The Prestige is returning to IMAX 20 years after its release, and a retrospective argues that Christopher Nolan’s magician drama remains his best film. Released between his Batman movies, it stars Christian Bale in his only other Nolan project and centers on two rival magicians at the turn of the century, both obsessed with perfecting the famed Transported Man trick.
The story begins with a tragedy: during a water-tank escape, Angier’s wife drowns after Borden apparently ties the ropes incorrectly. Angier blames Borden, and their rivalry becomes a lifelong cycle of obsession and revenge. The retrospective describes The Prestige as Nolan’s darkest film, arguing that Angier’s vendetta consumes him until he exists only as a vehicle for revenge. His pursuit of Borden’s trick leads him to commission Nikola Tesla to build a machine, with Tesla warning that the technology will not bring him satisfaction.
That warning proves accurate. Angier uses the machine to frame Borden for his own murder and then takes Borden’s daughter as a manipulation tool, still unsatisfied until Borden is hanged for a crime he did not commit. The film’s ending reveals that Borden was actually twins living as one man, which explains how the Transported Man was performed. Angier, meanwhile, confesses that Tesla’s machine clones him each night, leaving rows of drowned duplicates in tanks and raising the question of whether the original Angier survives at all.
The retrospective highlights how the film’s doubles motif rewards repeat viewing: Borden’s behavior, including Sarah’s observation that he only loves her on some days, makes sense once the twin reveal is known. It also argues that The Prestige was the last of Nolan’s golden age, a film with a tangible message about the price of success and the destructiveness of obsession. Though later Nolan films had their own tricks and twists, the retrospective contends that none matched The Prestige for thematic resonance or surprise.
Sources: Comic Book Resources.