Themes and Analysis (The Prestige) The Prestige
Nolan built the film as a magic trick about magic tricks
The film is structured around the three acts of a stage illusion -- the pledge, the turn, and the prestige -- and Nolan applies that structure to the narrative itself. The audience is shown something ordinary (two rival magicians), it is made to do something extraordinary (nested timelines, unreliable diaries, a machine that duplicates matter), and then something is brought back (the truth about both men's sacrifices). Nolan was explicit about the connection between his craft and his subject:
"Magicians in the Victorian era were like the filmmakers or even the movie stars of their day. There are huge similarities between what magicians did back then and what filmmakers do now." — Christopher Nolan, Empire (2006)
"The film has been written according to the principles of how a magic trick works. Our narrative plays tricks with the audience." — Christopher Nolan, Empire (2006)
The non-linear structure is not decorative. Borden's encrypted diary, read by Angier, and Angier's diary, read by Borden in prison, create nested frames of narration that each conceal information the reader-within-the-story needs. The audience occupies the same position as the magician's spectator: aware that deception is occurring but unable to locate it until the prestige.
Obsession consumes both men identically despite their differences
Angier and Borden are class mirrors. Borden is working-class, inventive, technically brilliant, and unable to perform -- a craftsman without showmanship. Angier is wealthy, charismatic, born to the stage, but incapable of original invention -- a showman without craft. Their rivalry is not between good and evil but between two forms of the same obsession, each willing to sacrifice everything for the trick.
"Both of them are very good magicians. Borden is kind of a genius magician, ultimately better than my character. But my character is much more a natural showman." — Hugh Jackman, Empire (2006)
Nicolas Rapold of Film Comment described this duality as "refracted Romanticism": Angier's technological solution represents "art as sacrifice, a phoenix-like death of self," while Borden's stagecraft reveals "the divide between the artist and social being." (wikipedia)
The cost is measured in the people around them. Angier's obsession costs him Cutter's friendship and produces a warehouse of his own drowned duplicates. Borden's obsession with secrecy -- maintaining the twin deception at all costs -- drives Sarah to suicide when she senses her husband is sometimes a different person. Both men lose Olivia. Both sacrifice love for the trick.
The film asks what "total commitment" actually costs
The Chinese magician Chung Ling Soo appears early as a thematic thesis statement. He is an old man who can barely walk -- except that his frailty is an act. He maintains a hunched, shuffling persona his entire life so that no one will suspect the physical strength required for his fishbowl trick. Borden sees this and understands: "Total devotion to his art. A lot of self-sacrifice." The line describes Chung Ling Soo, but it is also a description of what Borden and his twin have done to themselves.
Den Shewman of Creative Screenwriting identified this as the film's central question: how far would you devote yourself to your art? Film critic Alex Manugian called it "the meaning of commitment." (wikipedia)
The Borden twins' commitment is total: they have shared one identity since before the story begins, each living half a life. One loves Sarah; the other loves Olivia. One loses two fingers in a bullet catch; the other amputates his own fingers to match. The trick demands that they never be themselves, and they comply until one of them hangs for it.
Angier's commitment is different in method but identical in cost. He steps into Tesla's machine every night knowing that a version of himself will drown beneath the stage. He does not know whether he will be the copy who appears in the balcony or the original who falls into the tank. He does it anyway.
The Tesla machine tests whether the audience wants truth or illusion
Tesla's duplication device introduces science fiction into a period thriller, and the film is aware of the tonal risk. Tesla himself warns Angier: "You're familiar with the phrase 'man's reach exceeds his grasp'? It's a lie. Man's grasp exceeds his nerve." The machine works. It does exactly what Angier needs. And it is monstrous.
The audience's relationship to the machine mirrors the film's argument about magic itself. Cutter's closing narration states it directly: "The audience knows the truth. The world is simple, miserable, solid all the way through. But if you can fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder. And then you got to see something very special. You really don't know? It was the look on their faces."
The audience wants to be fooled. The prestige -- the third act of the trick -- is not the revelation of how the trick works. It is the moment the vanished thing returns. The audience does not want to know about the drowned duplicates beneath the stage. They want the man to appear in the balcony.
Neither magician is the hero, and the film refuses to choose
Philip French of The Observer compared the rivalry to Mozart and Salieri in Amadeus. But The Prestige does not assign those roles cleanly. Borden has the greater talent, but he is also the man whose knot killed Julia -- and who may not care enough to remember which knot he tied. Angier has the greater grievance, but he is also the man who murders versions of himself and frames Borden for his death.
"I was attracted particularly to Borden because he's quite an awkward character who's uncomfortable in front of an audience." — Christian Bale, Empire (2006)
Matt Brunson noted that the film "presents a complex duality where neither magician is depicted as good or evil." The audience is positioned as judge, but the evidence is structured to prevent a verdict. Every revelation that makes one magician sympathetic simultaneously makes him monstrous. (wikipedia)
The women pay for the men's obsession and the film knows it
Sarah Borden and Julia McCullough die because of the feud. Olivia Wenscombe is traded between the magicians like a prop and vanishes from the story when neither needs her. The film does not pretend this is incidental -- Sarah's suicide is presented as a direct consequence of the twin arrangement, and Julia's death is the inciting event. But the women remain functions of the male rivalry rather than agents in their own right, a limitation critics have noted.
Christopher Priest saw the adaptation as an improvement in some respects
Priest, whose 1995 novel the film adapts, saw it three times and approved of the Nolans' major structural changes -- removing the novel's spiritualism subplot and replacing the modern-day frame story with Borden's trial:
"I was thinking, 'God, I like that,' and 'Oh, I wish I'd thought of that.'" — Christopher Priest, Wikipedia (2007)
He praised the film's seriousness, the multi-level narrative, the minimal CGI, and the period authenticity. His primary criticism was that Nolan concealed the twin revelation as a "twist" ending rather than allowing the audience to deduce it, as the novel does. He also criticized David Bowie's performance and the use of Thom Yorke's "Analyse" over the closing credits. (christopher-priest.co.uk)