you
as a filmmaker Christopher no always
wants to walk a fine line if there's one
fundamental theme that suffuses his
entire filmography it's that cinema as a
shared narrative can be a hugely
powerful cultural force I'm far from the
first to notice for mention that many of
his films reference film itself that for
example the inception team bears a
strong resemblance to a film crew but
interestingly though a lot of his work
could be called meta cinematic Nolan is
extremely careful about avoiding meta
cinematic images in his work for example
in the established Batman continuity
Bruce Wayne and his parents are out to
see The Mask of Zorro film before the
fateful double murder that incites the
Dark Knight's whole saga in Batman
Begins however Nolan's retelling of that
origin the Wayne's are out to the Opera
mefist awfully instead that change is a
purposeful one as Nolan has said in an
interview we didn't have young Bruce
Wayne going to see Zorro because a
character in a movie watching a movie is
very different than a character in a
comic book watching a movie it creates a
deconstructionist thing that we were
trying to avoid the reason Nolan tries
to avoid this is because over and above
everything his cinema has always been
about immersion bringing you into a
story so fully that the edges disappear
and you're carried along by the
narrative momentum this is the line that
Nolan wants to walk he wants to be
immersive and meta cinematic at the same
time in other words he wants to hide in
plain sight
hiding in plain sight is essentially the
subject matter of Nolan's fifth film and
my favorite the
teach you could almost call this film
meta meta cinematic in that it functions
as a kind of rulebook for how to achieve
this immersive effect without seeming
deconstructionist to use Nolan's words
just take the first sequence the first
thing you see is the film title over a
mysterious shot of several mislaid top
hats in the woods the text here is of
course the title card but if you know
the film you know that this text also
has a literal function because these
hats are the prestige of the prestige
itself the second clue is in their
number doubles copies multiplicity is
the key to understanding the tricks of
this film and this is echoed in the
second shot as well with birdcages full
of identical Canaries from here Michael
Caine's character goes on to describe
how a magic trick works every magic
trick consists of three pawns
alright the pledge the turn and finally
the prestige the sequence carefully sets
up the film's own pledges that is Borden
and Angie are played by Christian Bale
and Hugh Jackman respectively while
illustrating its method through Michael
Caine's voiceover and his trick for the
little girl but the film is playing its
own tricks here through editing where is
this voiceover coming from usually in
film a voiceover means someone
commenting on the events being shown
from sometime in the future and when the
scene ends it cuts to the courtroom
scene of Borden's murder trial picking
up the last phrase as if Michael Caine's
whole explanation was testimony it's not
until the very end of the film that we
learned that the bird trick with the
girl is chronologically the last moment
in the film Nolan reverses the temporal
relationship between the voiceover and
the scene under it and this kind of
displacement is the key mechanism for
the whole movie The Prestige is all
about a trick that moves its object
through time and space instantaneously
well this is exactly what all film
editing does most of editing cuts
between short distances and continuous
times indeed with a simple cut that's
what most people expect
that same simple cut can traverse great
distances also and great lengths of time
in either direction Nolan has described
learning the power of this by watching
Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line in
which Malick cuts to memories simply
without blurs or fades or wavy lines and
the powerful effect this can have on a
viewer The Prestige exploits this power
to the extreme cutting between multiple
different nested memories Nolan sets up
this device with Borden and Angiers
respective journals but once these
devices are established and cuts between
the narratives at will and without
warning in this way the prestige
demonstrates a unique capacity of film
without compromising the audience's
suspended disbelief the complex
narrative structure is totally
subservient to the story Nolan wants to
tell it's necessary to keep its twists
secret until the film wants to reveal
them this is Christopher Nolan's great
gift as a filmmaker he's so in tune with
the dynamics of film narrative but he
can construct a plot with so much
forward momentum that even when he gives
you all the clues you remain at his
mercy until the very final shot
now if this was the only lesson of the
prestige I'd be satisfied and calling it
a great film but there's one scene here
easily missed that adds a final
important point I think
see he's alright he's fine
you can watch the prestige and enjoy the
story for what it is
that's what Nolan wants for us he wants
us to be amazed and as the film itself
says most of us want to be fooled but
all films even one as tightly wound as
this invite a probing eye as the boy
sees into the bird trick we can see into
cinema and we're accustomed to taking
most editing for granted but the way
stories are told the tools of any
storytelling medium in large part
determine the way we construct our own
memories shared or personal this is all
to say that studying film doesn't kill
it's magic
it feeds that magic back into the real
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