Book Report: The Prestige

A couple of months ago, Your Humble Blogger saw the movie The Prestige. I wasn’t knocked out by it, but there were a lot of interesting things, and particularly, there were some aspects, themes and motifs, really, that wound up sticking in my mind. I suspected that those were handled better in the novel, and that the screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, although good in places, had thinned it out, the way that screenplays tend to do.

Your Humble Blogger was wrong. I wasn’t knocked out by the book of The Prestige, either, but I think the adaptation of the book into the movie is one of the most interesting ones I’ve come across in a long time.

And because of the kind of things they are, every scrap of this entry from here on in will spoil either. Seriously, if you have seen the movie but not read the book, or read the book but not seen the movie, or haven’t done either one, and you have any interest in ever doing either, do not read the rest of this note, because they are both the sort of things that are spoiled by spoilers, and here be spoilers.

OK, is there anybody left? No? Maybe I should just leave the rest blank, but hey, I’m writing for my own amusement anyway, right? Fine.

These are things the book and movie have in common: The rivalry between two magicians in Edwardian England. Those magicians go by stage names The Great Danton and (in the book) Professeur de la Magie. The Great Danton is actually named Rupert Angier, and he is also Lord Coldwell; the Professeur goes by Alfred Borden off stage (and onstage in the movie, if I remember correctly), and he is actually the twins Albert and Frederick Borden, taking turns both onstage and off. The rivalry between them is both personal and professional, and continues for many years, while the magicians become prominent and wealthy.

Alfred Borden keeps the fact of his twin-ness secret so that he can perform a trick where he disappears from one part of the stage and reappears somewhere else instantly. For such a trick a double is necessary, but because the twins have spent their whole lives pretending to be each other, the switch is undetectable. The Great Danton finds a double to perform the switch, and performs it to great acclaim, although the double causes trouble for him, which allows Mr. Borden (or the Mssrs. Borden, hereafter the Bordens) to gain the upper hand. The Great Danton sends his stage assistant, who is also his mistress, to work for the Mssrs Borden and discover their secret; she becomes the Bordens’ mistress, and instead of passing along true information, sends Mr. Angier on a wild-goose-chase to Nikola Tesla. Mr. Tesla does create a magical device, which instead of simply transporting an object (or person) from one place to another, duplicates the object (or person). Mr. Angier returns with the device, and in a short time eclipses the Bordens with a version of instantaneous transportation, which requires the secret duplication of his body, and the secreting away of an increasing number of his corpses. In an attempt to find out the secret of this trick, one of the Bordens disrupts the trick, which appears to lead to the death of Mr. Angier, which appearance is helped by what is undeniably Mr. Angier’s corpse. This leads, in turn, to the death of one of the Bordens. Got all that?

Furthermore: The titular Prestige refers to a stage in a magic trick. There’s the set-up, the trick itself, and the prestige, which is the final flourish, without which the trick has no theatrical power. I’ll take an example from the movie: You talk about making a dove disappear and show people the dove, your hands, perhaps a cage or your rolled-up sleeves, various other things that make you think the dove cannot merely be hidden. That’s the set-up. Then—poof!—the dove disappears. That’s the trick. But that’s not satisfying, so you need the prestige: you make the dove reappear. Of course, it may not be the same dove. In fact, usually the first dove has died, as that’s the easiest way to get rid of it quickly without risking it making a noise or a movement or a mess later in the show. But the audience doesn’t know there’s been a switch, and where they would be unhappy at being missing one dove, now they are happy that there is a dove where there was a dove before. To do this trick, you need two identical doves. The magician doesn’t care which is the prestige, but the doves sure do. Similarly, the trick that is the focus of both stories involves a switch. Although the switched-out magician doesn’t die, the switched-in double is the one who gets to take the bows. How do you pick which one is the prestige? For Mr. Angier, when he hires a double, there is no choice. He has to be the one to do the set-up, so the double has to be the prestige. For the Bordens, they can alternate. But… when the machine is brought into the picture, Mr. Angier is duplicated. He is both the double and the prestige. But now we’re back to the dove problem.

