The Prestige
Director: Christopher Nolan
The suspense driven by Nolan’s film ‘The Prestige’ is once again a breathtakingly twist of a movie. Nolan explores and dissects The Prestige’s key themes of secrecy, obsession, duality, rebirth and sacrifice against the backdrop of the gradually escalating tension and animosity between two magicians.
As a result I was deeply inspired by this film. Even though the film is about obsession and dedication I somehow got inspired through the magic and illusion of being shown something and not believing what I was really being shown.Plot Summary
It all begins in rapidly changing, turn-of-the-century London. The flashy, sophisticated Robert Angier is a consummate entertainer, while the rough-edged purist Alfred Borden is a creative genius who lacks the confidence to showcase his magical ideas. They start out as admiring friends and partners. But when their biggest trick goes terribly wrong, they become enemies for life, each on outdoing and upending the other.
Trick by trick, show by show, their ferocious competition builds until it knows no bounds. Borden outdoes himself with a stunt called the Transported Man, in which it appears that he walks into a doorway on one side of the stage and emerges almost instantaneously out of a second doorway forty feet away.
Angier, convinced that Borden does this trick by means of a machine he bought from the American inventor Nikola Tesla, visits Tesla, where Tesla is experimenting with a new machine. Tesla, according to the movie, actually hits upon a way, not of transporting objects, but of duplicating them. Angier buys Tesla's machine, and with it stages his own stunt, which requires him to drown his own double each time.
Angier, convinced that Borden does this trick by means of a machine he bought from the American inventor Nikola Tesla, visits Tesla, where Tesla is experimenting with a new machine. Tesla, according to the movie, actually hits upon a way, not of transporting objects, but of duplicating them. Angier buys Tesla's machine, and with it stages his own stunt, which requires him to drown his own double each time.
This piece should not be read by people who have not seen the film and want to be surprised by the ending, because I'm going to give it away.
Here is the secret: Although Angier kept replicating and murdering himself each trick, Borden reveals that he has had a twin brother and they have been living their lives as one person while the other disguised himself as Borden's mute assistant. Borden also reveals that he was simply using a double (his brother) to perform the Transported Man.
What impressed me most about this film was the simplicity of the trick in the end. I was dumb folded by it all and in fact the reason that illusion shows are successful is because the audience, whether they admit it or not, want to be fooled by the illusions that they see. They don't want to see what lies behind it.
Thus out of the whole film it is the gist that I would like to take away with me and use the idea of magic and illusion as my sources of inspiration.
References
Sandys, J., 2008. The Prestige Questions and Answers. [Online] Available at: https://www.moviemistakes.com/film6272/questions [Accessed 14 December 2013].
Taylor, B., 2013. What Does The Ending Of The Prestige Really Mean?. [Online] Available at: http://whatculture.com/film/what-does-the-ending-of-the-prestige-really-mean.php [Accessed 14 December 2013].
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