Review of The Prestige (2006) by Noah C — 18 Jul 2014

The entire world has advanced of the past several years with new inventions and new ideas constantly evolving our society as a result. When it comes to filmmaking, time has both changed the craft of movie making with new techniques on how to make a movie yet the age old tradition of framing shots and telling stories for film has always stayed constant throughout history.

Usually when you ask a person who their favorite directors are they will most likely say someone like Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock, etc.; point being classic filmmakers have become legendary while current filmmakers obviously have not heralded the same kind of cultural admiration.

With that in mind, I can say with an utmost confidence that the best current filmmaker of the 21st century is the magnificent Christopher Nolan. What can I say; the man is an absolute genius when it comes to how to make a movie.

The key to Nolan's success as an artist is his understanding that to make groundbreaking original films he has to first give into the studio and make a film for the masses, in return granting him the ability to make his own films.

In 2005 Nolan made the critically acclaimed Batman Begins for Warner Brothers, his studio film. Begins was monumental success that instantly placed Nolan atop the mount Olympus of cinema. After having given the studio their blockbuster Nolan was given the freedom to make any movie he felt would fulfill his artistic vision; for in 2006 Christopher Nolan released The Prestige as his follow up to Batman Begins, reteaming with collaborators Christian Bale and Michael Caine.

Having seen the entire Dark Knight trilogy, Memento and Inception I instantly wanted to find more films by Nolan and happened to stumble upon The Prestige while shopping for Blu-Ray's. I was aware of the premise at the time, two rival magicians competing with one another, but that was it.

The whole magician idea just oozed with originality and when I finished watching this film an immediate satisfaction enveloped me, for The Prestige is a very good film, yet quite sadly not a masterpiece.

Initially the way the film would skip between the past and present was somewhat frustrating because unlike, say True Detective, it was difficult to determine what was past and what was present; however, when I finished the film all became clear.

The entire time I watched the film I was aware a twist may be incorporated somehow in the end, that would make everything clear, yet when the twist came I was sadly underwhelmed. With the bad out of the way I can now discussed what I liked about the film, first and foremost being the tight script.

I was always interested in the both characters admiration to steal each other's tricks to achieve the best allusion of all; very compelling stuff. Nolan's visuals are of course eye candy and the performances delivered from the cast are of course top notch as well.

Overall, the good far out way the bad for this film. There is a reason Christopher Nolan has received such acclaim for his work, simply because he Is a genius. He mixes together brilliantly original concepts with most importantly, a great script, to form a cinematic marvel.

In my opinion, The Prestige, is one of Nolan's less impressive films simply because it is not quite as thought provoking as his other work, yet this film is still an achievement in its own right.