The Prestige (2006) Script Review | #82 WGA 101 Greatest Scripts of the 21st Century
An admirable mashup of period piece with psychological thriller that soars on a clever structure and cleverer misdirection, yet somehow still feels a little underwhelming.
Logline: In 1890s England, two magicians fueled by an intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy of the stage, prepared to go to any lengths to win, even at the cost of everything.
Written by: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan
Based on: The Prestige by Christopher Priest
Pages: 128
Number of scenes: 219
Of all the scripts that Christopher Nolan has worked on, The Prestige might be the one of the few I think about the least. I don’t mean it’s a bad screenplay; I think it’s admirable in its approach to structure and the way it layers the story with deception and twists that mimics the subject of the script. I think I just wanted more by the end.
The Prestige, loosely adapted from the novel of the same name by Christopher Priest, is a period piece set in 1890s London, following two stage magicians who go from friends to bitter rivals and leave a trail of destroyed lives in their wake. Robert Angier, genteel American; Alfred Borden, working class Englishman. Working with ingenuer John Cutter, a man who helps design a magician’s illusions, Angier and Borden begin as audience plants for another magician’s act; the magician’s assistant, Julia, happens to be Angier’s wife. The act involves tying up Julia and dropping her into a water tank from which she escapes. One night, the trick goes horribly wrong. Julia drowns; Angier blames Borden who tied the knot; and Borden cannot remember whether he tied the usual knot or a different one.
From here on, the rivalry begins. First, they sabotage each other’s acts. Then they try to outdo each other’s acts. Their obsession takes a toll on the relationship between Borden and his wife, Sarah, who commits suicide; and it drives Angier to push his new assistant, Olivia Winscombe, into Borden’s arms, only to lose her as both a lover and a partner. It culminates in the public death of Angier, and the arrest of Borden who is sentenced to death for the murder.
On the surface, this is fairly standard stuff. Rivalry, obsession, the price paid for it; writers since the time of William Shakespeare have been talking about it. What Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (the writers) do is wrap it up in a non-linear structure and frame sections as a story-within-a-story via reading journals, creating the effect of a puzzle box, or a Russian doll. In an interview, Christopher Nolan talked about deliberately choosing to structure the three-act screenplay with the story’s method of crafting illusions called, ‘the pledge,’ ‘the turn,’ and ‘The Prestige,’ from which the screenplay takes its title. Nolan sees the parallel between stage magicians and filmmakers: Both resort to trickery to create spectacle that captures the audience’s imagination.
But good execution is only half the story, and perhaps that’s why I’m ambivalent when it comes to The Prestige. The ending feels like it was pulled out of a soap opera; or maybe it came too late. The second half of the screenplay consists of Angier obsessing over how Borden pulls off ‘The Transporting Man’ act. Cutter suggests that Borden is using a double; Angier dismisses it as too easy. He’s duped into believing that Borden used a machine built by Nikola Tesla, so he asks the reclusive inventor to build one for him. A cloning machine. Angier, being a better showman than Borden, soon eclipses Borden’s act, but in reality, he’s setting a plan in motion to frame his rival for his murder and to steal his daughter under his real name and title: Lord Caldlow.
Poor Angier. Despite his careful planning, he is killed by Borden, who reveals that Cutter was right all along: Borden had a twin named Fallon. Olivia fell in love with Fallon thinking it was Borden. Borden, who always loved Sarah, couldn’t reveal the truth. Nolan gets criticized routinely for his weakness in writing female characters, existing mostly as ciphers or to support the male character’s arc, and it shows glaringly in The Prestige more than any of his other stories.
Still, a Nolan screenplay always offers plenty to learn, and this is no different:
1. How to write rivalry
Have your rivals engaged in the same trade or chasing the same goal— but from different ends. Present them as opposite sides of the same coin: Borden is a great magician but terrible showman; Angier excels as a showman, but is mostly a decent magician.
2. Foreground the fictional rivalry with a real rivalry in the background to create parallels
The magicians’ rivalry parallels the real rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla over electricity at the time, which enhances the material. There are plenty of historical rivalries you can draw from to situate your fictional opponents.
3. Plot your structure carefully
Non-linear scripts require extra thought in arranging the pieces in such a way that it holds up under scrutiny. Go over the structure and the plot over and over until it is as air-tight as it possibly can be.
(Bonus: Spellcheck and proofread your script before sending it out— the draft available online is littered with spelling mistakes!)
The Prestige marked the first screenplay collaboration between the Nolan brothers (no, Memento doesn’t count), and they would work together on three more screenplays together (The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and Interstellar) that shines a fascinating light on Christopher Nolan’s writing style. I believe that Jonathan is more responsible for bringing more warmth and life into his characters that makes them more full-bodied, whereas Christopher sees his characters more in the abstract and focuses more on structure. It took the brothers five years to write the screenplay, taking considerable liberties with the source material while keeping its integrity intact. The result: The description is sparse, the personalities well-defined, and the execution solid.
Interestingly, The Prestige feels like a prelude to the turning point in Christopher Nolan’s career, the last “small” movie that he’d make. If it took five years to write and the film to release in 2006, that would mean they started working on the script somewhere in 2001. Just shortly after Memento (#9 on the WGA List of 101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century) and two years before The Dark Knight (#26 on the WGA List). The screenplay is very much in mid-budget territory— meaning that it doesn’t contain the huge set pieces that Nolan would become famous for. Everything that Christopher Nolan has written post-2008 feels like it operates on a grand scale (both literally and figuratively). I can’t help but wonder what The Prestige might have been like had he made it after The Dark Knight. We can only speculate.