“The Prestige” is playing on satellite & cable, so I watched it. I think it’s great! I regret not seeing it in the theater.
I’ve read through a few threads here on the film, but I haven’t seen an answer to a few question I have…
(1) Why, exactly, was Borden tried for “murdering” (an) Angier? After all, we see he was struggling mightily to free him. Was it just an example of an inadequate justice system?
(2) Did Angier plan on Borden being arrested for his “murder”, or was he just lucky? Sure, he would have expected Borden to try to figure out how he was doing the “Transported Man” and to come backstage & downstairs to watch it, but how could he think that would be enough?
(3) Did Cutter realize that he was a key part of railroading Borden? I tend to doubt he would go along with that, so it must be that at the time he really thought Borden had murdered Angier, right?
(4) Why did Borden and Angier’s wife try the alternate knot? Some have suggested it was because they wanted to show off by using a more difficult knot, possibly because Borden and Angier were competing, but that seems doubtful to me. They were on the same team at the time, so competition doesn’t strike me as a good enough reason. After watching it the first time, I thought I’d remembered that they did it because Cutter complained that certain members of the audience could see it was a trick knot, but when I watched it again I learned that I had remembered wrong; the remark about part of the audience seeing things concerned Angier kissing his wife’s leg, so that’s not it. Any other ideas on why they tried it?
(5) Many have suggested that the tanks-full-of-Angiers denouement was merely for cinematic purposes, and some have complained bitterly that they felt they were being “hit on the head” with the obvious. Is that necessarily so? It seems to me that if I were Angier, keeping all my duplicates and disposing of the whole batch of them at one time would have been far preferable than to try to dispose of them one at a time. Whaddya think?