As cautionary tales about the misuse of modern technology go, 2006’s The Prestige is a doozy. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale are stage magicians in 1890s London engaged in such a fierce game of one-upmanship that the former turns to inventor Nikola Tesla (David Bowie!) for a machine to help him achieve the greatest trick imaginable. We know from the get-go that it will end up destroying both men.
This is writer-director Christopher Nolan at perhaps his most unabashedly pulpy, lurid, and juicy: The Prestige is electrifying, sure, but with, you know, actual voltage. A popcorn flick as smart as it is shifty, like something Jules Verne would have written if he were Neil Gaiman, this is deliciously retro pre-atomic science fiction, a mesmerizing journey into a lost world in which scientific possibilities, and the toxic masculinity driving them, seemed unbounded.
And now that I think on it, this film seems a perfect thematic companion to Nolan’s latest work, Oppenheimer.
US: stream on Paramount+ with Showtime (via Prime and Apple TV); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on Prime (expiring in the next 30 days, no exact date available); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See The Prestige at Letterboxd for more viewing options.
