Once: Excellent. Twice: Masterpiece. Thrice: All-Time Classic

Rating: 10/10 (24 November 2006)

It's quite possible that THE PRESTIGE improves more with repeated viewings than any other movie ever made. As you might have gathered already, there are revelations at the end that force you to reinterpret everything you've already seen. The second time through, it's a different movie. Now, this trick has been pulled off before (most famously by THE SIXTH SENSE), but what makes THE PRESTIGE unique is that our identification with the characters changes once we know what was really going on, and the movie, which on first viewing is flawed only by a slight coldness, becomes profoundly emotional.
It's possible that Christopher Nolan (and his screen writing collaborator, brother Jonathan) will never top MEMENTO, because the concept of that movie is so original. But in every other way, THE PRESTIGE is a more accomplished film, and it's so good that it (and its predecessor) actually make an argument for Nolan being the best director since Kubrick. The screenplay takes a justly acclaimed World Fantasy Award-winning novel and, astonishingly, improves it greatly. The screen story seamlessly cuts between three separate time-lines (or four, if you consider the very beginning of the movie) so deftly that you may not even notice how ambitious such a structure is. Unlike MEMENTO, the structure doesn't call attention to itself, but like their earlier movie, it is integral to the story being told.
This is (the first time through) a hugely entertaining movie which (on subsequent viewings) turns out to be a deep meditation on obsession, on illusion, on sacrifice, on the nature of art and its audience. It's the best single movie of the last five years (exempting THE LORD OF THE RINGS) and, along with DONNIE DARKO, the best science-fiction or science-fantasy movie since BLADE RUNNER (and maybe since 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY).