The Prestige - Spoilers

I love how thought provoking this film is.

But here is something that would fit your thesis, but still have the machine work. "You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled." There IS something that fools us. It is the notion that the machine is capable of teleporting a man. It is not. It makes duplicates. Therefore, Angier has to drown himself every night, in the very manner his wife died.

THAT is the thing we don't want to figure out. We would rather accept that Angier can teleport himself across the theater. The reality is too horrific to know.

And Borden's is not much better. Living a life with one's wife and daughter, in an elaborate scheme with your brother for the sake of a trick. It may in fact be worse, as Angier's actions only hurt himself, while Borden's hurt others.

 

I hear you but I still have a major problem with that insofar as the overarching premise/theme is the logical secret behind every trick, based in reality. Duplicating is just as impossible as teleporting. Also, the film goes to great lengths to show that the only way to do the transporting man trick is with a body double and that double is impossible to control. The film spent a long time developing that whole plot line about the great danton's double.

Borden's/Fallon's actions were not much better, but their motives were. The brothers genuinely never set out to hurt anyone (the exception being when he took the cushion away so that Angier would fall to the floor below the stage; all the pain they caused was from dedication to their craft. And they were gifted magicians willing to sacrifice for their work. They just never understood that their self-sacrifice by trying to share a life could destroy the lives of those around them. They paid the ultimate price for that when Borden was hanged, but the prestige was to return the daughter to her father, which was the ultimate act of righteousness.

 

In an interesting turn (if the machine really makes duplicates), Angier DID stick to the notion that the only way to do the transporting man was with a body double. That is exactly what the machine makes. Further, he had the same control problem. I believe he says he shot the first duplicate. Then, he goes to the extreme of destroying himself. Some kind of lesson on the duality of man?

 

Interesting.

Both theories do support what the story tells that Angier went too far in his attempts to one-up Borden/Fallon. Just that one "too far" is metaphysical and one "too far" is murderous.

Still, though...there's a LOT of tanks. Like, a lot.

 

Yes, there are a lot of tanks. Angier would have had to find a lot of doubles and keep them sequestered so they didn't get wise to his whole murderous scheme. Hard to do, but not impossible for a wealthy man traveling far and wide, especially since Cutter showed him how to do it.

In the flashback based on Angier's diary that he fed to Borden in jail--not that we can trust that--the film indeed shows him shooting his double created by the machine. I took this entire thrust of Angier's figuratively. He refers many times to not knowing whether he or the double would emerge. The man had basically lost himself and turned evil; he really had killed himself by letting jealousy and vengeance take away his ability to care about anything or anyone. It probably did feel like he was killing himself. His character also had a morbid curiosity for how it felt to drown; remember him testing how long he could hold his breath after his wife died?

 

There's no way that Angier could have located and found, trained ALL those body doubles. It's not logical at all and it's told from Nolan's point of view as a director not from either characters diary where we could see them as unreliable narrators to a degree.

The bit at the beginning isn't about the audience being deceived and believing in the illusion but the magicians themselves who couldn't be fooled by others, managing g to fool themselves and others about their personal motivation. It's about how their relationships with others--and even themselves at times--is about illusion to the point where they can't tell who they are anymore because they have build up so many layers around themselves.

It's not about the trick mentioned in the film and how it plays out for the characters--they do manage to Trick themselves with their own "illusions" with their relationship with those people in their lives? I disagree that the theme doesn't pay off and feel that the other explanation doesn't allow the character and emotional deep dive that Nolan intended. The film is really about audience deception, emotional deception and personal deception of those that the characters have their relationships build around.


The rational explanation is the difference between "magic" (rooted in illusion) and science (Which sometimes appears to be build on the fantastic but is build on the solid grounding of physics, etc. but can STILL appear to be "magic" and illusion but just is--without pretense or agenda something humans create. . It's that shift to the science fiction genre that bothered many people who didn't like the film because, again, it was genre bending something that Nolan is kmown for doing and setting up "riles" thriugh building trust with the audience and then telling them you "I fooled you" but there were plenty of hints if you look at it. It's also, again, an example of Nolan's sleight of hand as a film director.

