The Prestige proved even further that Christopher Nolan wasn't a director to ignore. Years later,
we still can't get over the film's central twist, which, like a true magician, Nolan
hid in plain sight. Here's how he pulled off the trick.
Everything in The Prestige plays fairly with the audience regarding the central trick.
The ending is telegraphed repeatedly, through nearly every character and every line, making
it one of the most surprising, and paradoxically most foreshadowed, twists in movie history.
It's all summed up in the opening narration by John Cutter, where he breaks down the trick
into three acts: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige.
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it, because of course you're not
really looking. You don't really want to know."
As Cutter narrates, the camera pans over a series of identical birds, one of whom he
chooses to make disappear and then reappear as the "prestige" part of the trick. We'll
see this bird trick later, when Sarah brings her nephew to a magic show, which causes him
to burst into tears at the thought of the bird's death.
"See? He's alright, he's fine. Look at him."
"But where's his brother?"
It surprises Alfred Borden to hear the question about the bird's brother, not just because
a child can see through the trick, but because it's his trick, the central twist of the movie.
Borden is Fallon, each a twin living half of a life sharing the spotlight.
At the beginning of the film, Angier reads a passage from Borden's diary, and the audience
is given its first glimpse into what triggered the pair's long standing feud. Borden's narration
here is easily able to trick the audience.
"We were two young men at the start of a great career. Two young men devoted to an illusion.
Two young men who never intended to hurt anyone."
The audience is primed to think that this narration refers to Borden and Angier, based
on the premise of the movie, but that's not right. Borden and Angier never devote themselves
to an illusion. Borden and Fallon do. They've devoted themselves to the illusion that there's
only one Borden, and that they never intended to hurt anyone is true.
Angier's first move against Borden involves a loaded pistol, so the implication that the
"two young men" who never intended harm are Borden and Angier is dismissed within the
next 30 minutes of screentime. The movie wastes no time in telling you exactly what's happening,
but it's so obvious you can't help but be swept along if you're not paying attention.
After Angier's wife escapes the water tank, Borden, Angier, and Cutter discuss their different
philosophies on magic.
"A real magician tries to invent something new, that other magicians are gonna scratch
their heads over, you know?"
When Cutter asks him if he has such a trick, Borden says he does, but he refuses to sell
it, as no one else can do it.
This scene serves a variety of purposes. Firstly, it shows how Cutter knows the business well
enough to shoot down Borden's every idea for being reckless, but it also shows how desperate
Borden is to create a trick that specifically confuses other magicians. As the two men discuss
money and selling tricks, Angier doesn't say much, content to just watch. Cutter and Borden
are working-class people, whose jobs depend on their own success, but Angier comes from
money and doesn't feel the need to engage.
Tellingly, the audience doesn't figure into their conversation. Cutter keeps mentioning
money, while Borden pushes for the act of creation, performance and magic as the highest
ideal, something only other magicians can understand. To confuse another practitioner
is the highest praise, and Angier will spend the rest of the film suitably scratching his
head over Borden's Transported Man trick.
Cutter tells Angier and Borden that if they want to see what it takes to do "real magic,"
they need to go see Chung Ling Soo, who can make a full fish tank appear on stage.
Borden and Angier go, and afterwards, the pair watch the old man dodder into a cab.
"This is the trick. This is the performance. Right here. This is why no one can detect
his method."
As he speaks, the camera zooms into Borden's face to underscore the seriousness of what
he's saying. We're watching a confession, Borden recognizing a fellow practitioner willing
to shape his entire life around the performance of magic.
Once again, he never mentions the audience, only the art, the sacrifice. It's empowering
for him to see that his trick can work. Later, Angier will show off the trick for his wife
Julia, but he does it half-mockingly, in disbelief that anyone could or would want to do it.
"It's unthinkable. Borden saw it at once, but I couldn't fathom it. Living my whole
life pretending to be someone else."
It's a key foreshadowing of why Angier will be the only one who can't believe Borden uses
a double. The self-sacrifice, the pretending...he admits right there that it's unthinkable to
him.
When Julia drowns in the water tank, Angier becomes obsessed with finding out the truth
behind which knot Borden used to tie her wrists, unable to accept that Borden cannot remember.
It's a question that hangs over the men throughout the film, with Borden confessing finally that
even he would never know.
"I have fought with myself over that night. One half of me swearing blind that I tied
a simple slip knot. The other half convinced that I tied the Langford double."
Borden can't give Angier a simple answer about which knot he tied because the twins trade
off on different days. One twin would have tied the simple knot, the other would have
tied the Langford double, but Borden can't say whether he knows, whether it's the Borden
who tied the knot, or the Borden who truly doesn't know which knot he tied. The illusion
requires self-sacrifice.
Of all the characters in The Prestige, Sarah comes the closest to realizing Borden is two
people. She tells Borden early on in the film that she can tell he doesn't always mean it
when he says he loves her.
"Maybe today you're more in love with magic than me. I like being able to tell the difference,
it makes the days it is true mean something."
The surviving Borden, the one who confesses to Angier the secret, is the one who loves
Sarah. The other Borden is the one who falls in love with Olivia, but at this point in
the film, he's not with anyone else, so Sarah guesses that he's in love with "magic" instead.
This is also when Fallon enters the picture, prompting concern from Sarah that they don't
have enough to pay him.
"Don't worry about it. I'll share half my food with him or something."
A clever reference to Fallon sharing half of everything with Borden, immediately before
Sarah tells him that they're going to have a baby.
"We should have told Fallon! That is great. We're having a baby."
The "we" in that sentence is deceptive, since it seems like he's talking about himself and
Sarah, but he's really referencing Fallon-slash-Other Borden, too. They're all having a baby together,
since they shared everything, each living half a life, which includes Sarah and their
daughter.
When Borden begins showing his Transported Man, