Ten Men and a Movie: The Prestige

This weekend, we saw the best fall movie you’ve probably never heard of, the Prestige.

Movie was by Christopher Nolan, the guy who made Memento (and was co written with his brother, Jonathan. This is significant. If you've seen the movie you'll understand why.) Same kind of movie as Memento - lots of twists, the narrative jumps back and forth (and back again) thru time, and some huge reveals at the end. Type of movie that you’re still talking about 1 hour later, when you realize you still haven’t figured everything out yet.

We recommend it. Good performances by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale, and the story is top notch. Solidly structured, too - there are a LOT of twists and surprises in this film, but looking back on it, they didn't cheat. Most every twist was forshadowed, if you look closely enough. Also included a small thing we liked - there’s a subordinate storyline involving Edison and Tesla battling each other at the dawn of the electric age. Nice parallel to the Main story about the two magicians.

This is the second of two fall movies involving dueling turn-of-the-century European magicians, the other being the Illusionist (featuring Ed Norton and Paul Giamatti, written by Neil Burger) Taken together, both films complement each other nicely. Both are excellent period pieces, with the Illusionist being the more romantic of the two. The Prestige is a much darker take (Doug Henning, bless his soul, would never have the stomach for what these guys pull) .

(We’re also working our way though the 850-page monster that is Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, so we’ve just about had it had it up to here with these guys and their incantations.)