Two magicians on the edge of obsession

Rating: 8/10 (31 July 2013)

The film Â„prestige" is set in London centers around two rivaling magicians in the late 19th century. The budding performers Robert Angier and Alfred Borden both work for the engineer Cutter, who creates the machinery for their tricks. Competition between the two men advances and a dispute arises when Borden's suggestion to use an alternate knot tying technique for one of their tricks is rejected by Angier and Cutter. The collaboration between the two magicians experiences a definite rupture when Angier's wife, assistant to a dramatic trick on stage, drowns in a water tank as she is unable to untangle herself in time from a knot Borden had tied. Angier blames Borden for his wife's death and is increasingly filled with bitterness as he observes his contestant living a seemingly happy life with wife and daughter and at the same time challenging his fame as a magician. The two magicians closely track one another's shows and are gradually more daring to use dirtier techniques in order to damage one another's status as a magician. While Angier is sided by Cutter, Borden has his own mentor, Fallon, with whom he develops dangerous and at the same time ingenious tricks. Having started from rough living conditions, Borden advances to an increasingly successful performer with a yet uncontested show demonstrating his own disappearance and reappearance. Angier, unable to grasp the secret behind Borden's performance, seeks help from the scientist Tesla in the USA and returns with his own interpretation of the "transported man". The two opponents have in common their desire for prestige and fascination for magic. These traits increasingly degenerate into an obsession, leading to an alienation from reality and, in the end, demanding a high price.
As introduced at the beginning of the film, each trick has three parts, the pledge, where an ordinary object is presented to the audience; the turn, where the object is turned into something unexpected; and the prestige, where the object is brought back. In seeking uncontested prestige in the life of magic, Angier and Borden experience, that in real life, once lost, some things cannot be brought back. Christopher Nolan's film depicts a dark side of the world of magic in which magicians have to go far in order to gain admiration and amazement from the audience, which expects more than a simple trick.