Tagline: Are you watching closely?
The Prestige movie storyline. From acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan (“Memento,” “Batman Begins”) comes an innovative thriller woven out of the stuff of illusions. In this twisting, turning tale of urgent mystery, two Victorian-era magicians spark a powerful rivalry that builds into an escalating battle of tricks and an unquenchable thirst to uncover the other’s trade secrets. As these two remarkable men pit daring against desire, showmanship against science and ambition against friendship, the results are dangerous, deadly and definitely deceptive.
Their rivalry is brought to life by two of today’s most compelling screen stars: Tony Award winner Hugh Jackman, beloved on screen for his portrayal of the feral Wolverine in “X-Men” and its sequels, and Christian Bale, acclaimed for his intense performances including his recent turn as the Caped Crusader in “Batman Begins.”
Joining them is an exceptional cast of diverse characters portrayed by two-time Oscar winner Michael Caine, Golden Globe nominee Scarlett Johansson, newcomer Rebecca Hall, rising actress Piper Perabo, fantasy-film cult hero Andy Serkis and rock star David Bowie as the groundbreaking electrical genius Nikola Tesla.
It all begins in rapidly changing, turn-of-the-century London. At a time when magicians are idols and celebrities of the highest order, two young magicians set out to carve their own paths to fame. The flashy, sophisticated Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a consummate entertainer, while the rough-edged purist Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) is a creative genius who lacks the panache to showcase his magical ideas. They start out as admiring friends and partners.
But when their biggest trick goes terribly awry, they become enemies for life — each intent on outdoing and upending the other. Trick by trick, show by show, their ferocious competition builds until it knows no bounds, even utilizing the fantastical new powers of electricity and the scientific brilliance of Nikola Tesla — while the lives of everyone around them hang in the balance. Rife with sleight-of-hand shocks and revelations, the film delves into a riveting world where the farthest, darkest edges of faith, trust and the possible are probed.
The Pledge, The Turn, The Prestige
According to Cutter, the magician’s ingeneur (one who designs illusions behind the scenes) played by Michael Caine: “Every great magic trick consists of three acts. The first act is called The Pledge: the magician shows you something ordinary, but of course, it probably isn’t. The second act is called The Turn. The magician makes his ordinary something do something extraordinary. Now, if you’re looking for the secret…you won’t find it. That’s why there’s a third act, called The Prestige. This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you’ve never seen before.”
Director Christopher Nolan uses these same principles of carefully constructed secrets and shocking moments of revelation to unfold the winding, surprise-filled story of dueling magicians Robert Angier and Alfred Borden in THE PRESTIGE—an intricate thriller in which mysteries abound, illusions permeate every action, and nothing is quite what it seems, except the primal human emotions that drive an epic feud between two ambitious men.
Nolan has already, with just a handful of films, established himself as one of filmmaking’s most creative minds, and one with a striking ability to evoke the mysterious and disorienting, whether in independent classics or major action blockbusters. He first came to prominence after his promising debut, “Following,” with “Memento,” the ingenious, backwards-moving thriller about a desperate man trying to avenge his wife’s murder while suffering from the loss of memory.
Lauded as a cinematic masterpiece that played with notions of time, space and subjective reality, “Memento” continues to confound audiences and is now studied by film students. Nolan went on to cut his teeth on a bigger thriller, a remake of the Norwegian noir film “Insomnia,” in a fresh version starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank, which once again took on a journey into crime and fear. He then made another leap, this time into superhero territory, tackling “Batman Begins,” which unveiled the untold origins of the Dark Knight’s emergence as the savior of Gotham City. The film was hailed as one of the most original and engaging of all superhero movies and went on to worldwide acclaim, the rare summer box-office blockbuster that met with equal critical success. Now, it seemed that Nolan was the perfect person to tackle material as intricate entertaining as THE PRESTIGE.
Says producer Emma Thomas: “Traditionally, I think filmmakers have avoided the subject of magic because there is this feeling that if you’re not seeing it live that it’s too easy to get the wool pulled over your eyes. But Chris started with the idea that movies are already a kind of magic trick—and instead of concentrating on the magic shows themselves, the story is all about what happens behind the scenes in the lives of two driven magicians who are devoted to and obsessed with creating the most baffling illusions.”
The film’s genesis began just after Nolan directed “Memento.” Around that same time, executive producer Valerie Dean read and fell madly in love with Christopher Priest’s acclaimed novel The Prestige—and immediately knew that amidst its complex blend of history and science fiction, its tale of an out-of-control magical rivalry would make for an original film.
Dean gave the book to Nolan, who was equally intrigued. “The book created a terrific relationship between the narrative form of the novel and the techniques and ideas used by magicians to fool you and engage you in deception—and I felt the exciting thing about making a film of The Prestige would be to find the cinematic equivalent,” Nolan says.
“There’s quite a strong relationship between what magicians do and what filmmakers do. The filmmaker is very similar to a magician in the way we release information—what we tell the audience and when—and how we draw the audience in through certain points of view. We use our own techniques, blind alleys and red herrings, to fool the audience and, hopefully, to create a satisfying payoff. With THE PRESTIGE, there was an opportunity to really play with these concepts right before the audience’s eyes.
Nolan in turn asked producer Aaron Ryder of Newmarket Films to obtain the rights. After his experience on “Memento,” Ryder trusted that Nolan would create something distinctive with THE PRESTIGE. “He’s a truly gifted storyteller,” says the producer. “Chris was born to direct movies. I feel his films are some of the best films being made today and I just loved the idea that he wanted to make this film to be a magic trick in and of itself.”
