What Does The Ending Of The Prestige Really Mean?
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking."
Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled - Cutter Of late its sometimes easy to forget that Christopher Nolan, the genius behind the Dark Knight trilogy adrift amidst a sea of awards and accolades as a result of his labours with the franchise depicting his vision of the caped crusader, previously made a quartet of insidiously intelligent films: Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, and Inception. All of these films are amazing in their own way and worthy of separate analysis, showcasing Nolans developing directorial talent throughout the first decade of the new millennium. Today Id like to discuss The Prestige, Nolans dark and bleak visually spectacular mind-twister of a movie, and my own personal favourite from this quartet of films, which was adapted from British writer Christopher Priests 1995 prize winning epistolary novel of the same name. Over the past few years I've discussed my interpretation of the events of the movie and its key overarching themes with so many people that I decided it was time to put my thoughts into an article. The ingenuity of the movie arises from Nolans handling of the non-linear exposition of the film which, at its core, revolves around two talented magicians in the early 1900s who become engaged in a lifelong game of progressively daring one-upmanship. The movies narrator- Michael Caines Harry Cutter- is an ingénieur; he conceives then concocts the mechanisms which facilitate the magicians dazzling of their audiences. Cutter explains to the viewer the three key elements of any magic trick... every trick, he tells us, has three crucial stages: The Pledge the preliminary object or action; The Turn- the action or the deed that misdirects and distracts the audience from the true purpose of the trick; The Prestige- the final reveal which leaves them spellbound. If youre reading this article then you probably know the story which, in a nutshell to refresh you, charts via a series of flash-backs and flash-forwards the events surrounding the sentencing of Christian Bales Alfred Borden for the murder of Hugh Jackmans Robert Angier. The murder seemingly occurred as the culmination of a series of escalating trade-offs between the two magicians which had their origins in the death of Angiers wife Julia who, in tragic symmetry to the death of Angier, drowned performing a water cell act. Next we will discuss the ending, and then seek to understand how it is representative of the key themes embodied within the movie's narrative