The Prestige (2006)

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Rated PG-13 for some somewhat unsettling images.  It really depends what your buttons are.  For most, it is probably the animal cruelty.  For some, it's the mutilation and violence.  Sometimes, that violence leads to death.  But if I'm talking about everything that happens in this movie, there's also off-screen affairs and language.  But there's nothing really in this movie that feels R-rated, so rest in the knowledge that messed up stuff is often just messed up.

DIRECTOR:  Christopher Nolan

It's weird.  This was the first Christopher Nolan movie that I left thinking "It's alright."  I watched it back in 2006. I  own the Blu-Ray of the movie.  I may or may not have watched my Blu-Ray copy of The Prestige.  I can't promise in either direction if that is true or not.  But I was obsessed with Nolan before this point.  I was a big Memento nerd, which is now a movie I'm afraid to revisit because it might scream late-'90s / early-2000s a bit too much now.  It mostly comes down to the third act.  All these blogs get spoilery, so I'm just going to establish that this one is going to get spoilery really early.  One of my big thoughts on Nolan is his use of the twist.  He's never as bad as Shyamalan, who often needs his twist to work for the sake of the movie to work.  Nolan just likes turning things on their heads so that people don't necessarily see what's coming.  Like Interstellar, the twist in this movie could be seen as a bit polarizing.

See, the problem I have with the movie is that the twist is a genre swap.  I'm not talking about a Parasite genre swap.  The genre swap in Parasite is a swap between two realistic genres.  It goes from drama to thriller / horror.  If you were in a horror movie, most of your life probably looked like a drama or a comedy.  That's a natural progression of what reality would look like to you.  But The Prestige goes from realistic genre to science-fiction and that bugs the heck out of me. The conceit that The Prestige is that we have these two vicious geniuses of illusion.  The rules are that there is a trick behind everything.  It's about how far you would go to make that trick seem credible.  Now, to Nolan's credit, the key idea behind these illusions is that there has to be great sacrifice.  Borden's major sacrifice (among many) is that he has to split his life 50/50 with his twin brother.  When Borden is the twin, he has to live a life of anonymity.  His brother, reasonably, does not share his affections with his wife.  A natural result of that is the dissolution of a happy marriage with the woman he loves.  But Borden understands that.  It works with the story, especially considering that Cutter guesses Borden's secret to a certain extent.  

The issue I have is that Angier's secret is a bit of a cop-out.  To not mince words, Nikola Tesla never invented cloning.  It's actually kind of weird that Nolan would even imply that Nikola Tesla was even interested in cloning or duplication, considering that his passion was focused on dispelling fears about current and creating efficient means of power.  But instead, it's a science that, as far as I know, he had no interest in.  It's kind of like hiring Albert Einstein to make a sweet Vegan burrito. Like, I get that it takes a science to create a sweet Vegan burrito.  It's just that Albert Einstein was a nutritionist.  That's not his cup of tea.  The reason that we had Nikola Tesla in this movie is that we had to have a scientist who had a valid scientific background, but was also disavowed from his community.  Also, it's rad to put Nikola Tesla in things, especially if he's played by David Bowie.  

Now I'm writing for serious.  I've been writing slow and crappily this entire blog because I've been distracted and I've danced around a point that I absolutely need to make clear right now.  This second watch kind of changed things for me.  I was ready to put this movie as background noise. (Okay, that's not true.  I knew that I was going to be writing about this.  I was dismissive, that's true.)  Going into the movie with a knowledge that I wasn't going to like the cloning bit as a solution for the murder that is teased in the beginning of the movie, I watched it just as a movie about two obsessed magicians.  Oh my goodness.  This is a movie that works so darned well, especially if you can get over the cloning bit nonsense.  This is a movie about escalation.  I do love how many people side with Borden over Angier.  I'm on Team Angier for a lot of the movie.  Not always.  I would be real monster if I was always on Team Angier.  But Nolan creates a narrative where sympathies start dwindling given enough rope to hang oneself.  On top of that, I find it weird if you end up on any side completely.  Both men prove to be absolutely monstrous.

One of my students pointed out that the cloning story is almost its own movie that doesn't belong in this movie.  I then proceeded to tell him that movie was already made and it was called The 6th Day.  I'm sure that I just woke up a memory in someone out there reading who hasn't thought about The 6th Day in a God's age.  I kind of agree.  Like I mentioned, Nolan's obsession with giving a film a twist or a turn sometimes hinders him.  I'm not saying that Nolan's other films aren't about character. They have been and he really is marvelous about making strong character films. But like Oppenheimer, this is a movie about self-destruction.  As much as Borden hates Angiers and Angiers hates Borden, they are almost two people pointing guns at their own heads.  There's a sick level of respect for the enemy that drives these characters.  Angiers has an intense hate for Borden that is quasi/sorta valid.  It took a discussion with the students yesterday to understand why Borden didn't know if he tied the right or the wrong knot.  (I don't know why the other Borden didn't confess to the other brother outside of the understand that Borden literally was one part of an evil twin situation.) His wife dies and Angiers just needed an answer.  That actually is a valid reason to go full big-bad.

But there's the moment.  As much as you could say that there are two protagonists to the film, the movie really does follow Angiers far more than Borden.  The moment that I am talking about is when Olivia confronts Angiers on his motivation for revenge.  There's a shift that is absolutely well-earned when Angiers shifts his vengeance from his wife to jealousy over brilliance.  Now, Nolan's kind of a genius for how he sets this up.  There are steps all along the way that point to one direction and then there's the real drop.  It's the magic trick all along the way.  Angiers is wrathful about his wife's negligent death.  Borden gets a family and a career.  Borden has everything that Angiers wants.  Angiers keeps one-upping him in terms of showmanship, but not in quality.  It all seems like it is an extension of the initial death, but that shift happens oh-so-subtlely.  One of the key concepts in the movie that Angiers never understands is the notion of the trick being everything off-stage.  But in his own way, he's tricking himself by the  life he leads.  It's really this cool concept and I love it.

I am more cool with the cloning plotline in the movie.  After all, Angiers can't understand that living a life of illusion is where great magicians are made, so he feels the need to make real magic.  I get that it fits in his character.  But it still is this festering sore in the middle of a very well made movie.  The frustrating part is that the movie gets so close to perfection only to fumble something that is so crucial to the story's dismount.