DAVID'S REVIEWS - Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige"
It's been almost 2 months since I watched a movie. Even though I've been YEARNING to watch another one, I haven't had time or energy for some reason, thank god this is the first one I've gotten to watch in this long; I watched this movie as part of some of my final exams for my high school filmmaking class while we were on "Science Fiction" as a genre and the role technology plays in it - and it looks like the Ministry of Education in my country has very good taste.
My first (and only non-spoiler) positive thing to say about the movie is that I am so incredibly thankful that I watched it without knowing anything about it. Hell, I'll admit, I've never heard about it before. This led to several BIG surprises being even bigger to me, including with the casting.
SPOILERS AHEAD
I'll just start with: David Bowie??? David Bowie is in the movie???? He plays Nikola Tesla????? David Bowie as Nikola Tesla????.
Anyways.
The movie was structured very interestingly. It puts the climax, or "The Prestige", of the story - Robert Angier's (Hugh Jackman's character) death, which is at first framed to make us believe it was directly caused by his rival Alfred Borden (Christian Bale's character) - right at the beginning. After we see this, we see Borden at his trial with John Cutter (Michael Caine's character) providing a witness testimony where he claims to have seen Borden kill Angier, making the viewer believe that the case is clear-cut and that there is no debate to be had. However, things get confusing after this point.
After Borden is sent to prison, we see Angier arrive in Colorado Springs to visit Nikola Tesla, which left me confused since I thought we had just seen him die. However, my vision is bad and I struggle to recognize faces so I thought maybe we were just seeing a new character in the story; I then thought we were seeing the detective make his investigation into Angier's death after we were shown that Angier holds Borden's diary (remember, my vision is bad), but no!!! The movie was just being told through non-chronological storytelling!!! Another important subject in film-making class.
It took me a while to get this, though. It wasn't until I saw the death of Angier's wife, caused by Borden, that I realized that the story was being told to us in a way that we were being made to pick up the pieces and put the puzzle together by ourselves - something which I extremely appreciate and find fitting for a thriller movie.
I enjoyed the way the movie built up Borden and Angier's characters, it helped me feel the emotions I thought Christopher Nolan wanted me to feel in each scene and part of the story. What I most liked was the way Angier's obsession with winning in his rivalry against Borden was shown to have only gotten worse through the span of the story (i.e. Angier forgetting that his hatred originated in Borden killing his wife and not in their rivalry).
I'll also admit that it took me a while to get where the story was heading. The mystery behind Borden's trick was as confusing to me as it was to Angier, and I didn't get the hints of Borden's wife knowing when he means that he loves her and when he doesn't, or with Tesla's experiment on Angier's hat or Mr. Alley's (Andy Serkis' character) cat. However, this made me get even more excited when the big secret was revealed: the whole trick was a double!
The big reveal was done very well, to the point I felt inspired. (I won't expand on the reveal more so you can enjoy watching the movie by yourself)
The only other big thing I could say that I especially enjoyed about the movie was the way it used the rivalry between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison to sort of mirror the Angier-Borden rivalry. I didn't get the comparisons (yes I might be a little stupid) but I felt that generally delving into this subject was a unique and cool thing to do for the movie. The fact that Tesla is in Colorado Springs also helps the viewer understand the rough timeline of the movie (1899-1901).
At this point I think I kind of wasted the majority of my review on the exam I had to do after watching it, so I'll leave it at that. Just watch the movie to get the rest!!!
Overall, I'd rate this a 4.5/5 stars on the "Letterboxd scale" but in general it's more of an 8.9/10 for me. While I liked the movie, I would not consider it fitting for anything more than that.
