The prestige when is it set

Having Jackman face off against Bale must be giving the fanboys a field-day. Bale chuckles. Now you've said it, it's really obvious! But it should tell you a lot that you saying that is the first time I've even really considered it! Which, er, seeing as we share the same agent, he'll be a bit nervous to hear!

Nolan, meanwhile, is keen to look beyond the comic-book iconography. It's a very good cast of cultural icons. But Christian obviously started out as a child actor and as he's matured he's done lots of different things, so I certainly didn't think of him as just Batman, even though as Batman he was a great choice.

And Hugh, the same thing — there's a great depth to this guy as an actor. Wolverine is just one aspect of his work. He's just completely different here. He's a very, very talented actor. I think much more than his other films have shown. Both stars were required to hone certain prestidigation skills in order to make their characters sufficiently believable, so Nolan brought in professional magicians Ricky Jay "the king of sleight-of-hand in the world," according to Jackman and Michael Weber, who specialise in teaching magic skills to the movie industry.

Their outfit, rather tellingly, is called Need To Know. It was very frustrating. So we said, 'Hey Ricky, can you just teach us a trick, mate? Like just a card trick, something simple? And he goes, 'No! Both, however, found their own way — to some degree — around Jay and Weber's obsessive secrecy there it is again.

But it's just a few small moments in the film — I don't even know if anyone will even notice! And this young guy came and helped me out, and he was actually an aspiring actor and magic was just a part-time thing, so he was perfect.

He told me whatever I wanted to know! So now I do have a few tricks — I can make a little ball disappear in my hand! This is the part with the twists and the turns. Where lives hang in the balance. Jackman and Bale may have been keen to show off their tricks, but Nolan, as we said, is keeping his sleeves firmly buttoned up. Having proved himself a master rug-puller with all his movies so far — most significantly Memento — we can fully expect The Prestige to be just as brilliantly confounding.

Even Christopher Priest was intrigued as to how the director and his brother would pull off his work on the big screen. He had a gift for persuading women to materialize in his bed. These days, when most of us are less superstitious, it is the technical craft of a David Copperfield that impresses us.

We see the trick done, but do not for a moment believe it is happening. Houdini, the great transitional figure between "magical" acts and ingenious tricks, was at pains to explain that everything he did was a trick; he offered rewards, never collected, for any "supernatural" act he could not explain.

The Amazing Randi carries on in the same tradition, bending spoons as easily as Uri Geller. And yet in Houdini's time, there were those who insisted he was doing real magic; how else could his effects be achieved?

The thing was, Houdini really did free himself from those fetters and chains and sealed trunks dropped into the river, and survived the Chinese Water Torture an effect used prominently in "The Prestige" night after night. But there were those who argued his tricks were physically impossible, and thus must be supernatural.

Houdini would have been active at the time of "The Prestige," but his insights would have been fatal to the movie's plot, which is the problem with the plot. They assist in tying up a helpless damsel, in reality, Robert's wife, Julia Piper Perabo , and lowering her into the Chinese Water Torture box. Concealed by curtains, she somehow escapes, as Houdini always did, but one night, Alfred ties her knots too tightly, she cannot escape, and by the time a manager Michael Caine rushes onstage with an ax, it is too late to save her from drowning.

This sets off a lifelong hatred between Robert and Alfred, during which the frigid and ominous Alfred rises to the top of the profession. The hapless Alfred now in love with his new assistant Olivia, played by Scarlett Johansson falls to the bottom, is reduced to performing in flea pits, and yet presents an illusion named the Transported Man in which he walks into a door on one side of the stage and instantly emerges from a door at the other. How is that physically possible? It's the sort of thing that made his fans claim Houdini was supernormal.

He believes that Tesla built a transportation machine for Borden - a belief that quickly turns out to be false - but Tesla still manages to build a transportation machine for Angier. This machine duplicates any object or living being placed inside and drops the copy a short distance away, meaning each time the trick is performed, Angier is cloned. This means the original Angier falls through a trap door into a water tank and drowns each time the trick is performed, with the new duplicate appearing somewhere in the theater to delight Angier's audiences.

The trick, or more accurately Faustian-style bargain, is what finally earns Angier's the audience's adoration, which is what his character has long been searching for. In short, Alfred and Fallon Borden don't technically exist, instead acting as two separate identities taken on by a set of twin brothers.

As one brother says in the film, they live two halves of a full life. They're so dedicated to this craft that they each sacrifice a potentially well-rounded life in order to succeed in their chosen career.

To keep up with the ruse successfully pulling off The Transported Man, each twin takes turns alternately playing Borden and his stage engineer and right-hand man Fallon. Each brother lives different lives when portraying Alfred. One is madly in love with Sarah, the woman with whom they marry and have a child with. The other is in love with their assistant Olivia Scarlett Johansson and treats Sarah cruelly.

Borden's wildly contradictory behavior actually clues in Sarah to the fact that he is two people. When one twin is wrongfully tried and hanged for the assumed death of Angier, his rival believes he's finally beaten Borden once and for all. This is not the case when the surviving twin finds and fatally shoots Angier, as both he and the audience realize that Borden successfully pulled off The Transported Man for years by being one half of a set of twin brothers.

In essence, Angier was so caught up with the big picture that he failed to look for one of the most obvious answers, mirroring the audience's journey through Christopher Nolan's film. The Prestige 's opening monologue describes the three acts of a magic trick, while also cleverly foreshadowing the structure of the film. The first act of a trick, the pledge, shows you something ordinary.

The second act, the turn, makes it do something extraordinary, such as disappearing. The third act is called the prestige: it brings back the object - or in this case, person - that disappears. Play trailer Drama Mystery Sci-Fi. Director Christopher Nolan. Top credits Director Christopher Nolan.

See more at IMDbPro. Top rated movie Trailer Official Trailer. The Prestige: 10th Anniversary. Clip A Guide to the Films of Christopher Nolan. The Prestige. Photos Top cast Edit. Michael Caine Cutter as Cutter. Rebecca Hall Sarah as Sarah. Samantha Mahurin Jess as Jess. David Bowie Tesla as Tesla. Andy Serkis Alley as Alley. Daniel Davis Judge as Judge. Jim Piddock Prosecutor as Prosecutor. Christopher Neame Defender as Defender. Mark Ryan Captain as Captain. Roger Rees Owens as Owens.

Ricky Jay Milton as Milton. Christopher Nolan. More like this.