REVIEWED - THE PRESTIGE AT THE beginning of The Prestige, a retired conjuror (played by Michael Caine) explains the significance of the title. Every great magic trick has three acts, he says: The Pledge, the set-up introducing something that appears to be ordinary; The Turn, where something that seems extraordinary happens; and The Prestige, when, after a series of twists and turns, the climax is revealed.
Movies generally adhere to a similar three-act structure as the director, like a magician, engages in the art of illusion to entertain an audience that is willing to be drawn into the intrigue that is established and to fall for the trick while simultaneously trying to second guess the film-maker.
Based on a novel by Christopher Priest, The Prestige has been adapted for the screen by director Christopher Nolan in collaboration with his brother Jonathan, who wrote the original story on which Nolan's breakthrough film, Memento, was based.
On the evidence of these two films, the Nolan brothers appear to revel in devising intricate, time-shifting structures, and whereas Memento played in reverse, the screenplay for The Prestige is formed as a jigsaw, moving back and forward in time and even containing flashbacks within its flashbacks.
This tangled narrative revolves around two magicians who became music hall stars in late 19th-century London, around the same time as the first films flickered on a screen. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a sophisticated American who delights in showmanship, whereas Alfred Borden (Christian Bale), a working-class Cockney, is an obsessive perfectionist more concerned with substance over form.
They begin as friends, apprentices posing as volunteers in the stage act of an illusionist, played by Ricky Jay, a regular actor in David Mamet's films dealing with games of deception, and one of the consultants on Nolan's movie. When a particularly dangerous trick has tragic consequences, Angier and Borden become bitter rivals, seeking each other's magic secrets and donning disguises to sabotage each other's routines.
As they play tricks on each other, Nolan performs his own act, preying on the susceptibility of the audience and playing devious tricks on us, offering red herrings as distractions as he withholds vital information until it is revealed in the coup de grace.
This elegant production captures the period through the designs of art director Nathan Crowley and Irish costume designer Joan Bergin, who has worked on movies from My Left Foot to Veronica Guerin. Bale, on his second film for Nolan after the title role in Batman Begins, is outstanding in a strong cast that features a striking cameo from David Bowie as a real-life character, the reclusive scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla.
"Are you watching closely?" is the first line spoken in this tantalisingly satisfying thriller that rewards the viewer's attention, By the time its resolution comes, it prompts the same urge as Memento did - to want to play it all back in one's mind, with the benefit of hindsight.
