Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch The Prestige
2006 · Christopher Nolan · The Prestige on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch the edges of the widescreen frame, not the center. (camera)
Pfister's 2.39:1 compositions hold people and objects out at the sides while your eye stays on the speaker. The wide format leaves much of the frame to scan.
Payoff: The frame becomes something you read rather than simply see. In the reading: the readable image. This is the reading's lectosign: an image that stops being obvious and asks to be read.
Watch for the two notebooks and who is reading which. (structure)
Angier reads Borden's diary, Borden reads Angier's, and the present keeps folding into both accounts.
Payoff: Two accounts run side by side, and no version is given to you as the settled record. In the reading: falsifying-narration. The reading calls this falsifying-narration: incompatible accounts presented as equally real, with no master version.
Notice how still Bale stands compared to Jackman's constant charm. (performance)
Jackman plays Angier outward, all showman warmth. Bale plays Borden closed and laconic, giving almost nothing.
Payoff: Charm and silence are two ways of holding an audience at a distance.
Look at the slate, soot and gaslight grays of London. (light)
Pfister keeps the Victorian scenes cool and desaturated, closer to period illustration than to warm costume drama.
Payoff: The color keeps the stage world sober and a little cold.
Listen for Julyan's low drones and sparse piano under scenes. (sound)
The score works in mechanical rhythms and held tones rather than telling you what to feel. In the Tesla scenes electrical hum and static discharge take over as both atmosphere and punctuation.
Payoff: Music that refuses to guide your emotions leaves you alone with the evidence, which is exactly the film's test.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the edges of the frame, not the trick.