The Prestige - "How far would you devote yourself for the sake of Art?"

4 out of 5 stars.

The Prestige gets my vote as one of the best movies I have seen in 2006. It has lots of twists, and again I admire such great storytelling. You are kept guessing til the end. The plot is mostly unpredictable. There is not a lot of hype to this movie, which is what makes watching such a movie even more fulflling. The director, Christopher Nolan, also directed Batman Begins. I actually caught this movie last Sunday, and its ending its run soon. Or maybe it has already ended by the time you see this.

The Prestige is about rivalry between two magicians, and in their competition, they lost things which are dear to them. Borden, it was revealed at the end, had a twin brother who played as a double and was forced to live the a parellel life together. When one of the brothers' fingers were chopped off, the other had to do the same, in order to keep up their magic performances. The other rival magician, Angier, played by Hugh Jackman, actually sacrificed his own life in the process to be a world class magician. At least this is how I interpreted the final performance. The clone is the one who carried on the magic show. The final "magic" actually involved pseudoscience and cloning which sounded and looked absurd, but if you are watching such a good show, I think one should forgive these shortcomings. There are other theories about whether it was the real Angier who drowned or the clone who drowned, but I guess thinking too much is not what the director wants us to do. The point is, Angier sacrificed something, and it makes sense that he actually sacrificed his life at the final performance.

It is a good show, not great though. It was made less powerful when the audience (meaning I and others watching the movie) is made to accept a magic act which was too ridiculous. If I'm the director, though, I would definitely make the end of the show more believable by real magic tricks, or at least more believable ones. The "magic that is really science" part at the end was kind of anti-climatic, and probably because they ran out of ideas.