THE PRESTIGE (2006)
November 9th, 2006
Deric Spoils The Movie THE PRESTIGE (2006)
By Deric Kempsell
THE PRESTIGE (2006)
M. Night Shyamalan wishes he had thought of this
twist ending
The premise of The Prestige is simple: all magic tricks
have three parts. First, The Pledge wherein a magician
shows the audience something that appears ordinary; the
second part is called The Turn, where the magician makes
the ordinary do something extraordinary; and finally, The
Prestige, where you see “something shocking you’ve never
seen before.”
Cut to 1887 in Victorian London, where young magicians
Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) and Robert Angier
(Hugh Jackman) are assisting Angier’s young wife perform
a bound, underwater escape from a locked water torture
cell as a part of Milton the Magician’s magic show. Borden
believes a different knot would be more beneficial for the
act and the young lady agrees. When the time comes for
her to slip her knot she fails to do so and inadvertently
drowns. Angier is furious, believing Borden cost him his
wife’s life, and as the show ends, both magicians head their
separate ways to seek their fortunes in the world of entertainment.
Borden assumes the moniker of “The Professor,”
and Angier titles himself “The Great Danton” as they begin
their professional rivalry.
Some time passes and Borden is performing a dangerous
“Bullet catch” trick wherein he pretends to catch a
bullet, however the patron who holds the gun turns out to
be none other than a disheveled Angier himself, determined
to get revenge on Borden for killing his wife. Before
he can shoot Borden though, a shadowy man named
Fallon (whom Borden has hired as an assistant) steps up
and deflects the shot so that it only injures Borden’s hand.
Now Borden (having lost two fingers from the gunshot
wound) has a grievance as well, so when Angier is beginning
his next performance, Borden sabotages it.
Borden premiers a new trick soon after called “The
Transported Man” which is remarkable in its simplicity. Two
identical boxes are set up across the stage from each
other. Borden bounces a rubber ball toward the other,
steps back into the box, and shuts the door, then appears
out of the box across the stage to reach out and catch the
ball instantaneously. Angier’s trick designer, Cutter
(Michael Caine), tells him it must be a body double. Angier
refuses to believe this and as his fascination with Borden’s
trick turns into an obsession he sends his beautiful young
assistant Olivia to discover the secret. She in turn falls in
love with Borden and he begins an affair-much to his wife’s
dismay. Olivia returns with Borden’s diary, written in code,
that she says holds the secrets to all his tricks. Angier and
Cutter then kidnap Borden’s assistant Fallon and ransom
him for the cipher to decode the diary.
The key to Borden’s code is TESLA, so Angier travels
to the United States to find the electrician and famed rival
of Thomas Edison. Nikkolai Tesla (David Bowie) agrees to
create a teleportation machine for Angier. He is successful,
although there is one side affect-when teleporting the
object or person, a duplicate or doppelganger of the original
is created.
And now,
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