Christopher Nolan is easily one of the best filmmakers working today, bringing to screen stories that are not only complex, expansive stories with incredible effects but box office hits as well. Films like Inception, Interstellar, and Oppenheimer only scratches the surface when it comes to Nolan’s impressive work and he has another epic on the way with The Odyssey hitting theaters in July. But while Nolan has made some major films, it’s one of his smaller projects that is arguably his best and it’s now streaming on Hulu.
Released in 2006, The Prestige is based on Christopher Priest’s 1995 novel of the same name and stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as stage magicians, fierce rivals in competition with one another over creating the superior teleportation illusion. However, it turns out that there are other deceptions at play than simple sleight of hand. The film received positive reviews and did well at the box office but often goes forgotten when it comes to Nolan’s greatest works.
What makes The Prestige so good is genuinely the story itself. Like most Nolan films, there are interesting and unexpected twists and turns, but what The Prestige excels at is nuance within the narrative structure. If you’re paying attention, you realize slowly that the way the story is being told itself mirrors the illusions of magic in the film. It’s a device that serves the tension of the story very well and helps enhance the rivalry between Jackman’s Robert Angier and Bale’s Alfred Borden.
There’s also the way the film approaches its various themes. This isn’t simply a straight-on movie about magic and rivalry. It’s much more detailed than that. This isn’t a film that has a direct good guy or bad guy; both Angier and Borden are in many ways morally gray men driven by their own ambition and each of them dealing with having to pay the heavy cost that comes with achieving greatness. It’s a deeply human movie, one that keeps you switching for whose side you are on even as each man’s choice leads to various tragic ends. This is no small feat, either, considering that there is a stunning twist as the movie takes a sharp turn into science fiction and delivers an ending that will live your jaw hanging open in the best way possible. It’s easily one of Nolan’s most complicated films and it’s put together practically perfectly making it easily his best work to date.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
