I love this movie. Pretty much all of Nolan’s work is gold, but this one gets better every time.
But one question:
When Danton did the final engagement specifically for 100 shows, why did he choose 100? Was there any significance to it or was it just an angle to really through Borden off? Make him so crazy he couldn’t resist?
That’s my theory, but I wasn’t sure.
But here’s another wrinkle. How did Danton know when NOT to appear in the balcony? When Borden finally fell for his trap, Danton did NOT perform the Prestige of the act.
Was that the 100th show and he knew Borden would bite? Did I miss something?
Ok. That’s more than one question. But, you get my point. How did Danton know when to not appear and was it related to the number 100?
Can’t really answer your question, as it’s been too long since I’ve seen it and can’t go into that level of detail. So I’ll just say…what a cool movie. Two magicians, both working on the same trick, each approaching it in the most outlandishly impossible way.
I know…I’ll instantaneously duplicate myself, then commit suicide!
I know…I’ll keep the fact that I have a twin brother a secret through my entire life! I’ll even chop off my finger!!
The whole movie is basically about obsession so, I don’t think any :rolleyes: is needed. Just like the old magician at the beginning who has been posing as being crippled for most of his life just to do one trick.
I remember watching it and thinking… this is a twist? I had no problem spotting the heavily disguised Christian Bale. I was actually a bit miffed at the camera cuts during Bale’s trick. They shoulda invested in the CGI to make it a single shot so the jaded modern movie audience would have a moment of “huh?”
Maybe I’m a sucker, but I totally didn’t recognize Christian Bale as the assistant. At one point, I thought it was a cameo from Teller of Penn & Teller.
But Borden had been in the audience before. He saw the trap door, and he’d indicated he’d been in the audience several times to try to discover the trick. I tend to agree with your second sentence.
I hate to hear that, because that REALLY ruined the film for you, I imagine. I’ll cop to totally missing Bale as the assistant. Even when he teared up at the end when hanging Bale said a good bye! I’m usually the guy who figures plots out, but I recall thinking that if they wanted that scene to be emotional, they should have beefed up that guy’s role and had someone famous play him.
Egg meet face.
They so minimized his character that it was a typical slight of hand. The trick is out in the open, but you’re looking at something else.
I recall being disappointed at the time that they used science fiction as the solution for Danton’s trick. But it’s not like they didn’t warn us from the opening scene. Over the years, it has become actually a plus.
Add in some Michael Caine and you’ve got a classic.
Amusingly, Caine also has a twist movie to his credit, Sleuth:In the first act, his character is killed off (as far as the audience knows) and Caine returns for the second act, heavily disguised and fake-accented, but anyone who’d seen Caine later in his career would recognize him immediately, so the twist that he’s playing the same character from the first act (not killed at all) is somewhat mitigated. When I first saw the movie, sometime in the mid-nineties, I just figured Caine was playing two characters in a bit of stunt casting, but contemporary audiences in 1972 were led to believe “Police Inspector Doppler” in the second act was played by an actor named “Alec Cawthorne”
Funny thing–I completely missed the disguised Bale, but I remember thinking that the reveal of the other magician’s trick was disappointing because it seemed to me it had been telegraphed almost from the beginning.
Still loved the movie though.
Two different ways two people can be one person.
Since my dissertation deals in part with philosophical issues surrounding the possibility of personal fissions (and fusions) this film was like brain candy for me.
As an aside, I saw the play when it first opened in London and the playbill (“programme?”) contained head shots and lengthy biographies for the actors who were playing Inspector Doppler and others. Added to the “Whaaa…?” moment.
I still think I’m missing the mechanics of the sci-fi trick of Hugh Jackman. He kills his duplicate self at each performance. Got that. But I still don’t see how that gives him enough time to run all the way up to the top balcony. It seems you’re only gaining a couple seconds over NOT duplicating yourself and dying. When does he have time to run up there?
And my take on the 100 engagements thing was that he could only stand to kill himself for a finite amount of times.
And, FWIW, I figured out the Christian Bale twin thing very early on, and I’m usually very studiously NOT trying to figure things out in order to let the plot happen to me. But in this case, it seemed so obvious that they were purposely hiding the identity of this person for no good reason. So, there had to be something up. And huh, he looks like Christian Bale. But I totally didn’t realize that he’d cut off his finger, etc., and that the Interchangeable Twin™ thing was why some days he loved his wife and some days he “didn’t.”
