The Story Archive

The Prestige

Christopher Nolan · 2006 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

Two young men planted in a Victorian audience to check a magician's knots are made rivals by a water-tank trick that goes wrong, and each spends the years afterwards wrecking the other's act. One tours a transported-man illusion the other cannot account for, so the rival goes to Colorado to buy a machine from an electrical engineer. Nolan cuts between two stolen diaries, each read by the man it was written against.

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Attributes

Genre
MysteryPsychologicalScience Fiction
Theme
ObsessionJustice & RevengeSacrificeAmbition & HubrisArt & Creation
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
The DoubleAvengerMagicianShadow
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedRevenge CycleFrame Narrative
Symbol / motif
The MachineThe MirrorThe Book / ManuscriptThe Stage
Conflict
vs Personvs Self
Mode / tone
GothicIronicTragic
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues