Yeah, no, I didn’t mean an actual duplicate, just that the trick bird died and another took his place.
The same guy at work pointed out the significance of the kid’s comment about where “the brother” was, since Borden did in fact have a twin brother. Not that the kid actually meant that, but his comment can be taken in two ways, the obvious and the tricky.
What a great movie.
Oh okay…sorry this movie is just so great you just analyze it so much…I had to see it again…does anyone else plan on doing that as well?..Quick question…in the water tanks I thought he was getting rid of the extra bodies…but I guess he was just keeping them under the stage?..or was he taking the bodies to a different location?
At the end, Angier took the bodies to an old abandoned theater that he owned. I’m not sure why, and I haven’t heard an analysis of why. My guess is that it’s hard to dispose of bodies, and, he wanted a reminder of what he went through to be where he is.
The parallels of this movie is what makes this movie great. I initially thought that literally killing yourself day after day to make yourself the greatest magician was too insane, and unbelieveable. But, then I noticed the other parallels:
the Chinese magician willing to look like an old man even after the performance.
one of the Borden twins willing to die (by hanging, no less) just so that he his secret won’t be let out
After seeing that other people were willing to go such lengths, killing yourself didn’t seem so far out of the imagination in that universe.
Remember that all of his stagehands were blind, to keep anyone from knowing what was going on. To keep the secrecy, he would have had to do it himself. Killing yourself in each show would be one thing, but to have to pull your own dead body out of the tank afterwords? ::shudder::
Man that is something if that is what happened but like you said there is no analysis of this…but that would make sense that he wanted to justify his trick by showing what he had to go through just to do it!
yeah they were blind too!
Superb film making, excellent direction, acting, deep complex story, etc. etc…BUT (and it’s a big BUT)…They lost me with the Tesla/magic lightning Xerox machine angle.
Here’s why - the movie is sold as a story about magic. To me, for magic to be “valid” I have to know it exists in my universe, the one I walk around in every day. The enjoyment of good magic comes from knowing I have been fooled by a well designed illusion. It is a puzzle for the mind, “How did he do that?” Sometimes you can figure it out (you think) and you get satisfaction from that.
Even though this is a movie, with all of it’s attendant trickery, I walk in thinking I will see some magic that exists in my universe. In addition, we are given a true life historical figure, Tesla. For those of us who were listening in science class we learned a little about this man and what he contributed. So, my sense of being in my universe is reinforced by the presence of Tesla.
So far, so good. We are in the regular universe. These magicians are trying to one-up each other, a little romance, a little mystery,…then… ZOT! Oh look, a “magic” lightning Xerox machine…just like we used in Science class in the 8th grade…NOT! At this point we have abandoned the regular universe and anything goes. Why not just have dead people come back to life? Why not grow extra arms? Maybe we can have people fly? Why not?
If something had established that I was not in my universe early on in the movie maybe I wouldn’t have objected. But that is not what the film makers did. So, they lost me. There is a big difference between an illusion and a con.
Wow I did not feel that way at all. I think the movie was about magicians…and what they did to become the greatest…and I guess this was one of the things that one particular magician decided to do…I never thought I would get some great magic trick secrets but just learn a bit more of how great magicians crafted there game…and that is what I got from it…but I can see how if you came in looking for a certain thing you could be dissapointed…but I just thought the movie was about Magicians in their prime showing us what it takes to be the best at what they do!..and that is what I got:) Great movie!
Icarus, I respectfully disagree. At first, I was thinking the same thing you did (however, I don’t really put that much stock if this movie exists in my universe or not). My thinking was more along the lines of that there will be nothing supernatural in this. However, Tesla’s machine isn’t arguably real magic, is it? There is a science behind it, and as Tesla explains, science is difficult and often the result isn’t what he intended. I agree that using a historical figure probably wasn’t the best move, but it was just another parallel to be used to tell this story. For example, just like the Angiers/Borden conflict, Tesla has his competition with Edison.
Even if you argue that Tesla’s machine is real magic (like the theater owner who exclaimed, “It’s been a while since I’ve seen real magic.”), so what? It’s just another interesting parallel of magic versus illusion. As the movie (it was probably Caine’s character) explained, the prestige isn’t that great once it’s explained. Crushing birds is horrifying and brutal, for example. Likewise, the “real” magic behind Tesla’s machine is also mundane, i.e. he tried to make a transporter device and failed, though he did manage to make copies. Like the killing of the birds, another parallel is drawn to having Angiers kill himself at every performance. Without having this part of the movie, the movie just isn’t as good. I just thought that it was cool that the real magic in the film was as mundane and as brutal as the prestige of the illusion.
I hope this thread is not too old to bump.
