Starring: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, David Bowie, Piper Perabo

Directed By: Christopher Nolan

Prestige an image

The final act of every magician is the one that gathers all the people around him and turns them into believers. It is the act that they are willing to stake their lives and livelihood on. The three act screenplay was a take on how these magicians performed their acts in three acts. It was something that the audience was truly not prepared for. The film deals with the lives of two ringers who keep pushing themselves and compete with each other. The two men try to outplay each other at every instance of the movie. The movie goes through three parallel stories in a non linear fashion. This is something that has been seen in most of Christopher Nolan’s earlier work like Batman Begins, Memento and Insomnia.The film combines him with his team of Christian Bale and Michael Caine from the Batman Begins. The film was made before the now popular Dark Knight. The film was a very well knit plot with a strong ensemble cast.

Hugh Jackman who plays Robert Angier is man who is driven to find out what his competitor Alfred Borden is upto. He even sends his lover to him so that he can investigate what is that he has concocted as his final prestige. Borden on the other hand uses the help of several careful gimmicks to drive Angier away. He take him to the extant of throwing him off on a wild goose chase in search of a machine build by Tesla. But this doesn’t stop the man’s resolve to find a truly original prestige. On the surface this film might just look like a rivalry. But the themes of obsession and betrayal are really central to this whole movie.

Christopher Nolan by now has become a man with an iron wand when it comes to good cinema. His ideas of narrative for stories like this makes him truly a cut above the rest. They make people want to follow his every move. For a year that witnessed probably the greatest movie ever made in Dark Knight. He probably has a high standard to follow. As always he extracts such unorthodox portrayals from his principal casts that will be remembered for some time. He takes pain to make sure that his films are entertaining yet they need to have some thought gone into it.

Another concept that has been used in this movie is the idea of duality. It is something that has never been truly tackled. The closest we have got to any kind of Duality is probably with the Hulk movies. It is a concept many connoisseurs of cinema really fail to relate to. But this film makes it as entertaining as well as uncanny. Lots of people are going to watch this film as fight between Wolverine and Batman. But really no one really would love to see their fates in the hands of such characters.

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!