2.49 - 100 - THE PRESTIGE (2006) & Misdirection

To mark our 100th episode, we go back to the film that in part gave the podcast its name: yes, it’s The Prestige on The Prestige! We talk about how this film works as an allegory for a magical illusion, some theories about how the movie might represent parts of Christopher Nolan’s psyche, and how this technique really works in this film whereas in others it probably/definitely (depending on whether you ask Sam or Rob) doesn’t.

This Week’s Media
DHEEPAN (2015): Jacques Audiard, Anthonythasan Jesuthasan, Thomas Bidegain
BABY DRIVER (2017): Edgar Wright, Ansel Elgort, Kevin Spacey

Recommendations
MEMENTO (2000): Christopher Nolan, Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss
LABYRINTH (1986): Jim Henson, David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly
CARRIERS (2009): Àlex Pastor, David Pastor, Lou Taylor Pucci
THE USUAL SUSPECTS (1995): Bryan Singer, Kevin Spacey, Gabriel Byrne

Footnotes
A lot of what we talk about this week has the idea of meta-cinema behind it, which we’ve talked about a lot before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacinema. (We do so most obviously in the last episode of Season 1, on JOHN DIES AT THE END: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/john-dies-at-the-end-and-meta/id990653468?i=1000382263507&mt=2). Sam’s fact about jump-cuts in the film comes from the IMDB page on the film, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571, which also has the (quite short) section on production gaffes. This is a good article about some of the cinematic trickery of the movie: http://www.avclub.com/article/prestige-plays-trick-its-audience-hiding-secret-pl-232247. Finally, here are a couple of videos: an interview with Nolan himself about the film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOD4d--mztc, and a longer ‘making of’ video, taken from the DVD extras: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOD4d--mztc.