~~ A Terrible price to pay 4 'The Prestige' ~~. Review on Prestige Movie

I have never been very good at telling a story, and therefore am even worse off when it comes to writing a review on a movie.....Coz the truth is, the review in itself is a story. One has to give enough information on who are the characters, what do they do in the movie, who are they played by etc etc. Then you have to give credit to the directors, the novel from which the movie was adapted from (coz a lot of movies now a days are), and me being the forgetful person I am, do not remember all these details….not that I take note of them when I watch the movie.

This is my way of apologizing .... before you go any further and read this review ...there are others far better at doing this....so if you will...go and read what they have to say as well...nuf' said.But this movie is different. I watched in two parts, and finished it last night. Starting the minute the movie ended till the current moment I am unable to tear my mind away from going over the details of the movie, the characters, the plot, the direction etc….And so I have decided to sit down and put a few words down, and hopefully get some wonderful soul to go see this movie.

So here are the Basic Stats of the movie

Name: The Prestige

Director**: Christopher Nolan

Main Characters**:

Alfred Borden - Christian Bale

Robert Angier - Hugh Jackman

Magician’s Assistant - Scarlett Johansson

John Cutter - Michael Caine

Nikola Tesla - David Bowie

For those who have seen the Illusionist (another movie I really liked), the theme of this movie is quite familiar. In the Illusionist the main protagonist Edward Norton carried the movie solely on his shoulder, as the movie revolved around his struggle and his triumph. But then that’s a different review in itself.

The Prestige on the other hand is the story of two marvelous Magicians, Alfred Borden and Robert Angier. Borden has always been the technically sound magician; his work revolves and resides in the nuances, getting the technicalities just right. Angier on the Other hand is an over the top personality, a True showman at heart. Borden adopts the name ‘Professor’ for the stage and Angier adopts ‘The great Danton’.

Trouble starts when Angier’s wife dies in a tragic drowning accident, due to a unconventional knot tied by Borden, that she is unable to untie it in time. With her death comes to an end an already fragile friendship between the two magicians and what begins, fuels the drive in each to out do the other, to top the other off, to Win!!

On the personal front Angier views Borden’s family as something that should have been his Happiness, something that Borden deprived him of, by being responsible for Angier’s wife’s death. In the meantime, Scarlett Johansson joins Angier as his assistant on the persistence of Cutter who is the one that designs the illusions.

Each successful magic trick Cutter says consists of three parts:

The Pledge: Where you take something ordinary, something that draws the audience in

The Turn: Where you take the ordinary object and Make it into something extraordinary.

The Prestige: Where you make the whole thing unbelievable, the Grand Finale if you may

Borden, in the meantime has devised a mind boggling, almost truly magical trip, where he Disappears into one doorway and appears at the end of another at quite a distance almost instantaneously ‘The Transported Man’. This proves to be the Professors Ace, something that The Great Danton, tries desperately to replicate.

After failing to perform the trick with a double gone horribly wrong, Angier approaches Nikola Tesla, the eccentric scientist, to build him a machine. Something that will take the Transported Man from being an Ordinary magical trick to and extra ordinary scientific miracle!

Throw in the genius of Cutter, the loyalty and disloyalty of the beautiful Assistant, a marriage falling apart, and the obsession to perfect a passion and, to be better the other, what you get  is a mere glimpse into the Life of The Professor and The Great Danton.

To tell you anything else would be a shame, a crime if you will. I assure you though the movie may seem to be all over the place, darting from the past to the future to the present, and the story seemingly disjointed; sit through the urge to get up and leave.

Slowly but steadily things start to take shape. Everything that seemed so abstract will start to make perfect sense…. The secret of the Transported the Man and the Price one has to Pay for it! ..will lay open in front of your eyes

And before you know it, you my friend would have fallen in love with the movie!!!