In the movie, he invented a machine that was able to clone him. When the clone dropped down below the stage, it was trapped into a large cage of water and drowned. The clone was a full-fleshed human being (but whether he could think or feel - I am not sure). In the book, the machine that Angier invented was a teleportation device, not a cloning device. Angier was actually teleported to the other side of the stage. However, each time he was teleported, a piece of himself was taken away. The pieces were some type of ghostly shadows. Angier did come close to cloning himself (by accident) in the book. While trying to teleport himself, he shut the machine off halfway through the process. Angier stays behind but a holographic Angier appeared. I particularly find this aspect of the book very interesting.

The modifications made to the story for the benefit of the movie makes sense, especially with the cloning. If the story followed the book closely, Angier would have pieces of his "shadowy" self floating around. This won't do well with the current plot of Borden mistakenly assuming the trapped man to be Angier himself; therefore getting "caught", accused, convicted, and finally executed. I believe that with the changes made to the story, the movie carried out its purpose extremely well, kept us on our toes and led us through an interesting story of magic.