As somebody upthread said, it’s been a while, but from recollection, the machine makes a duplicate of him some distance away. That was the source of the top hats and cats shown earlier in the movie, in the woods outside Tesla’s house/lab. The machine not only duplicates, it also teleports a short distance. So Jackman somehow jiggered the machine to have his duplicate (or himself, depending on your interpretatio) appear in the balcony.
The funny thing about this is regardless of which one is considered the “duplicate” (either the one that remains or the one that is transported), both have died at least once, meaning there really is no way Danton is the same.
The first time he uses the machine he places a gun next to him just outside the machine. When he sees the other Danton appear outside the machine, he shoots him, so danton is now the one that stays in the machine. But during all his performances, he drowns the one that stays in the machine and the one that appears outside is now him.
One particular scene I liked (in hindsight) is when the two go see the old Chinese magician and are awed (Borden) and incredulous (Danton) by his willingness to live his whole life a lie just so he can do a trick – even though both of them are already doing the same thing --Borden is really two people, and Danton is really a rich aristocrat.
I too figured out the identity of Borden’s engineer. It was a big mistake, I thought, for Fallon to always appear shadowed and out of focus. To me, at least, it made it absolutely clear that this was something the film was trying to hide from us. Borden and Danton knew the best way to hide something is just not to draw attention to it – I wish Nolan figured it out as well. Bale is a good enough actor that he could have made himself invisible without being off camera.
I didn’t think think any of the “twists” of the film were any great shakes – I understood how Danton did his version of the trick well before the movie showed us, too, although not as early as I should have. But it’s still a great movie.
But that doesn’t mean that both the one remaining behind and the transported one have died in the past.
The first time Danton duplicated himself, he remained in the machine and killed his duplicate. Call the survivor Danton(1). Danton(1) survived the first duplication.
Now, after the second duplication (the first time the trick is executed) let’s call the resulting people Danton(a) and Danton(b). (Danton(a) being the one who is teleported, Danton(b) being the one who remains behind and drowns.)
Both D(a) and D(b) are “descended”, so to speak, from D(1).
You said "whichever you consider the duplicate, both will have died at some time in the past. But if we consider D(a) to be the original, then we consider D(a) to be the same person as D(1). And that person survived both duplications.
No matter how many duplications occur over time, you can always take the survivor, choose to identify him as being the same person as the original Danton, and identify him with the survivors of each previous duplication–and in this way, mark out a single person who has not died as a result of any of the duplications.
Probably obvious to others, but, in retrospect, I love the scene where the bird is transported, only we learn that one bird dies in the trick. And then, obviously, that’s essentially EXACTLY what happens in the movie. If you watch it through looking for those sorts of things, there’s just a TON of little pieces that hint at what really going on. Love this movie.
Was there question whether the guy dying was him or his duplicate? I admit to only seeing the movie once, but I remember being pretty clear that it was the guy starting the trick who dies, and the duplicate who finishes it. That’s what made the obsession so freaking crazy. The main actor was willing to experience death for the sake of the trick. Each of those dead bodies was the body of a man who chose to die each night, not a duplicate who was a victim of the original man’s choice.
And the boy watching that trick even gets upset about the bird and when he’s told “look, it’s okay, he’s here” the boy replies “I mean his brother”, and of course Bale’s character suffers death for one brother for his magic.
Yes and no - the duplicate is one of someone who had chosen to die, but he’s also effectively the one who lost the coin toss and had to die. When you witness up close the prestige duplicate drowning he doesn’t look all that relaxed about dying.
More to the point, the duplicates are ALWAYS the one who survived, they only come from the ones that are get to live in the trick. So whilst Danton is technically correct when he says “You don’t know what I’ve suffered”, meaning his own death, the Danton saying that has never had to experience death, it was always the other Danton.
Yeah, but each person who made that choice had (just almost barely missed-it-by-this-much) experienced death dozens of times previously. At the very least, he was the duplicate of a man who made the decision to enter a machine that would kill him - dozens of times over.