The Prestige

In one of those strange Hollywood coincidences that looked like a game of chicken both sides were determined to not to lose and so both went over the cliff still in the car, two movies about magicians and their loves came out within weeks of each other last fall. One was The Illusionist, which I wrote up a month ago, starring Edward Norton and Joaquin Phoenix fighting over Jessica Biel.

In The Prestige Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) fight each other over their magic, not their women (Piper Perabo and Rebecca Hall), but the women get involved in their unfriendly competition nonetheless. Michael Caine has the lead supporting role as a man who creates tricks for magicians and is somewhat of a confidant to Angier and Borden who, early on, meet while working under the tutelage of the same star.

David Bowie is delightful as Nikola Tesla, a real person who was Thomas Edison’s employee, vitcim and primary competitor in the commercial development of electricity. The Prestige is set later in Tesla’s life, after Edison has won the corporate battle; though we never see the Wizard of Menlo Park onscreen, his agents are shown hounding Tesla, forcing him to be constantly on the defensive and on the move, though willing to assist Angier when he travels to wintry Colorado Springs in quest of a copy of a device he believes Tesla built for Borden.

Director Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins, Insomnia, Memento), who co-wrote the snappy, intelligent script with his brother Jonathan from Christopher Priest’s novel, points out right at the beginning that in the world of magic nothing is ever what it seems to be, that the show must be watched carefully and that the performers will go to great lengths to create illusions. This is very useful advice, so I pass it along to you.

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