A "real world" explanation makes the plot increasingly more and more far fetched. As Nolan notes, this is based on a Victorian based science fiction novel and he stays true to the themes of the novel but going in his own direction in telling the story with what would work cinematically (the novel if adapted faithfully would t have worked in the screen for a variety of reasons much as a literal adaption of Phil Dick's Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep wouldn't have worked within the confines--or even from a storytelling pov--on screen, hence we have the "alternate" version of the same story told by David Peeples, Hampton Fancher and Ridley Scott.

Angier went with a double at first because he thought that's how Borden did it but became convinced something else was at play that would still allow Borden to enjoy the love of the audience and that's everything that Angier wants--acceptance and love even if that is also build on an illusion.

I would disagree with you that it is science (reality) vs. Magic (science fiction). The latter is all about deception and having an audience believe what you want them to believe by misrepresenting who and what you are doing and are. Science is straight forward and, in this case, science fiction is based not on fantasy but on reality that is just beyond our grasp to to do. To paraphrase Clarke--science advanced enough to fool us and that is beyond our understanding appears to be magic--but it isn't. It's about lack of knowledge, beyond our grasp of understanding or the decision to fool ourselves bexause it would take an intellectual leap that is difficult to make.

 

Indeed...but the difference is that, in killing him delve with every performance, he got lost in his own need for revenge and to "win". Angier's story with the double was an example of his failure to do things as Borden does (though he doesn't realize that's how he's doing it--he's convinced that Borden does it differently and rejects that Borden does it with a double because he recognizes the need of the magician to bask in the success and love of the audience. This is what motivates him from being the man behind the curtain and find another method and why he believes Borden's I formstion on Tesla--because it fits in with what he believe every magician would want --to personally enjoy his success.

The portion of the story where Angier has a Tesla make the machine and where Tesla warns him of it, isn't told from the diary. Caine's character dislikes and wants to destroy the machine because it isn't about illusion, it's about science and, in this case, corrupts the person using it by forcing Angier to committ murder/suicide every time. If Caine believed that Angier did the trick via another method, he wouldn't have pushed for the machine's destruction.

At the conclusion and during the actual tricks with the doubles that emerge. The story is not told by either character but from Nolan's pov.

 

Why is there no way? It's not clear how much time had lapsed between when we last left Angier with his machine (and I believe that was told from Angier's point of view; his voiceover and flashback as juxtaposed to the present situation [Nolan's point of view] which was simply Borden reading a diary as he languished in jail). Between the point in Colorado and Angier returning to London, there is no clear indication at all what Angier was up to. In the final conversation, Fallon/Borden emphasizes: "You traveled half way around the world. You spent a fortune. You did terrible things--really terrible things." To me this speaks to something much more diabolical than simply going to visit Tesla and buy the machine. It speaks to traveling the western world, rounding up innocent men as doubles, paying them, training them and murdering them.

But the bit is clearly directed at the audience. None of the characters have been introduced when Caine's voiceover begins and he is going over the basic construction of a trick. The magicians themselves would have known this. Of note during these bits: the hats are shown strewn on Tesla's property, emphasizing Cain's comment that the audience doesn't really want to work it out. As for the magicians deceiving themselves, I don't think so. Borden/Fallon knew what they were doing; they hated the way it affected their relationships but that was the sacrifice that they understood to be paramount. Their problem was that they couldn't pretend to love each other's love interest, but they were fully aware of that problem and never built any type of layer around it. Likewise, they regarded Angier as just a professional rival who they had wronged in a horrible accident, but whose one-upsmanship got more violent. In contrast, Angier lost all humanity, lost the ability to feel, to love. He was purely a creature of jealousy and revenge.

The audience deception is a multilayered feat that Nolan has his fun with in most of his films, e.g., dream within a dream. It reads to me like Puck's statement near the end of Midsummer Night's Dream when he says:

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.​

There you have an imaginary character in an imaginary story challenging the audience to imagine that they dreamt it all! In the same way, Nolan weaves these multilayered veneers and challenges upon the actual story. I understand that the film can be seen like that; but I'm getting at that actual, underlying story of what happens beneath all the illusion.

None of that accounts for Nolan's thesis about wanting to be fooled and not working it out. It's the only narration that speaks directly to the audience. It is a challenge. If there's no secret about the machine, there's no challenge and there's no reason for that narration. I don't think the real-world explanation makes the plot more problematic; on the contrary, it ties the whole thing together.

