Sep 30, 2024

Thoughts on The Prestige (2006)

It is all but a magician's act.

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
-Confucius

The Prestige (2006) is one of the most intellectually stimulating films I've ever watched, which is confirmed by the fact that I am still thinking about it after watching it almost 4 days ago; not many films have been able to do that. In fact, I want to mull over it. It already has a grip over me and I have surrendered to it.

This film, in my opinion, is one of the best Nolan movies (among the ones I've watched). Sure, Interstellar and Oppenheimer may be his magnum opus, but this movie really got to me, man. This movie was fabulous.

People have been watching and re-watching this movie and that's understandable because you can understand so many new things in the second pass. It's like reading a book again and finding a whole new perspective of it.

And, here is the part where I say Spoiler Warning.

This movie doesn't have action, nor does it messes with your mind (unlike Inception). It just forces you to think. It wants you think and explain why the character did what he did, all the social and behavioral phenomena.

You see how it all spirals, but it's different from the typical "spiraling into chaos" narrative. Because in the end, you're left with no particular conclusion, no particular justification of actions, only a mere signal that, one has won the battle and that costed him a part of himself.

Borden (played by Christian Bale)

The most important part of this movie is how the characters' moral sense decays progressively. Each trying to outwit the other and losing control of themselves in the process, which in the end becomes so fervent that one resorts to framing the other, or killing themselves (you'll see what I mean by this when you watch the movie).

Angier' character is a tragic one because he is a "slave to his obsessions". His revenge is empty. Because, the real grief, that he felt for his wife's death, had already vanished when he grew more and more incompetent and obsessed. He had already lost the battle against Borden when he let his obsessions took hold of him.

Angier (played by Hugh Jackman)

Borden's character is strange. I think it is a metaphor for Jungian or Freudian divide of the human mind, the "parts of the self"; that, there are, simultaneously, multiple us trying to live. Why the twins chose to live that way, that I do not know. But it is for certain that their life was the greatest act of all.

All in all, this movie is worth brooding over. It is very thought-provoking. The whole plot makes sense now. Every foreshadow (Nolan does it a lot) makes sense, and it is so satisfying to think about it.

I was not here with a literary theory or analysis. I was just here to tell you that movies can be fabulous, and it's often those movies that are outright classified as underdogs.

10/10