Wonderfully dark and tense atmosphere (Possible spoilers)

Rating: 8/10 (4 May 2007)

Cristopher Nolan does it again! He is definitely someone to watch in the future. In THE PRESTIGE he creates a wonderfully dark and tense atmosphere, thanks to excellent use of music and superb cinematography and set design. There is hardly any day exteriors at all. The approach of scrambling the continuity works fine here and makes you pay extra attention, soon it will become such an often used device that audiences probably wont even notice. The acting is overall uniformly excellent, Michael Caine stands out as a center of gravity for the plot and the rest of the ensemble. Even David Bowie has improved his acting with age, and now also has great authority and weight, he hardly registers as "Bowie" at all. What you will make of the payoff is probably very individual, I thought it fitted the slightly surreal and dreamlike ambiance the rest of the movie had. The cinematography, as I mentioned, is stunning. It must have been an ordeal for the focus puller, since it is anamorphic, mostly hand-held, and often shot in under-lit locations.