Meanwhile, the director approached his brother Jonathan about joining him in tackling the massive task of adapting Priest’s intricate novel, composed in part of confessional diaries, into a suspenseful screenplay. Having previously worked together on “Memento”—which Christopher Nolan adapted from Jonathan Nolan’s time-shifting short story—Jonathan was intrigued by the prospect of doing something equally challenging, yet entirely different.
This time around, the fun would be in trying to write a movie as an illusion—one that would dazzle, deceive and ultimately surprise the audience. “The movie definitely had to function as a magic trick,” Jonathan says. But that concept left him in entirely unexplored territory. He continues: “When I started writing, I had a bunch of different classic movies in mind that I thought I might pay homage to, but after I was done, I realized that I’d never seen anything quite like this one before.”
He began by paring through the onion-like layers of Priest’s novel. “The book is a very complicated, very ambitious, sweeping epic with tons of ideas—and it took me about 18 months to figure out how to cut it down into something that resembles a film,” Jonathan comments. “I had to find the structure, which was tricky, because the story is so complexly interwoven. What we came up with is a three-part flashback structure based on this idea of the three-part structure of a magic trick.”
Utilizing that three-part structure—comprised of The Pledge, The Turn and The Prestige—helped the Nolans cut to the core of why people have always been so fascinated by magic. “A lot of it turns on this idea that Chris and I were fascinated by: that the audience for a magic show knows that what they’re about to see is a trick,” Jonathan explains.
“If they actually thought a woman was going to be sawn in half, they would be very upset, and definitely not amused. So they know it’s a trick but they also want to feel fooled, so that’s why that third act, or The Prestige, is so important. The real world is rigid, there’s not a lot of mystery to it, but people don’t want that to be the case—and that’s where magic comes in. If we’ve got all the rules figured out and this is the way the world works, where you get a job, save your money and then die—well, who wants to live in that world? I think we all would prefer that the universe have some surprises, some tricks up its sleeve.
Along the way, Jonathan Nolan delved into researching the secretive world of gifted magicians. This became especially revealing when he met with some of the most shadowy figures in that already shadowy realm—the ingeneurs who come up with wild ideas for never-before-seen tricks behind the scenes. “They’re fascinating figures who eschew the limelight, and for a screenwriter, there’s something very familiar about that,” he laughs. “The attraction is that they get to pull all the strings.”
In researching magic’s illustrious past, Nolan also gained insight into why that grand legacy has faded into today’s Vegas acts. “I think part of it is that now there are different versions of magic out there but we don’t call them magic. We have television, video games, movies—they’re all spectacles that you can disappear into just as one used to do at a Victorian magic show,” he says.
THE PRESTIGE heads into many unexpected directions, including having its two main stars—Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale—morph from heroes to anti-heroes and back again. Jonathan always intended for the audience to choose sides. “I think you can’t really watch the movie without choosing an allegiance. But whoever you’re rooting for, the idea is that you’re likely to start questioning it by the film’s end,” explains the writer.
Yet Jonathan himself doesn’t hold a special loyalty to one character or the other. “I like both Angier and Borden,” he says. “To me, they’re flip sides of the same coin, two complementary halves of one person.”
As he wrote, Nolan never shied away from letting the audience draw their own conclusions about all that is going on in the raging battle between Angier and Borden. “I love contentious stuff,” he admits. “Chris and I still argue about aspects of ‘Memento’ and we’ve had arguments about THE PRESTIGE as well. I think if you get to the point where people are sitting around a table arguing about what your movie means, then you’ve done your job as a writer.”
After Jonathan wrote an initial draft of the screenplay with Christopher’s creative involvement, Christopher then jumped in with his own draft. The unique working relationship between the brothers has always involved one sparking the creativity of the other. Jonathan has his own theory for why they complement each other so well. “I’ve always suspected that it has something to do with the fact that he’s left-handed and I’m right-handed,” he remarks, “because he’s somehow able to look at my ideas and flip them around in a way that’s just a little bit more twisted and interesting. It’s great to be able to work with him like that.”
Emma Thomas was dazzled by the completed screenplay. “When I read the book, I knew it was going to make a great movie—I just didn’t quite know how!” she laughs. “There were so many different elements to the story, but Jonathan and Chris were able to distill it all while keeping the fun of magic and the excitement of this unusual world alive and keeping the focus on all these fascinating characters. Every role had something juicy about it.”
Aaron Ryder was equally impressed. “The story plays with deception, identity and obsession,” he says. “In much the same way that ‘Memento’ pushed the envelope, I believe on a grander scale, the same could be said for THE PRESTIGE. I truly think that it’s innovative in that same way. Jonathan and Chris adapted a very complicated book into a tension-filled thriller. It’s rare to see a film deviate so far from the source material yet still remain true to the story and the theme.”
The Prestige (2006)
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Andy Serkis, Piper Perabo, David Bowie, Christopher Neame, Jamie Harris
Screenplay by: Jonathan Nolan
Production Design by: Nathan Crowley
Cinematography by: Wally Pfister
Film Editing by: Lee Smith
Costume Design by: Joan Bergin
Set Decoration by: Julie Ochipinti
Art Direction by: Kevin Kavanaugh
Music by: David Julyan
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for violence and disturbing images.
Distributed by: Buena Vista Pictures
Release Date: October 20, 2006
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