Film Analysis: The Prestige - Essay Example

Film Analysis: The Prestige Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film, The Prestige, is a fictional film that succinctly tells the story of two magicians, Borden and Angier. These magicians are rivals in performing magic and go to great lengths to preserve their respective statures and by outdo each other in the process. In the course of the film, the rivalry, different skill sets, and deception involved in the magic leave a trail of disasters. In the wake of the action, dominant themes emerge from the depiction of the two main characters. This essay purposes to examine the dominant themes brought out in the film. The objective shall be met by the aid of the salient delivery techniques employed by the director to effectively bring out the themes. The prestige adequately covers the theme of sacrifice that goes into deception; the kind of deception that is good enough to generate the perception that what is achieved is actually magical and cannot be replicated by someone else without the knowledge, skills and experience of the magician. A peculiar characteristic of this sacrifice is that in most instances, it is often disguised because its discovery could be fatal to the discovery of the truth thus unmasking the fact that no magic is performed. Two examples stand out to demonstrate sacrifice. One is in the characters of Borden and Chung Ling Soo. In order to perform the magic trick of entering one point and exiting the other instantaneously, Borden cleverly uses a twin brother to accomplish the same. However, great sacrifice is what makes the achievement a reality. Borden has to conceal at all costs that he has a twin brother and make sure that the status quo remains hidden for life (McGowen, 2012, p. 112). This demonstrates how far he is willing to go just to deceive his audiences. Borden cannot even reveal his twin brother to his wife Sarah who is forced into taking her own life when she suspects that she has been dealing with two men believing them to be one. Further, sacrifice is still demonstrated when Borden’s two fingers get shot off during a magic activity that goes awry. Instead of stopping bullets as originally intended, he ends up with two fingers chopped. The negative development puts the secret of his twin brother in jeopardy as the brother will be conspicuously distinguishable from him with all fingers intact. The only solution is to chop of the fingers of the other brother so that they all look the same. Perhaps, this example best demonstrates how far in the domain of sacrifice a magician can go to capture and retain audience for magic activities. Chung in the same vein is an old magician who walks with a limp. He too has perfected the art of deception through great sacrifice. His magic act is to miraculously produce a fish jar so as to appear to come from nowhere. He sacrifices walking normally so that he can display frailty to indicate old age. In this act, he is able to conceal the large jar between his legs with a 100 per cent assurance that the audience cannot notice (McGowen, 2012, p. 111). The sacrifice made here is Chung having to act frail despite the discomfort that comes with it. In both instances of deception, the end result of the deception is usually more appreciated than the process that led to it. If the processes leading to the magic were carefully appraised, people would not be deceived into believing the magic acts. The sacrifice to achieve magic performance and the apparent lack of its comprehension is also likened to the functioning of the capitalistic system of production and wealth accumulation. In this system according to McGowan, is one that exploits labour to create surplus value that gains its important during exchange. This surplus value is not perceived from its true sacrifice that is the labour, but is wrongly attributed to the capacity to sell commodities at a higher price than the production cost (McGowen, 2012, p. 114). The film thus mirrors the society in its failure to appreciate the true heroes who put effort into work. Instead, the society glorifies the bourgeoisie that exploits the working masses. In this regard, it presents something that could change. If the society appreciates the input of the laborer as appropriate, perhaps laborers would earn more and not be overexploited. The same standpoint counts for audiences that believe in miracles because the audience is too lame to unearth the trick. Cutter best summarizes the idea at the end of the film with the voice over in which he says that “Now you are looking for the secret, but you won’t find it because, of course, you are not really looking” (McGowen, 2012, p. 119) Cutter’s pronouncement confirms the superficial way in which we approach the issues that affect us the most in life such as economic activities we engage in. Rivalry also features prominently as a focus of the film. Each of the two magicians wants to so badly outdo the other. To achieve their desires, Angier and Borden have to spy on each other and discover the tricks that the other uses. The aim is to discover the trick and improve on it or come up with a better one. One way of spying was for one magician to be disguised and join the audience when the other is performing. Both magicians thought that it offered a better opportunity to discover each other’s tricks when observed from the audience perspective. Though both magicians focus on different areas of practicing their trade, they are keen to ensure one is ahead of the other. When Angier cannot replicate the teleportation trick, he is forced to steal the illusionary idea just to gain some leverage. The rivalry also drives the two magicians to deceive each other through diaries. Each magician records false or misleading information in their diaries. Deliberate effort is then made to ensure that the other magician comes across the diary and act on it when the judgment is impaired and the hidden intention is comfortably concealed (Bordwell, 2013, p. 34). Fortunately, the deception leads to the discovery of a functional time machine. The consequences of rivalry range from good to extremely bad. The good means that each magician attempts to be as mysterious as possible to endear