The Prestige: A Mystical Story of Betrayal, Revenge and Morality

The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this film was, albeit it looked quite amazing, I couldn’t quite get over the fact of Christian Bale starring. I’m not a big fan of him, quite disappointed with his roles in previous films like American Psycho and Reign of Fire, although I was, admittedly, pleasantly surprised with the interpretation of Bruce Wayne and Batman in the film Batman Begins. 

Aside from Christian Bale’s performance, The Prestige was also blessed with the talented directing skills of Christopher Nolan, who won my heart with his twisted and completely unforgettable 2000 film, Memento and worked with Christian Bale and Michael Caine both when he directed Batman Begins. Along with the writing credits of Christopher was his brother, Jonathan Nolan, who wrote the short story "Memento Mori", which Christopher’s screenplay for the film was based on.

In this movie, Christian Bale simply blew everything away with his performance of the character Alfred Borden, who was rivaled by the other lead star, Hugh Jackman, as the rather vengeful and straight-minded Rupert Angier. The pair worked together beautifully in a way that I couldn’t have even imagined and managed to portray the exchange of physical and metaphorical blows belonging in a long-running rivalry that leaves you wondering even until the credits roll just who is supposed to be the protagonist and the antagonist, or whether both of them are really supposed to cover the entire spectrum of possibilities.

Although in the end, you realize that just like in life there is not always a black and white, but rather different shades of gray which makes it amusingly and refreshingly difficult trying to decide just who you want to end up on top in the end.