Yes, your point about Angier craving the love of the audience is spot on. Angier went with a double because Cutter assured him that's how it's done. That's the only way it could be done! They created the ultimate transported man trick. The film went painstakingly through this process because this is where the bulk of Angier's character development and training occurred; as he learned to do the trick and learned to hate the body double, he also learned to hate himself and drive himself nuts with obsession, jealousy and revenge.

I know what you're saying, but the bottom line is that we have been fooled as an audience. Underneath it all is logic vs impossibility. The layers of illusion the story weaves do not alter that core reality underneath it. The only question, to paraphrase Cutter, is if you want to work out the logic or if you want to believe the illusion.

 

I'd never seen this before until today and I was disappointed. I expected better from Christopher Nolan. It's really a pretty silly movie. Just the whole dueling magicians proposition is kind of goofy. Add the cheesy Tesla side story (Tesla is the love child of every conspiracy and mysterious genius nut) and it really started stinking. Personally. I found it awkward and meandering and overly clever in the way of a creaky old Agatha Christie novel. Took two days to finish. Just a silly movie given a really serious, pretension treatment. Oh yeah. they didn't skip on the meaningless obligatory love story, either. First Christian Bale movie where I thought he was lousy. He played it as subtly as Spanky from Our Gang.

 

I wouldn't disagree that the film has its flaws but it's not about dueling magicians--it's about the rivalry between two men who let their (or three rather) anger, envy and insanity consume them. It's about one man wanting to destroy the other, not in revenge for his wife (at that stage it was about HIM) but because of his pride. The conceit that it is one film and then turns into another genre film (close to but not quite a Steam Punk science fiction flick) the slight of hand so to speak bothered lots of folks. It reminds me of Hitchcock's "Stage Fright" where Hitch, essentially misleads his audience using the unreliable narrator as part of the story wanting to accomplish much the same thing as in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and Hitch learned "lying" to his audience just pissed them off and then they would hate the film. I suspect that, aside from the fact that you didn't like the story itself, you felt much the same thing. Nolan tends to play with the whole concept of narrative deceit and the illusion of storytelling and that's really what The Prestige is all about.

I personally find it one of his challenging, most fascinatingly told films. I wouldn't disagree that Bale's performance, as hard as he tries isn't up to the quality or standard of Jackman's. He gives an amazingly nuanced (Jackman) performance.

The shifting point of view (Bale's character Jackman's character, Nolan) certainly doesn't appeal to everyone especially if you are expecting a different story.

 

I think its a good movie if you accept the over-the-top insanity of the plot. I like Christopher Nolan a lot, and, while it isn't as good as Memento or Interstellar, The Prestige is still a very good movie IMO. It's not as clever as some other Nolan films, and the ridiculous plot twists make Vertigo look predictable, but I still enjoyed it when I saw it.

 

Didn't this movie have a competing 'old-tyme-magic' movie to deal with...
I think it starred John Cusack...
This one was better, if I recall correctly.

 

It was with Ed Norton "The Illusionist" and it was different to be sure. It was a more of a mystery. IMHO, it wasn't as good although it certainly had its moments. The difference here was some of th magic was impossible whereas ALL of the magic --note I said magic not science--was practical and "real" magic. Again, "The Prestige" was more about the illusion or "lie" vs. the reality surrounding it and how we all participate in some form of self deception.

 

This is how I approached the film. The statement is made at the beginning of the film. Chris Nolan is telling us that the film is as much a fantasy as the trick is. In this age of technology and information he fools us to believe we will have a satisfying and scientific ending but in the end we won't really. Movies are all about illusion and this is one more he seems to be saying. You are there watching the film because you want to imagine along with everyone else, in the film and the audience.

 

That's the wonder of the film--11 years later people are still arguing about it.

 

See I don't see the plot as over the top insanity. It's a Victorian Science Fiction film. The failure of the film is because it promised to be something else but, like a magic trick, Nolan the slight of hand and magic trick is that it's entirely something else. The film itself is The Prestige as well.

 

I haven't read through this thread, and only saw the movie once, in the theater when it was released.

My father was a stage magician, and I usually accompanied him to magic conventions (I was a ventriloquist and was the middle act between his magic and Punch & Judy show, and I just have to say...