himself to the audience. However, the rivalry has also led to deaths and the development of a personal vendetta kind of objective for the magicians against each other. Borden’s wife chose suicide because Borden concealed the existence of his twin in the bid to maintain the teleportation magic and get ahead of his adversary. The greatest tragedy caused by the rivalry is that both characters die by the end of the film. Borden has to hang for causing the death of Angier’s wife while performing the teleportation trick in which the woman drowns due to the Boden’s negligence (Rusell, 2006). The rivalry is so intense that even human life does not matter as long as the interests of the two magicians are met. Angier also loses the love Olivier because he becomes cruel to her as a result of engaging in magic activities. Angier’s last version is shot dead in the film. The film also demonstrates the flatness of life, its futility and lack of meaning. McGowan noted that life does not offer any hope. Instead, people need something that can trigger hope in them and keep them looking forward to the future. This hope is to effectively create something to believe in even if it is false believes like the seemingly magical acts are. In a strange twist of events, chance can turn these falsities into realities. The imminent example in the film is the proliferation of a time machine that is conceived as a result of prevarications that the magicians propound to each other. Borden lies to Angier that the time machine facilitates his teleportation to conceive the fact of existence of his twin. Angier, fuelled by rivalry, actually procures the person purported to make the time machines to make a similar machine. It is quite surprising that new time machine whose construction is triggered by lies is actually functional and can deliver its intended purposes. It is such belief that human beings need in order to achieve great feats such as new discoveries and inventions. The film also employs a powerful mix of stylistic devices with cinematography, editing, sound track and voice overs that set it apart. One such device is the story within a story approach. Using a story within a story draws the audience attention to a matter that is not currently in issue but is essential in the description, character and roles of those characters in the film (Bordwell, 2013, p. 36). Nolan achieves interesting plot development by retorting the technique of telling a story within a story. The use of the technique of story within a story is used to aid crosscutting- when Nolan directs the film to shift from one scene to the next creating and sustaining suspense. The audience is kept in anticipation because there is a hint at the truth, but the truth is kept away creating a perfect replica of the scenario of something being so near yet so far. The crosscutting used enables us to have an insight into the lives of the two magicians so that we can relate their present conflict. In a nutshell, crosscutting juxtaposes the two magicians so that we clearly see the difference in skills but desire to outshine each other. The viewer is also treated to a break in the monotony of film that follows a chronological time sequence as crosscutting makes the film to seamlessly travel to the past and back to the present (Bordwell, 2013). Bordwell does not fail to point out that crosscutting broadens the viewer’s perspective. It facilitates the transition from individual to individual and from one location to another (McGowen, 2012, p. 30). The accounts obtained from the magician’s diaries help to strengthen the plot by providing background information with makes the viewer arrive at subjective judgments. These diaries capture the tools of trade for the two magicians who are skeptical of each other and wittingly employ the journals to mislead the other by cunning. Since we have to assume the point of view of the particular magician whose diary is read to us, we are kept within the knowledge and experience as expressed by the person who assesses the diary and not what is objective truth (McGowen, 2012, p. 104). The director also uses voice overs to effectively ensure that the viewers do not miss important information that the characters do not relay, or may disturb the flow if relayed by the characters. The result is a harmonious transition of the plot from one stage of development to the next. Apart from the voice overs, the movement of the camera in cinematography is used to identify the characters at the beginning of the film. In order to shift focus in the particular protagonists, the camera is focused on then each time they are mentioned (Bordwell, 2013, p. 22) and they are required to speak or spoken about. The focus of the camera reveals salient features such as missing fingers, a bead on a character and so on. The exposition above on The Prestige effectively captures the story in the film. Through the struggles of the magicians and interaction with their audiences, the viewer is left convinced of how their activities impact the society. From these activities, we learn the dangers that rivalry can lead to as well as the benefits. More importantly, we get to learn how the society is gullible by being duped by experienced magicians whose magic is nothing but a bunch of tricks. It can therefore be said that the film got important lessons for the viewers. Further benefit is derived from the ability to critically access the film and relate it to broader concepts such as labour relations in the capitalistic world. In a Nutshell, The prestige is an entertaining as well as educative film that every film lover will find interesting due the unique presentation of the two dominant characters. References Bordwell, D. (2013). A Labyrinth of Linkages. Madison, Wisconsin: Irvington Way Institute Press. Corrigan, T. (2011). A Short Guide to Writing About Film. London: Pearson Longman. McGowen, T. (2012). The Violence of Creation in the Prestige. In T. McGowen, The Fictional Christopher Nolan (pp. 102-121). Austin: University of Texas Press. Rusell, J. (2006, November 10). Muvir Review: The Prestige (2006). Retrieved from The BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2006/11/06/the_prestige_2006_review.shtml Read More