The Prestige

I loved The Prestige. It’s one of those movies that somehow gets better the more I think about it. The first time I watched it I was completely pulled in by the mystery, but afterward I realized how carefully everything had been set up from the beginning. Nolan packs the movie with repetition and foreshadowing through lines, images, and even entire scenes that repeat themselves, but every time they come back they mean something different. It feels like the movie is performing its own magic trick on the audience. It shows you exactly what matters, over and over, and still manages to surprise you. What really stuck with me was the theme of obsession. Both Angier and Borden are so consumed by being the better magician that it starts destroying everything around them, and eventually themselves too. Neither of them can let go. The movie makes obsession feel almost like another trick. It’s something that promises greatness but slowly takes everything from you. The very last scene of The Prestige is one of my favorite endings because of how the monologue completely reframes everything. As Cutter speaks about the three parts of a magic trick the pledge, the turn, and the prestige the movie is literally showing us the final reveal at the same time. It feels so satisfying because the monologue isn’t just explaining the trick, but rather it’s explaining the entire movie and even the audience’s role in it. “You want to be fooled” lands so perfectly there. It’s such a smart ending because Nolan turns the final reveal into the movie’s own prestige. Sometimes I wonder if this movie is better than interstellar but I think the music and character development of interstellar edges it out.