Complexity at its Best

Rating: 10/10 (4 December 2007)

The Prestige is a highly rich and complex linear narrative that contains many non-conventional elements throughout its storyline. It is compact with multiple themes and motifs that cue the viewer to suspend disbelief, acquire poetic faith, engage in mind-boggling inquiry, and become active participants in determining what is ethical.
It is a story that centers upon the darkness of magic. The explicit query, "Are you watching closely?" provides a profound subtext throughout the film in asking the following: What is real and what is illusion? Examining the nature of self-sacrifice and to what extent its meaning is skewed is another common question asked. It effectively manipulates the viewer's emotions in providing no real protagonist but rather invites them to carefully consider there own heroism. What is meant by this is that the viewer is given a choice after seeing what dire consequences fall upon the lead antagonists of the piece. The choice is the following: Either you walk away feeling bitter about the unethical values these two characters held, or, you obtain a heroic and metaphorical textbook on how not to act when offenses come into your life. This is the predominant theme of the film: Although offenses will come, suspend what you consider unethical in other's views by allowing tolerance to teach you a lesson on how not to react when feelings are injured.
In following the traditional aristocratic method of storytelling, The Prestige examines the lives of two skilled magicians whose hearts lack forgiveness and whose obsessions with becoming the "greatest magicians of all time" thwart their opportunities to be happy. In an ongoing battle of jealousy, envy and meticulous revenge, the two men become slaves to their illusions and end up sacrificing what's most important to themtheir lives; their families.
The editing of this film is rather non-conventional and illusory. In support of the subject of magic, it eludes both time and space to create an off-set, spatial and temporal ambiguity. The viewer is constantly thrust between past, present and future settings through the use of journals being read, stories being told, and first-person narrations of both antagonists. The effect of this parallel editing is used to keep the viewer on his/her feet in determining what is real and what is not.
Director Christopher Nolan made some rather poignant directing choices during the process of analyzing, interpreting and conceptualizing the piece. One particular choice is of choosing the concept of magic to examine the many avenues (both metaphysical and transcendental) of deceit amongst the characters. One such avenue is of deceiving the viewer on what type of genre the film is. Upon entering the theater, the viewer most likely suspends disbelief to the psychological thriller or drama genre, little knowing that half-way through the film it will become a science-fiction piece. The reason this works and why the viewer ought not to feel disappointment by its "unrealistic" qualities is that the film itself is based upon the idea of magic being a form of enchantment and illusion. Nolan is able to get away with switching the genre for this very reason. However, this is the only reason. If the film were to contemplate any other theme than magic, it most likely would not work. It's as if Nolan is performing his own prestige over the viewer's assumptions and parading their expectations with suspense and surprise.
Like the characters in his film, Nolan too has sacrificed much in making this film. Any film as complexly deep and rich as this one is had to have been extremely well thought out and prepared for. The choice of setting the story in the early 1900's reflects the beginning of the post-modernist and film phenomenological eraone which has no fixed meaning other than what the viewer brings to it. It's completely fitting for a story as ambivalent and open-ended as this one is where meaning can literally be derived from anywhere.