He believes that Tesla built a transportation machine for Borden - a belief that quickly turns out to be false - but Tesla still manages to build a transportation machine for Angier.
This machine duplicates any object or living being placed inside and drops the copy a short distance away, meaning each time the trick is performed, Angier is cloned. This means the original Angier falls through a trap door into a water tank and drowns each time the trick is performed, with the new duplicate appearing somewhere in the theater to delight Angier's audiences.
The trick, or more accurately Faustian-style bargain, is what finally earns Angier's the audience's adoration, which is what his character has long been searching for. In short, Alfred and Fallon Borden don't technically exist, instead acting as two separate identities taken on by a set of twin brothers. As one brother says in the film, they live two halves of a full life.
They're so dedicated to this craft that they each sacrifice a potentially well-rounded life in order to succeed in their chosen career.
To keep up with the ruse successfully pulling off The Transported Man, each twin takes turns alternately playing Borden and his stage engineer and right-hand man Fallon. Each brother lives different lives when portraying Alfred. One is madly in love with Sarah, the woman with whom they marry and have a child with. The other is in love with their assistant Olivia Scarlett Johansson and treats Sarah cruelly.
Borden's wildly contradictory behavior actually clues in Sarah to the fact that he is two people. When one twin is wrongfully tried and hanged for the assumed death of Angier, his rival believes he's finally beaten Borden once and for all. This is not the case when the surviving twin finds and fatally shoots Angier, as both he and the audience realize that Borden successfully pulled off The Transported Man for years by being one half of a set of twin brothers.
In essence, Angier was so caught up with the big picture that he failed to look for one of the most obvious answers, mirroring the audience's journey through Christopher Nolan's film.
The Prestige 's opening monologue describes the three acts of a magic trick, while also cleverly foreshadowing the structure of the film. The first act of a trick, the pledge, shows you something ordinary. The second act, the turn, makes it do something extraordinary, such as disappearing. The third act is called the prestige: it brings back the object - or in this case, person - that disappears.
So, I dug around. And I tumbled down a spectacular Reddit hole of alternate theories. Fans of the film raised a lot of fantastic questions and points that film either doesn't address, or doesn't answer well enough. For example, if Angier really wants to perfect The Disappearing Man, why doesn't he just clone himself once, use the clone in the trick night after night, and never have to drown anyone? There's the fact that Angier dies symbolically this way because it's how his wife died. And Cutter has a line where he told Angier how drowning was like "going home," only Cutter lately reveals that he was lying.
That dialogue is in the movie for a reason. Still, without a natural twin, Angier could have cloned himself once, then performed the trick from now until infinity with Borden never being the wiser. Another prevalent theory online states that Tesla's machine never worked, and that he was stringing the wealthy Angier along so he could fund his next project. When the government got too close to Tesla, the inventor left, leaving Angier with a broken machine.
Those who follow that thread point out that Angier's "clones" should have had the same limp that the Angier Prime had, from a brutal fall earlier in the film. There are a surprising amount of people who believe that the real trick to The Prestige is making the audience believe that a machine capable of cloning another human actually exists. What do you believe? Is there a deeper twist at the end of The Prestige that we aren't seeing?
Or did Christopher Nolan leave his cards on the table this time, for all to see? Weigh in below with your best guess and wild theories. And go watch The Prestige again if you haven't in a while. Movie junkie. Infatuated with comic-book films. ReelBlend cohost. It was boring so I decided to write about things I love. On the geek side of things, I write about comics, cartoons, video games, television, movies and basically, all things nerdy.
I also write about music in terms of punk, indie, hardcore and emo because well, they rock! And yes, I've written sports for them too! Not bad for someone from the Caribbean, eh?
To top all this off, I've scribed short films and documentaries, conceptualizing stories and scripts from a human interest and social justice perspective.
Business-wise, I make big cheddar not really as a copywriter and digital strategist working with some of the top brands in the Latin America region. In closing, let me remind you that the geek shall inherit the Earth. You really don't know? It was Robert Angier : No one cares about the man in the box, the man who disappears. Cutter : Take a minute to consider your achievement. I once told you about a sailor who drowned. Robert Angier : Yes, he said it was like going home.
Cutter : I lied. He said it was agony. Robert Angier : But here, at the turn, I must leave you Borden. Yes, you, Borden, sitting there in your cell, awaiting your death. For my murder. Robert Angier : He's a dreadful magician. Cutter : No, he's a wonderful magician. He's a dreadful showman. Robert Angier : A brother You were Fallon Alfred Borden : No. We were both Fallon. And we were both Borden.
Robert Angier : [panting] Were you - were you the one who went into the box or the one who came back out? Alfred Borden : We took turns. The trick is where we would swap. Robert Angier : [breathing heavily] Cutter knew. Cutter knew. But I told him it was too simple, too easy. Alfred Borden : No There's nothing easy about two men sharing one life. Robert Angier : Wh-What about Olivia? And your wife? Alfred Borden : We each loved one of them. Alfred Borden : I loved Sarah.
He loved Olivia. We each had half a full life, really, which was enough for us. You see, sacrifice, Robert - that's the price of a good trick. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?
Robert Angier : [labored breathing] I've - I've made sacrifices. Robert Angier : Yes. Alfred Borden : It takes nothing to steal another man's work. Robert Angier : It takes everything. Robert Angier : It took courage Do you want - want to see.
What it cost me? Y-you didn't see where you are, did you? Alfred Borden : Look here You spent a fortune. You did terrible things And all for nothing. Robert Angier : You never understood The audience knows the truth - the world is simple
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