The Magic of The Prestige (2006)
Zombos Says: Very Good
Like a well-performed routine of cups and balls, director Christopher Nolan and writer Jonathan Nolan manipulate the nonlinear twists and turns of Christopher Priest’s novel, The Prestige, pausing here and there just long enough to make sure we are watching closely until the revelatory climax. Steampunk science-fiction merges with Victorian-era stage magic in this engaging story of rival magicians striving to upstage one another in a dangerously escalating battle of wits, secrets, and one-upmanship bravado.
Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden’s (Christian Bale) obsessions for their magical art, and for one teleportation illusion in particular–the Transported Man–provide the drama in this story set against the backdrop of turn-of-the-century London. Mingling the social horrors of workhouses–where little girls could be sent for want of money and family–with the wonderment of stage magicians, the headliners of their day, performing their pseudo-scientific and preternatural miracles to the amazement and delight of their Industrialization-era audiences.
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