Nitpick: it *is *a teleporter. The “duplication” (a misnomer, IMHO) is a side effect.
Why do you think it’s a misnomer? Near as I can tell, either the device makes your nitpick possible by creating a “duplicate” at Point A while teleporting the original to Point B – or it creates a “duplicate” at Point B while the original simply remains at Point A. I see no reason to opt for the former description over the latter, but doesn’t it create a duplicate either way?
As Tesla said, “They’re all your hat”. Not exact copies of your hat. To the best of my understanding, the device both teleported Angier *and *didn’t teleport him at the same time, like two alternate realities rolled into one. It’s all very quantum.
Cutter used his wanting to sell it on as an excuse. The court wouldn’t accept that it was magic or that he didn’t know how it worked: He was the magician’s ingénieur. But he still believed at this point that Borden was responsible so he wanted to see the murderer of his best friend hang.
Once you’ve accepted that all that’s left is relying on his ability to convince the judge to not pry further. We can assume that there’s a part of their conversation that we didn’t see after the movie started into its flashbacks.
I’d argue that each hat is his hat either way – but I still don’t see how “duplicate” is a misnomer for what you’re describing. After all, we’ve already got a perfectly good word for ‘one of two or more identical things,’ and “duplicate” is it.
Questions aside, wasn’t this an awesome movie? I remember watching it the first time, half-dozing, kind of bored, until about 2/3s of the way into the movie at which point I sat up engrossed. I had to rent it again a couple of months later to re-watch and really catch all of the things in the first half.
It’s a cliché, but after watching the movie I immediately watched it again.
Definitely one of my favorites. I thought Christian Bale especially was great in it. The only thing I haven’t ever gotten was that it was Borden that (I think) first mentioned Tesla as a key to his journal. I never really understood that connection.
To me, “duplicate” means that there is also an “original”. But in the movie, they were both originals, just in different locations.
And yes, it’s one of my favorite movies of all time.
Damn, I need to post that under the “Obvious things you’ve realized” topic.
I think it was shot like that to play up the fact that it really wasn’t an impressive trick at first. Remember that the audience barely applauded. Only Angier really understood what an amazing trick it was.
I’ve always wondered at the end whether Angier pulled the trick one last time and if Borden is killing a duplicate. The ending doesn’t seem to have a final twist.
Doubtful. The “duplicate” would be no more willing to sacrifice himself for Angier, than Angier is willing to sacrifice his life for his duplicate. And any plot he hatched about tricking his duplicate into taking the fall for him would be known by the duplicate, as well.
That’s giving up too much control. Angier already saw what happened when a look-alike was central to his act. The look-alike started to screw him over and demand more, started to think he was the star.
Then, the first time Angier makes a duplicate, he brings a gun. He clearly means to kill the duplicate. And, whichever one of them ends up nearest the gun does so. Having another copy of yourself walking around is dangerous. You are in many ways completely at their mercy. Whatever they do, you get the credit or blame for. And, of course, if they decide to kill you, there’s no fallout for them. Angier is too ruthless to allow another copy of him around.
Plus, he knows he’s willing to kill his twin, so his twin is likewise just as eager to do him in.
I just watched the movie for the first time tonight because seeing this thread title reminded me I’d always meant to and never got around to it.
Didn’t Cutter witness the blind guys hauling away the covered tank in the same scene that Bale’s character did? It’s probably not enough on its own to make him figure out what’s actually going on, but once he sees Angier alive, I think he can fill in the gaps.
Also, I thought Angier killing his twin and not just using a single clone indefinitely was more an example of how he was an inferior magician than anything else. It wasn’t primarily that he was afraid his clone would betray him but that he couldn’t conceive of spending a lifetime living a lie to make a single trick work. Though I guess that given that, it’s inevitable that the clone would betray him unless one of them died.
I think it is touched on early in the movie that Angier wasn’t as good a magician as Borden, and Borden wasn’t nearly the showman that Angier was.
Yeah, but even after Borden’s act gets flashy with the lightning machine and the showgirl, Nolan still chose NOT to present the trick as a single shot. It was done on purpose to fool us, the movie audience. By doing it as a rapid cut the director, being the magician here, distracts us from realizing how Borden really does the trick.
@Bryan Elkers
but regardless, I too was disappointed that we never got to see the trick as a single shot, and be as awed by at as Angier was. What I found more disappointing though was the other Alfred’s last moment. His “abracadabra” was too inaudible (in the trailer it was much more clear) to fully get what Nolan was trying to do there: give the initial impression that Alfred performed The Transported Man one last time to escape the noose and shoot Angier. The other part that kind of ruined it, was that Angier hears someone there with him BEFORE Alfred says Abracadabra, so already I’m kind of doubting what Nolan was trying to have us believe.
That said, it’s one of my FAVORITE movies, and probably one of my favorite performances by Christian Bale, with American Psycho and Empire of the Sun.
I just saw it for the first time and think the movie was very good - but only once I got over the idea that there was an actual cloning machine. Until the end, I was hoping it was still some sort of trick. The presence of an actual cloning machine turns the movie from something that could have happened to something that couldn’t possibly have happened - from fiction to fantasy.
But that said, here are my thoughts/questions/issues:
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A deep message of the movie is that a clone can never really be a clone. Sarah learned that a clone can’t love her like the original - in her case the real clone (twin brother) of Borden. Angier’s clones are willing to kill their own “brothers” for the fame. The “original” would take painstaking steps just to avoid killing a bird.
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David Bowie was great!
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Did Angier really try to frame Borden, or was it just a happy coincidence? How did he know that Borden would stick around and try to rescue him? Things would have had to work out perfectly and there was risk of exposure.
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Why was Cutter ok with not knowing the trick? You would think that his curiosity would have forced him to try to find out.
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Do/did magicians really do disappearing bird tricks by killing the birds?
Well, Borden saw Angiers at the Tesla demonstration (and vice versa), so it was an easy step from there to plant the suggestion that Borden had crafted a relationship with the man to compel his rival to waste a lot of time and money.
Definitely not a coincidence. He set up the trick specifically to pique Borden’s curiosity, knowing that sooner or later he would work his way downstairs and be implicated circumstantially in a death that (unbeknownst to everyone) was actually happening every night.
Be probably wasn’t OK with it, but was complying with Angiers will (though all the cloak-&-dagger business probably made Cutter secretly glad he wasn’t more complicit in whatever was going on).
Do? Almost certainly not, at least by magicians in the West, anymore. But Did? Yes, sometimes.