I have never, in my life, heard the phrase "The Prestige" used in conjunction with stage magic. Ever.

Not in the dealer's room filled with a hundred booths with folks demonstrating stage and close-up magic, not in lectures on magic techniques, not when standing around listening to my father talk to his fellow magicians. Not ever.

Either it was a phrase that had completely died out, or the writer knew nothing about stage magic and just pulled it out of his butt.

 

From the author of the novel:

CP: According to the Shorter Oxford, from about 1881 … which is roughly when the novel is set. The world of magic is not particularly word-driven, so few magicians actually used ‘prestige’ to describe what they do, but I gather since the book came out, and latterly the film, it has come back into use in some quarters.

 

The term I always heard was the "reveal." I haven't been to a magic convention since my dad died when I was 16, but I can imagine anyone using the term "prestige" these days would be seen by their peers as an utter twit. And what does he mean "not word driven"? We're talking about a world where hundreds of dollars change hands for a single printed page of instructions in a sealed envelope.

 

I have no idea. It's possible that the term may be part of the Victorian magicians. I'm just quoting what Priest revealed as the background on his research. He mentions that it was used in Victorian England. As far as "word driven" I'm assuming he means that, at that time, they didn't use any specific nomenclature to describe various parts of their tricks.

 

It's cool. But that whole "not word driven" thing is hilarious - my dad's magic library was hundreds of books, and his claim is about as credible as Spinal Tap manager Ian Faith's one that their gig being canceled in Boston was not a major thing as it's "not a big college town."

 

It could also be derived from the fact that there were a fair amount of folks that were illiterate at the time. It's also quite possible that Christopher Priest created the use of the word because he tends to like simple titles.

 

Yes, I was seriously involved in magic as a kid (in the local IBM and SAM clubs, subscribed to Genii, the whole thing) and I only ever heard "reveal." The single biggest revelation to me in the movie was the discovery that the disappearing bird cage actually killed the bird when the metal cage collapses and goes up the sleeve. By the time I did that trick, we'd swap the real bird for a rubber bird. It never even occurred to me that you could just kill a dove in every stage show, and that to me was the clue where the movie was going: somebody would secretly die just to promote the illusion.

Note that the original novel of The Prestige did not have the goofy ending with 50 water tanks with 50 dead bodies.

Instead

Spoiler

the magician using the double gets angry at the one using the Tesla machine and turns off the Tesla during the trick, which creates two magicians: one who's weak dying, and one who's kind of turning into a ghost. The Prestige - Wikipedia

The book ending would've been harder to pull off, and so Nolan went for the ridiculous visual for the end in order to show the 50 water tanks and the theater burning above. Don't forget this magician used blind assistants backstage so they wouldn't learn about the duplicates, which was the stupidest thing I ever hoid.

 

Yep, went to International Brotherhood of Magicians conventions in Kansas City and St. Louis twice a year. Old St. Louis magicians might remember Gene DeVoe of DeVoe's Magic Den.

Again, I just jumped in - but as far as I know it was always a fake bird going back to antiquity! Who would want to clean crushed dove out of a prop after every show? Much easier to have one out of rubber - or before that, spring wire and feathers. We had a cage of two white doves in our home my entire childhood*, and not only wouldn't you want to kill them for economic reasons, it would mean continually having to train fresh doves to be comfortable being handled.

It sounds like this author knows nothing about magic.

* I can still perfectly imitate them.

 

There was a plot point and analogy in using the bird that was killed and it also revealed how clever the child was "bring the other one back". It hinted at the way that Borden did his transported man routine as well -- using a "double".It also, ironically pointed to what Angier would be doing to himself for the sake of a Trick even though it was Borden who demonstrated it.

It was about the sacrifice that both men did for their "art". When I read the novel I recognized it would be very difficult to translate that to the screen. Nolan's clever ending allowed him to answer the question also about what happened to all of the doubles and it acted as a metaphor about what his life had become. He still wasn't the one to enjoy the applause as the man that went into the "box"wasn't the man transported. The trick,also took a psychological toll on Angier making him doubt if he was truly "himself" and, in a sense, committing murder (or symbolic suicide) to,prove his point and dying just as his wife did in a sense condemning himself to the same fate.