Understanding The Prestige - Major Plot Spoilers

M

MUCK

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Did anyone understand it? Because I really had to think before I realised what I was seeing. Only read further if you have seen the movie:

So Christian Bale (Borden/Fallon) senRAB Hugh Jackman (Angier) to the Tesla machine through the diary right? I know that the Tesla machine duplicates whatever walks into it's energy field, as seen by the multiple hats and two black cats. It basically creates a carbon copy of anything. The first time Angier walks into it, it creates his 'clone' but he shoots it. Why? How do we know which is the real Angier? I think they are the same, not different at all.

Every night, during his magic show and the 'real transported man' act, his obsession drives him to duplicate himself every night. Only, either himself or the clone could be the 'man in the box' i.e the one that drowns through the trap door, or be the 'prestige', the man who has been transported to the back of the stage. A 50/50 chance one of them dying.

From what I understood, both duplicates are the same person with exactly the same emotions etc just like all those hats are Angiers. So essentially Angier is killing himself every night, putting his 'clone' through the agony of drowning. All for the sake of being the better magician.

His motive? Michael Caine (Cutter) told him drowning was like going home, but as we find out, he lied, drowning is agony. We see the bodies at the end in water tanks which shows he did the act on more than one occasion and explains why he hires blind stage men, so they wouldn't blab about the secret.

One thing I don't quite get. There are two Christian Bales. Fallon and Borden, he says they are identical twins (or possibly clones from the Tesla machine?). They explain during their acts that they sometimes swap roles. However, I will have to watch again to see which 'twin' is in which scene as I have no idea which was hanged and which survived at the end. Where they really clones, or identical twins? If so, which twin died? Alfred, or Freddy? The one who loved his wife, or the one who loved Olivia?

Also I didn't quite get whose side Cutter was on. At the end he was obviously betrayed by Angier, who was letting an innocent man die and making him think Borden killed him. Did he change alliance right at the end? Or did he know all along Borden had a twin? Perhaps he thought Angiers obsession drove him to insaneness.

It's a very thought provoking film, one I enjoyed and thoroughly recommend. 9/10.

Any thoughts? Theories?
 
I'd read the book before I saw the film, so I knew what was going on, but in the book you are led to believe that the clones (or 'prestige materials' as they are referred to) are not fully functioning exact copies.
 
The one that loved Sarah lived

he says "I loved Sarah, he loved Olivia."

the other one one said he was sorry about Sarah when he was dragged off - she killed herself cos she knew he didn't always love her - altho it is unclear if she knew why IMO.

I think Caine new about the twins from the start - I don't think he was a clone cos that slightly tarnishes the film IMO (why mention the chinese guy who lived his whole life so it wouldn't be found out how he did the trick.

This was def my film of last year, hanRAB down.

The only bit I hated was Borden sending Angier all the way to the US to the only place wher ehe could help him - if that was a coincidence it's a pretty crap one - if not it implies Borden has been through the machine.

There was a massive debate about this on IMDB last year - worth a read if you have a spare hour or so!

EDIT some thoughts here

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=481740&highlight=prestige
 
The second time we see Borden's trick, his cupboarRAB now have sparky electricity stuff going on between them. Something i think Tesla put together for him. So when he send Angier off to Colorado it was a big joke. All Tesla did was make a fancy light show. It meant he got rid of Angier for ages. But what he didnt know was that Tesla was desperate for funding and when Angier showed up with his bottomless pocket he went ahead and tried to build him the machine he wanted.

The Bordens were twins raised in the workhouse who decided they would live as one person with the goal of performing this trick. It was the ultimate sacrifice and they would never give up that secret. The fact that Angier actually came back with a machine was something that Borden never thought possible.
 
I watched this for the first time last night. I picked up on the twin aspect partly because I had been spoiled a few days before. I'm still having trouble with the main story because I have a lousy memory for faces. For example, I currently think it was Angier who shot Borden during the bullet-catching trick out of revenge for his wife, and Borden who ruined Angier's trick with the bird cage, but at the time I thought it was the same chap motivated by his wife each time, not tit for tat.

He doesn't want his clone wandering around. One possible reason is that with clones there's always a danger they'll kill you and replace you.

Me, too. So whichever was closest to the gun would have killed the other, which makes it self-defence in a twisted kind of way.

A 100% chance of one of them dying. The question arises of which one.

It never occurred to me that the displaced man might not be the clone. A new copy in a new location, makes sense. For the original to disappear, a new copy appear in his place, and then the original to reappear in another location, seemed unnecessarily complex.

Given that, then it's apparent that both have continuity of consciousness: the original has because he's the original and nothing much happened to him, and the clone has because he takes the original's place seemlessly after each act.

I think the original drowns each time, and the clone replaces him and drowns the following night. If it makes a difference, which arguably it doesn't.

I don't think it's right when the character says he has a 50:50 chance of being the one who drowns. He is always the one who drowns. But the new one has continuity of conciousness with him, so he feels like he is the one who survived, despite not really having a history.

I reckon he declared he'd only repeat the trick 100 times, because he only had space to store 100 bodies.

Or rather, Angier was committing suicide each night; it wasn't quite murder. Although Cutter didn't know that. Letting Borden hang for a crime he didn't commit was effectively murder.

As far as I can tell, Angier's motive for that was still the death of his wife. However, that seemed a bit unfair to me. Even if Borden had tied the new knot deliberately (which he I'm sure he did, even if he didn't admit it to his twin), I thought the main purpose was safety. With the old knot there was a chance the girl would slip off while being hoisted, and be hurt. It's not obvious what the best safety trade-off was.

Also, it seemed a bit pointless to have Cutter standing by with an axe and a stopwatch, if he wasn't actually able to rescue the girl in time when it did go wrong. I think nowadays she'd have been resuscitated, although maybe medical knowledge wasn't so good back then.

The bit about Borden sending Angier to Tesla was a stretch for me, which added to my confusion. For a long time I thought Tesla was in cahoots with Borden and ripping Angier off for the money. Even the final thing with cats and hats could have been faked - to me it just looked like a good con trick. Tesla's machine violates the laws of physics, so it is a weak point in an otherwise very strong movie.

At the end, Borden wrote down his secret and sold it to Angier, but Angier tore it up so we don't know what he wrote. Do we think he wrote the truth? If so, then had Angier read it he would have been forewarned and might have avoided getting shot at the end.

Do we think Angier truly died, or did he have a backup clone who survived? I suspect he had no clone, because that fits better with his character (especially his shooting of the first clone).

Did they explain why Borden's daughter couldn't be brought up by the surviving twin?

I am now in the same situation you were a year ago - stimulated by the movie and wanting to write about it to someone. I like science fiction, and this turns out to be a new take on the classic teleportation quandary, and issues of identity. I love how the bird-cage trick prefigures.
 
That implies Tesla was a charlatan which is far from the truth in real life & far from the truth depicted in the fiction of The Prestige.

Michael Caine acknowledges him as a "wizard" & not a mere magician.
 
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