Cool People Know That Christopher Nolan's Best Movie Came Out 20 Years Ago Today
The big magic trick of The Prestige is that the magician behind it wasn't as famous yet.
Christopher Nolan has made a Best Picture-winning film, and he took home an Oscar for directing Oppenheimer, too. Odds are good that he'll win the Academy's top prize again for his epic take on The Odyssey. He made arguably the best superhero movie of all time (The Dark Knight), one of the best superhero origin stories (Batman Begins), a mind-bending blockbuster (Inception), and one of the best sci-fi movies of the century so far (Inception). And yet, real ones know that Nolan's best movie is none of those films. It's The Prestige.
The claim that The Prestige is Nolan's best film is not exactly a hot take. Oppenheimer got the biggest accolades while The Dark Knight and Inception are the 22nd and 33rd highest-rated films on Letterboxd, respectively, so you'd be hard-pressed to call any ranking that has The Prestige on top a consensus opinion, but the film's fans are numerous and vocal. As of this writing, it's ranked 151st on Letterboxd. Clearly, people think The Prestige is very good; only the coolest and truest know that it's the best.
Released on October 20, 2006, The Prestige is an adaptation of Christopher Pries' 1995 novel of the same name. Set in Victorian London, the tale chronicles the rivalry between two rival stage magicians. Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) is a charismatic showman while Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) is more technically minded. Both are driven and talented magicians, and each hates the other. Angier blames Borden for his wife's death, but their rivalry is about more than just revenge; they also want to outdo each other on the stage, and they'll go to great — and terrible — lengths to do so. The supporting cast — including a pre-Black Widow Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall in one of her first roles, a non-motion-capture Andy Serkis, and none other than David Bowie as Nikola Tesla — are great too.
Various twists and turns reveal themselves, and while movies that feature big plot twists can suffer on rewatch, that's not the case for The Prestige. These twists are shocking the first time you see The Prestige, but knowledge of them is rewarding on a rewatch. The performances, especially Bale's, become significantly deeper. The dramatic irony becomes all the richer, as does the tragedy of it all. The two magicians are such well-developed characters that it's hard not to have alternating sympathies for them, even knowing what they've done and what they will do. There may not be a show-stopping set piece like the truck flip in The Dark Knight or the bomb test in Oppenheimer, but The Prestige might be Oppenheimer's most rewatchable movie as a whole, likely accounting for some of the love it gets.
In fact, it's likely because of The Prestige's comparatively small scale and relatively modest ambitions that it's the alternative pick for Nolan's best film. When it came out in 2006, Christopher Nolan was not one of the best-known and most important directors in Hollywood. He'd made two cult favorite independent films, Following and Memento, before making his studio debut in 2002 with Insomnia. His last film before The Prestige, Batman Begins, was a much bigger deal than anything that had come before it, but at the time it was just another superhero movie in the pre-MCU days as the genre defined itself. After The Prestige came The Dark Knight, a popcorn blockbuster sensation that was also so critically praised that it prompted the Academy Awards to change their rules once it was snubbed for Best Picture.
Nolan after The Dark Knight is a different filmmaker. He was powerful; a Christopher Nolan movie was an event unto itself. He used this clout to push the boundaries seeking more complex plots, bigger setpieces, and bigger IMAX cameras to shoot them. His filmography after The Prestige is on such a grand scale that it almost feels unfair to compare the magician picture to an epic retelling of a Greek myth that's made nearly $2 billion at the box office. Yet that is exactly why The Prestige is so great, and the movie's fans understand this. There is a degree of "I liked them before they were cool," to be sure, but appreciating The Prestige as Nolan's best movie means you also appreciate his talents without them being overshadowed (or even diminished) by his excess. The Prestige, like most of Nolan's movies, has a non-linear plot, but it's less showy than some of his especially chronologically knotty films like Dunkirk, The Odyssey, and especially Tenet. The production, from the cinematography to the special effects, is expertly done but free of the weight of expectations that Nolan's created for himself. To watch The Prestige isn't to wonder "How will Nolan top himself this time?" but to be enthralled by an engrossing tale well told.
Davie Bowie... cool dude.
The Prestige is the height of Nolan's filmmaking when he was just some director rather than Christopher Nolan. Though Angier and his ego wouldn't agree, part of what makes The Prestige so special is that viewers are appreciating the magic and not, necessarily, the magician.
