Movie Review: The Prestige

Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called "the pledge." The magician shows you something ordinary. A deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But, of course, it probably isn't.

The second act is called "the turn".The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it, because, of course, you're not really looking.You don't really want to know. You want to be... fooled.

But you wouldn't clap yet,because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act.The hardest part. The part we call......"the prestige."

I am doing my first movie review and what better a movie to do it. Three months back I saw a movie named Memento, which some of you may not have heard of as it was not released in India. It is a movie for which I do not find any adjectives good enough, I cannot give it a better compliment. The movie is in reverse chronology, which means that the movie starts with its end and keeps movie in reverse order towards its start. You can read a 6-page analysis of the movie Memento here.

Now you would be wondering why am I talking about Memento when I am writing a review about The Prestige. The reason being, Memento introduced me to a hollywood director Christopher Nolan. Curious, I checked out his profile on IMDb, he is a young 36 years and 7 films old director who was pushed into limelight after Memento released in the year 2000. I decided to watch his latest work which is The Prestige but had to be content with watching his Batman Begins (which again was a great movie but nowhere close to Memento or The Prestige) and waited for The Prestige to release in India. It did 3 weeks back but I for some reason couldn't watch it in theaters so I had to wait again, now for its DVDrip to be released, it released a week back. And now here I am writing a review on it.

I do not want to give away any spoilers in my review so that you enjoy the movie to the maximum. First the plot outline which I have copied from IMDb:

Robert and Alfred are rival magicians. When Alfred performs the ultimate magic trick, Robert tries desperately to find out the secret to the trick.

The best part of the movie lies in its detailing, they show you every minute detail. Even with the movie being so complicated I could not notice a single flaw in the whole movie. And again Cristopher Nolan doesn't believe in following proper chronology, this time he has experimented with some kind of recursive chronology, its like one narration inside another one(you will understand what I am saying once you have seen the movie). I highly recommend the movie, go and watch it!

PS:Do not forget to look into the FAQ for the movie as you will sure have some doubts after watching the movie.(I strongly suggest checking it out only after watching the movie as it contains some spoilers)