The motif is there in both. Which dove does the work? Which dove gets the applause? Which dove gets a broken neck?

Another motif in both: the story of the Chinese magician who makes a bowl full of goldfish (and water) appear as the climax to his act. The discovery that despite the magician’s doddery appearance, he must be strong and agile, and the further knowledge that he keeps up the doddery appearance onstage and off, both in public and in private. The willingness, then, to subsume one’s own life to appearances, to sacrifice some of the things you could be, so that you can keep your secret. And for what? For one trick, one surprise, one moment of applause.

My lord, this is already long, and I haven’t really started yet. Feh.

These are things that are in the book, but not in the movie: the great-grandchildren of the Bordens (or one of them anyway) and Lord Coldwell, at the end of the twentieth century, drawn to each other by coincidence and subterfuge. Lord Coldwell using the duplicator to duplicate gold in large quantity. Lord Coldwell’s avarice. Mr. Angier’s initial forays into magic via mentalist tricks in a pub, and then séances. The Bordens’ first encounter with Mr. Angier at a séance, and his subsequent exposure of Mr. Angier as a spiritist fraud. The brawl following, during which Mr. Angier’s pregnant wife is injured and miscarries. The Bordens’ habit of referring to each other in the first person singular, and the accompanying sense of his/their mental illness. Mr. Angier’s abandonment of his wife, and their subsequent reconciliation. The use of the Machine leading to the death of the double. The great-grandson of the Bordens being put through the Machine at the age of three, and his subsequent connection with the “twin” he never had.

The (perhaps) inadvertent disruption of the routine by the Bordens in the middle of The Great Danton’s transportation, and the subsequent division of Mr. Angier into a physical body with a devastated immune system and a ghost-like figure able to pass through walls. The determination to rejoin the two halves after the death of the physical body by transporting the ghost-like figure into his own corpse. The scene of Bordens’ great-grandson, now grown, discovering the corpse of his three-year-old duplicate amongst the stacks of identical corpses of Rupert Angier. The voice of Rupert Angier, still alive a hundred years after his death. The hijjus creepiness of that culminating scene in the crypt.

These are things that are in the movie that are not in the book: The young magicians working together before they become rivals. The death of Mr. Angier’s wife, onstage at the end of a magic trick, after the Bordens’ are entrusted with tying her hands. Mr. Angier shooting the Bordens onstage, and the subsequent loss of a finger, and the subsequently necessary loss of the other one’s finger to match. The looming figure of the ingeneurs: Mr. Cutter as a conscience for Mr. Angier, and the alternating Bordens as their own ingeneur and disguise. The duplicator leaving two living duplicates, necessitating the murder of one Mr. Angier by the other. The Bordens’ discovery, under the stage, of the trap that murders one duplicate. The Bordens’ trial for the murder of Mr. Angier. The execution of one of the Bordens. Mr. Angier’s murder at the hands of the remaining Borden. The Bordens’ daughter being reunited with her father, living after his death.

Do you see what they did? First of all, of course, it being a movie of a novel, they cut out a big chunk of it and compressed the rest. That’s not a big deal. Then they added a lot of violence (four deaths and a maiming—hey, that’s catchy) and thus heightened the stakes. Then they took that image of the dove (I didn’t mention this, but the movie shows you the dead dove where the book does not) and replay it again and again. In fact, the first bit of the movie is Mr. Angier’s death; we go back from there to see what led up to it. His disappearance, that is, his death, is clearly a trick of some kind, and we will be satisfied only by the prestige, when he is made visible again. Similarly, Mr. Borden’s daughter loses her father when he is hanged, but in the prestige, he reappears. Or rather, his twin does, just like the doves. The one who goes away is never the one who comes back. When the Great Danton goes through the trap door, the one that comes up the other trap door is not the same. When the Great Danton goes to America, the one that returns is not the same. The magician who does the trick is not the same as the one who takes the bow.

That’s in the book, of course. But the movie plays with that idea, reinforces it, shows it from different angles. Spotlights it.

Now, I’ll repeat that I wasn’t knocked out by the movie, or by the book, either. But the adaptation of the book into the movie, now that knocks me out.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.