The first time I reached the end of the film “The Prestige,” I sat in horror and obsession. Everything that I thought about the world I had just witnessed through Christopher Nolan’s film was a lie. I felt betrayed, which led to a doubling down on every detail of the movie I had just watched. I had to see it again, all over.
Such is the case with most of Christopher Nolan’s movies, I suppose. Obsession over every detail at play to understand what really happened.
His films are much like getting to know someone. What you first observed about someone comes to be interpreted by new character development, revealing more of who that person is. And yet, in a way, it was all in front of you when you first met them.
Such are the magician’s top hats in the first two seconds of “The Prestige.” The top hats are the key to a magic trick in the film. But the top hats are quickly forgotten as our narrator, a magician, dives deep into the world of explaining magic tricks. We fail to realize the trick until the end.
Or the second, third, or even fourth rewatch.
Reader, beware, and continue reading at your own risk. To explain my meaning, I must expose a few magic tricks for what they really are, which will steal the joy of watching the movie for yourself.
If you want to be fooled by magic, don’t continue.
We are told that there are three steps to each magic trick. First is the pledge, which is an ordinary thing shown to the audience. Second is the turn, where the audience watches as the ordinary thing is made to do something extraordinary. Third is the prestige, as Cutter, the magician, explains.
“Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t want to know.”
We watch as Cutter makes a bird disappear, then reappear, and we’re fooled. Most of us. Unless you’re really looking.
“You want to be fooled,” the narrator tells us.
The little girl claps, ignorant of what has just happened.
“That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call ‘The Prestige.’”
Later, we’re shown that it wasn’t the same bird. There were two.
On paper, that seems obvious, I suppose.
Isn’t that what magic tricks are, though? We go to magic shows because we want to be fooled. We don’t want to work it out; we want to be mystified and filled with wonder because we’re spiritual beings looking for the supernatural. We love being reminded that the world is not merely as mundane and simple as it appears.
But having spiritual desires doesn’t mean we’re seeking truth. Some spiritual pursuits are a desire for the itching of our ears to hear what will please us, as Paul warns the young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:3.
“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but, having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.”
It’s in our nature to look for the easy and pretty explanation.
And Cutter’s point in explaining magic this way seems to make a similar statement about the human condition. We want to be fooled by the elusive. We don’t really like walking in the light. And so magic tricks fascinate us. And so, we remain dumbfounded rather than following the trick to its natural end.
When Borden, one of the two main magicians in the film, reveals the secret to his bullet catch trick, his wife laughs at its simplicity. It’s not as amazing when the secret is out.
But Borden quickly reminds her that it’s still serious business. It can be a costly trick if someone slips a real bullet in the gun. Which ends up being truer than his wife knows, or even us as viewers. For Bordon’s greatest magic trick is also the costliest.
Lies and illusions are costly to keep up. Consuming. Deadly, even.
The lies in the Garden of Eden led to death for all men, both physical and spiritual. And the lies that we believe today that we cling to with their elusiveness and thrill, leave us empty and dead. Masks won’t keep us from dying forever.
But we don’t have to remain in the dark. In fact, we’re invited into the light. It’s just hard to walk there because it means courage in the face of reality and death to the thrill.
The top hats at the beginning of the film are shown at the end of the movie with greater significance for the illusion they had been keeping up. And Cutter is found to be true, through and through. We weren’t really looking the first time when we saw all those hats skewed on the ground, but they were clones of each other.
We want to know the secret to Borden’s magic and his rival Angier’s “Transported Man,” but we won’t find it unless we’re willing to look at the dark, costly reality that maintains the illusion. We must choose not to be fooled, looking the other way to ignore truth. We must choose to pay attention to details, as small as red bouncy balls.
Angier, the top-hatted magician, remarks at the end of the movie, “The audience knows the truth. The world is simple. Solid all the way through.”
And so, it is. In the realm of magic tricks, anyway.
Except that there are realities of magic in our world. It’s called life, and scientists can’t quite figure it out. Where did life come from? Only the supernatural can answer such an existential question. And furthermore, we can actually know the supernatural because God, who is Spirit, has revealed truth to us in His Word.
But real magic is certainly not always beautiful, for there’s also a type of dark magic in the hold that lies and deceptions have over us. There is a certain slavery to deception deeper than the words we’re saying, a dark magic that clings to our hearts.
“The Prestige” uses the art of simple magic tricks to reveal the power of this deeper magic – of deception’s hold on a person’s entire life. Spoiler alert, there are a lot of dead men with their hats off and magic red balls absent at the end of the movie. And it may leave you horrified.
But it’s also easy to turn a blind eye to this death, because you must be looking for it to find the truth of the magic trick. Same with our world, too. Walking in the light takes effort. And it takes courage to look at some dark realities in the face.
But it’s worth the effort, because it’s true. And the dark realities will not be met with justice all by themselves.
So, as Borden the magician asks in his opening lines, “Are you watching closely?”
Are you looking closely at the world around you?
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