Prestige: Where Theatrical Conventions Meet Research Proposal

The only connection between the two worlds of Tesla and Robert, electricity and old-fashioned staged magic, is the sense of hyper-reality: of magic and stagecraft in one realm, and electricity and the 'real world' of science that makes the depiction of magic on film possible. Tesla's mad scientist hair, the bags beneath his eyes, make him look more mentally unbalanced than a rationalist -- a mad inventor of film, not a trusted authority to the eye. The viewer's apprehensiveness is dependent upon this awareness of cinematic conventions, just like the audience of a magical illusion is dependant upon their awareness that it is, in fact, an illusion.

Further unsettling the viewer's sense of Tesla's trustworthiness are the buzzing electric generators that hum like tiny bees in the background, sparking with fire. Tesla seems purely a creation of the cinema, of electricity itself. Electricity unlike staged magic is real but close-ups of Tesla's face make him seem haunted and when the camera pulls back to reveal him in the context of his equipment, he looks like he is a Frankenstein-like product of his machinery, and not a man at all.

All of this contributes to Robert's and the viewer's conviction that Alfred has entered into a devil's bargain with Tesla. Tesla is a scientist and a madman who has made the illusion possible. Yet the awareness that Robert himself is an unreliable narrator, given what has been gleaned in flashbacks, and the fact that the real-life Tesla's discoveries have made the cinematic experience of the Prestige itself possible mean that even after witnessing the Tesla sequence on film, there can be no certain conclusions about how the easy cinematic trick of transportation can be rendered in reality, or if Alfred's art is a moral art.

Works Cited

The Prestige. Directed by Christopher Nolan. 2007.