We saw this today. And my problem was not that you might miss something. It’s that the story stooped so low to make sure nobody missed it.
[spoiler]Tesla’s machine creates duplicates. Hence all the hats in a pile on the lawn, the multiple black cats running around his property. All the dead Angiers.
The problem is that the audience is bludgeoned, that the filmmakers made it as idiotproof as possible, at the risk of insulting the audience:
- You get the multiple hats at the beginning of the film, then explained later. “Don’t forget your hat.” “Which one is my hat?” “They all are.”
- Ditto the cats.
- The scene in which Angier tests Tesla’s machine, gun nearby, and is faced with (and shoots) his double.
- The tarped water boxes secretly taken away every night to the rehearsal space/warehouse.
- We see a very dead Angier in the tank and on the slab, and then later a living Count/Angier.
- The final shot of the pickled Angier (not to mention the rows of water boxes that, unseen but known, hold dozens of other drowned Angiers).
El Perro Fumando and I both understood the twist as soon as the pile of hats appeared the second time. Shame that we had to be told, more and more explicitly, what the twist was, five more times.
Every night, there’s a new water box under the stage. Every night, the trick creates a duplicate that, because of the vaguaries of the machine, ends up spitting out the copy onto the balcony; the original Angiers falls through a trap door into the water box, which locks above him to drown. Angiers goes into the machine each night knowing that he’s committing suicide at the same time he makes the copy, so that there are not monstrous clones running around London.
The trick is that, one night, Borden witnesses the necessary suicide and causes a scene that leads to his discovery and arrest. Balcony Angier, knowing that the illusion is ruined once Borden is found with a freshly drowned Angier under the stage, does not appear as planned, and goes on to be the Count incognito.[/spoiler]
I guess what I’m saying is that you’re overthinking it, RogueRacer. It’s all right there. And then there again. And again. And again. If anything, the last shot only muddied the waters with possible confusion in the case of people like your RogueGF.
Other than my extreme hatred of how they handled the big twist (and how they glossed over the substantial twist with an absurd other), it was a great movie. Strong performances all around, great mood and setting. Excellent cinematography.