Christopher Nolan’s ‘Between Two Bats’ mystery/thriller has stood the test of time and remains one of the filmmaker’s best, if sometimes overlooked films.
It’s hard to believe that The Prestige is 20 years old this year. Christopher Nolan’s fifth feature arrived at a fascinating point in his career. Though he’d already stepped into blockbuster territory with Batman Begins, he was still primarily known for tightly wound thrillers such as Memento and Insomnia. Even though it was a huge hit, one could even argue that Batman Begins followed that tight-thriller pattern. The halls of Arkham Asylum, the rainy Blade Runner-esque streets of ‘The Narrows’, all lent a sense of uneasiness to the film. However before Nolan became synonymous with globe-spanning IMAX spectacles like The Dark Knight, The Prestige represented a bridge between those two eras: intimate in scale, but ambitious in ideas.
The Prestige is a story about two late-19th-century magicians who, after a sudden on-stage tragedy, become obsessed with each other’s work and secrets, battling their own demons as much as each other. Hugh Jackman plays Rupert Angier, whose closest professional rival, Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), seems to be besting him at every turn. So, Angier sets out to beat Borden at his own game, resulting in a bitter feud between the two in a deadly game of one-upmanship. As Nolan layers the rivalry across multiple timelines, the film gradually reveals that neither man escapes the consequences of his obsession.
Borden is a talented engineer of tricks, but lacks showmanship, something Angier naturally has, yet lacks the imagination to create exciting original illusions. They’re two sides of the same coin, yet rarely share the screen, with their feud instead spilling over onto those closest to them, particularly Olivia (Scarlett Johansson) and Sarah (Rebecca Hall). Angier becomes consumed with uncovering Borden’s secret, enlisting the help of veteran stage engineer John Cutter to recreate one of Borden’s tricks, ‘The Transported Man’. As his increasingly desperate schemes fail, his obsession pushes him towards more extreme and dangerous solutions.
While Borden reads Angier’s stolen diary from prison, where he serves time for a crime whose full context remains hidden until much later in the film, we see in flashbacks to what lengths Angier went to in order to best Borden. Angier travels to meet Nicola Tesla, who may hold the key to creating an authentic ‘Transported Man’ of his own. Cue David Bowie making a fittingly weird cameo as the mysterious scientist Tesla, helped only by his assistant Mr. Alley, played by Andy Serkis in one of his early non-digital supporting performances.
Despite the film’s Victorian-era setting, it feels remarkably non-period. Nolan doesn’t indulge in sweeping, grand shots of the cities or overly populated set pieces. Instead, the camera stays largely handheld, lending a sense of energy and urgency to scenes. Backgrounds are often kept soft to focus attention on the action. The film isn’t interested in romanticising its Victorian setting; instead, it embraces darkness and grime, with characters constantly slipping in and out of shadow as they employ disguises and misdirection to gain an advantage.
Just like their respective characters Jackman and Bale make for an ideal pairing. Jackman brings charisma and desperation to Angier, while Bale’s more restrained performance makes Borden an intentionally difficult figure to fully understand. Michael Caine (Nolan’s good luck charm) provides the film’s moral centre as Cutter, perhaps the only character capable of seeing the damage both men are causing.
Cleverly, the whole film is framed by Cutter’s explanation of how a magic trick works: The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige (I’ll leave you to look those up). Nolan mirrors these stages throughout the narrative, constructing the story with the precision of a master illusionist. Yet what elevates The Prestige above a clever puzzle-box thriller is the emotional wreckage left in its wake. Both men sacrifice relationships, families and ultimately their own humanity in pursuit of professional superiority. The film’s greatest trick is convincing us we’re watching a mystery when we’re actually watching a tragedy.
Author: Arron, Marketing Department