We just got back from seeing it. Pretty good - I love plot-driven, “twist” movies like Memento and Angel Heart.
My son and daughter are both convinced that Borden was cloned earlier in the movie, during the first public demonstration of the machine at the exposition. He was not born with an identical twin.
And I am convinced that the Angier who drowned was always the one who stepped into the door and dropped. IOW, he was so desperate to bring the trick off that he was willing to commit suicide.
But why only 100 times? What was the significance of the number of performances?
Regards,
Shodan
I saw this tonight, and thought it was very good. A couple thoughts:
I’m surprised that anyone seems to think that the fact that the machine made copies was in any way a bit plot twist only revealed at the end. As soon as we see Angiers storm out of Tesla’s place and run into the multiple hats and cats, I thought it was just clearly part of the plot what the machine did, not some big secret. So the other instances where the duplicate nature of the machine were mentioned didn’t strike me as “beating you over the head with clues,” but just natural plot points. Having said that, it wasn’t clear to me that Angiers was just killing the clone/himself every night – I was just wondering where he was housing all these extra clones being made. Of course, the bit with the canary did forshadow the killing.
But why did Angiers even need to kill himself every night?? He could have avoided a lot of pain and trouble by just cloning himself once, then teaming up with his exact double to do the Transporting Man trick exactly as he had done years before with the drunk guy who looked like him. He wouldn’t have run into the same troubles he had with the drunk man, because, as exact clones and thus kind of brothers, they would have had similar thought patterns and loyalties to one another. The effect on the audience would have been exactly the same, because for all they knew, the “real” transporting man trick with Tesla’s machine was done the exact same way as the old trick. And Angier’s intellectual curiosity would have been satisfied because he KNEW how the real thing worked.
Why did Borden’s wife kill herself? Okay, I get that she could tell her husband didn’t always love her, but the night before she hung herself she kept screaming “I know what you are!”, or something along those lines. Was she merely saying that she knew her husband was twins…?! And if so, why would that be so distressing that it would make her abandon her little daughter and hang herself?
My thought was that he only had room in his warehouse for 100 tanks to keep the extra bodies in.
Why only one per tank?
Regards,
Shodan
No, they started the foreshadowing long before Tesla entered the narrative. Borden talked about how he had a great trick that wasn’t ready yet from the very beginning, and his wife noted that some days he didn’t love her before Tesla. Tesla was a red herring, Borden never met the man. Tesla played along because he needed Angier’s money.
Showmanship (the one aspect of stage magic that Angiers had over Borden). Limiting the supply attracts more customers, and Borden.
I really enjoyed it. Saw the twists coming (although I hadn’t considered that Angiers really was the lord, I thought his false name was just using “Danton” on stage and Caldlow was created from whole cloth), but still liked the plot.
As for using actual magic, consider this: by using actual magic, Angiers was cheating. He was meant to create an illusion, but in a topsy-turvy way fooled everyone by actually doing the impossible. Borden (like Batman) achieved his crowning effect through an enormous amount of personal sacrifice and discipline, while Angier’s “trick” (like Wolverine’s) was based on a miracle that he didn’t create (and also murder).
Even more topsy-turvey than that, because he used the real magic to create an illusion! If he had let the audience see himself being duplicated, that would have been the real magic.
There’s no way this happened. The machine didn’t exist before Angier went to Colorado and started bankrolling Tesla. Remember, Tesla was just as surprised as Angier to find the field full of hats and the spare cat. He didn’t even know he’d invented a duplicating machine until that moment, which he’d surely have been aware of if he’d previously duplicated Borden.
While I really like Mennochio’s response, I will also add that Angiers also needed to lure in Borden because he had it in his mind to frame him. 100 show limited engagement is a great marketing ad. Also, practically speaking, he only had so much room in the abandoned theater. And, even though the stagehands are blind, do you really want them handling what is obviously a dead body? If you were Angiers, knowing that you already had to kill yourself, would you also want to dispose of the body?
This is a good question, and I didn’t really think about it before (well, not too much, I just assumed she was unstable). She knew one of the Bordens (possibly her Borden) was sleeping with Scarlett Johansen’s character. She was probably driven mad by the knowing and not-knowing of when Borden said he loved her (remember, she could tell when she meant it). If she did find out that they were twins (I don’t recall that the audience knew for sure), can you imagine what else that means? It means that her husband was willing to keep such a huge secret from her, and that her husband-Borden put his craft above their marriage, and that even when she said that she could tell when her husband meant the “I love yous” he didn’t really mean it because he put his craft above their marriage.
I suppose I could organize those thought more succintly, but I hvae to go to lunch. 
I thought he had to do it so that he could frame Borden for the murder.