I saw this last night, and I loved it. However, I’ve got a different take on the film than anyone here, so let me lay it out and see if you think I’m totally nuts.
First of all, there’s a great deal of importance in what happens when Jackman hooks up with Caine after Jackman’s wife dies. Caine offers Jackman the vanishing bird trick, but Jackman doesn’t want it, because he doesn’t like the idea of killing birds. Caine, however, has come up with a way to do the trick without killing the bird! This is important for later on in the film.
After Jackman duplicates Bale’s “Transported Man” trick, Jackman says, “No one cares about the man who disappears, the man who appears is the star.” That’s why he drops through the trap door during the trick and goes into the tank (one of the reasons, anyway) to die, because Jackman is utterly obsessed with beating Bale’s characters, and being the best magician ever. So to drop and die is a small price to pay to be the greatest star, ever. That’s also why he shoots the duplicate who appears the first time he tries the machine out. He can’t stand the concept of there being someone who could share the credit. That’s why he’s shocked when Bale tells him they took turns in being the man who appears.
Bale met Tesla and got him to make the lightning generator for his trick (and may have let Tesla into the secret of how the trick was done, thus that’s how Tesla knew what it was Jackman wanted, since Jackman never said to Tesla what he wanted, other than to be able to do Bale’s trick). Bale knew the cypher would take Jackman a long time to crack, and it’d take him a long time to convince Tesla to build him a machine (that made lightning, Bale never suspected that Tesla could actually do what he did).
Now, here’s where I really diverge from what everyone’s said so far. When Caine meets the lord and sees that it’s jackman, he realizes that Bale’s completely innocent and going to die (Oh, and the reason Jackman only plans on doing the trick 100 times? A limited run ensures that Bale will come and check it out, and Jackman can get him out of the way.). This disgusts Caine. In the rivalry between Bale and Jackman, Bale never puts Jackman’s (or anyone else’s) life at risk. This makes Jackman a threat to every magician out there, because the moment they come up with a better trick than what Jackman has (and let’s face it, sooner or later the novelty will wear off on the public), Jackman will steal their trick and kill them. Caine, as you remember, came up with the trick to save the bird.
Caine get’s Jackman to explain how the trick works, Caine then goes tells Bale (the one running around as Fallon). The two of them hatch a plan. If you remember, even Jackman says that there’s no way the prison Bale’s in could hold him, and Bale says that so long as he has his red ball, he can escape. So Bale has himself duplicated in the machine, that version goes to the prison and does a swap with the Bale that’s in the jail. (So the duplicate allows himself to be hanged. This works because now Bale can resume the Transported Man act and perform without disguises since obviously the “killer” has been hanged.) The Bale that’s been in prison, is the one who goes and kills Jackman, while the Bale that’s been Fallon goes to see his daughter.
Oh, and the reason Jackman uses a tank to kill himself in? Because Caine told him the story about the sailor saying it was a peaceful way to go. That’s why at the end, Caine tells him it was agony. Because Jackman had been comforting himself by thinking that it was a peaceful way to go.
So why do I think that both Bales are alive at the end of the film? Part of it is because Caine is the fellow who came up with the trick that keeps the bird alive. If there was any way for Caine to save Bale from the noose, he’d take it. Bale, of course, would do what he could to save his brother. The only key, of course, being that they don’t reveal how the Transported Man was done. Also, when Caine is showing the original bird trick (the one where the bird dies) to Bale’s daughter, the bird dies at the same moment as Jackman, not when Bale is hanged. Another thing is that Bale allows the machine to be destroyed. The Transported Man is his trick, it’s his signature trick. Without it, he’s just another prop magician (and not a very good one, because of his bad hand). He would not allow the machine to be destroyed, if it could give him the chance to continue to perform the Transported Man trick. He’d at least make one more version of himself. Yet he doesn’t, therefore, he must have freed his brother. Also, when Bale appears in Jackman’s theater to kill him, he bounces a red ball towards Jackman. Thus indicating that he’s the one who escaped.
Of course, you’re probably wondering how he thinks that he can still perform at all given that he’s got the face of a murderer. Well, as has been shown in the film, he (and Jackman) are both masters of disguise, plus outside of London, few people are likely to have any idea of what Jackman’s supposed killer would look like, so they’ve no reason to suspect (and even if they did, the killer hanged, so it obviously couldn’t be him). Additionally, the whole spectacle of murder hanging over the trick, makes it that much more an enticing draw for the crowds, since they know they’ll be seeing a trick which a magician has killed over.
I had one minor problem with Bowie being Tesla (and mind you, when I realized that we were going to see Tesla in the film, I was practically screaming, “God, I hope they got David Bowie to play Tesla!”), Bowie needed to lose a bit of weight as his face was a bit too jowly to be Tesla’s, but other than that, he nailed it. If they ever do a biopic on Tesla, I hope they case Bowies as Tesla (or if they do a film version of the opera about Tesla).
What I’m wondering, is if the director intended for it to be revealed that Bale was a twin when I figured it out. I figured it out when Bale gives the message to Fallon and says to tell Scarlet Johanissan that he loves her, and we didn’t see Fallon talking to Scarlet, but Bale. Gotta say that it’s one of the best film’s I’ve seen all year.
