The Odyssey, the latest film from acclaimed director Christopher Nolan, is about to hit theaters. The Odyssey has been adapted many times over the past couple thousand years, and the idea of a filmmaker as distinguished as Nolan giving us his take on it has driven audiences into a frenzy.
Nolan movies tend to do that, whether it’s Inception or Oppenheimer or The Dark Knight. But before he developed his current reputation, Nolan created a masterpiece that has never gotten as much attention as his later work: 2006’s The Prestige, which, according to Nolan, is returning to theaters early next year. With Nolan fever burning hot again, it’s the perfect time to rediscover this gem.
The Prestige is straightforward for a Christopher Nolan movie
But there’s still plenty of cinematic slight of hand
Set in London in the 1890s, The Prestige revolves around a pair of magicians: the aristocratic Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and the working-class Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). At the start of the film, they’re both working for the same magician, but a trick gone horribly wrong ends their friendship forever. Later, Angier the natural showman is the first of the two to make it big on their own as a solo act. But success isn’t enough for Angier; he becomes obsessed with finding out how Borden, who was always the superior craftsman, is able to do a trick called the Transported Man, where Borden appears to teleport from one side of the stage to the other almost instantly.
What follows is a deadly game of one-ups-manship. Both men ruin each other’s shows. They share a lover in the talented Olivia Wenscombe (Scarlett Johansson), who transfers her affections from one to the other. They read each other’s diaries, and Angier eventually goes to visit the real-life scientist Nikola Tesla (David Bowie) to see if he can engineer a way to replicate Borden’s trick. Tesla obliges, but warns that it will bring only misery, which it does.
By the end, both men have become so obsessed with each other that they lose loved ones and eventually themselves. In a memorable moment, Angier confesses that he’s no longer sure of his own identity. To say anymore would be to give too much away, and everyone knows a magician isn’t supposed to do that.
The Prestige’s reputation has risen with time
Abracadabra
The Prestige made around $104 million at the box office, which is a decent haul but well below what movies like Interstellar ($642 million) or Oppenheimer ($976 million) took in. In the grand sweep of Nolan’s career, The Prestige feels like a stepping stone on the way to bigger and better things.
But it deserves more than that, and as time has passed, The Prestige has risen in esteem. Modern-day critics often rank it highly when looking back on Nolan’s filmography, whereas the ponderous Interstellar and the moody war movie Dunkirk don’t seem quite as impressive in hindsight.
Like many of Nolan’s movies, The Prestige uses a non-linear narrative structure, but it’s not as hard to figure out as the non-traditional narratives in movies like Inception, Interstellar, and Memento. It also goes with the theme. The Prestige is about magicians, so of course the movie is going to try and distract us with flips and tricks so we don’t notice the clues right in front of our faces. That makes it a fun movie to rewatch.
The Prestige also has a lot on its mind. It’s set at a time when technology was rapidly changing, and when stage magic probably really did feel like actual wizardry to a lot of people. The movie has a dark, almost pagan energy to it as it draws out these themes. It also makes smart use of its setting by using the real-life conflict between Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison — who were then battling over whether AC or DC current would be used to power the worlds’ burgeoning electrical grids — as a metaphor for the fictional conflict between Angier and Borden. There are a lot of doubling motifs throughout the movie, which will make a lot of sense once you see the whole thing.
The Prestige deserves another theatrical run
At this point, most Christopher Nolan films do
The Prestige represents a healthy medium between movies like Inception, which is constructed like a puzzle box so complicated some moviegoers just throw up their hands and walk out rather than bother to try and solve it, and a more straightforward film like Dunkirk, which is long on tone and short on twists. It’s one of Nolan’s most accessible movies, and would probably be talked about a lot more today if it came out just a couple of years later, preferably after 2008’s The Dark Knight, which is the movie that really made Nolan a household name.
A return to theaters will give new audiences a chance to discover the film for themselves. We don’t have information about tickets yet, but Nolan was nice enough to give us a date: January 21, 2027. If you’re interested, be on the lookout.
The long road to The Odyssey
But first, we have The Odyssey to enjoy. Nolan’s new film has gotten rave early reviews, so there’s every expectation that it will be so spectacular that fans will be clamoring for it to be re-released in theaters 20 years down the line. For now, it debuts on Friday, July 17.
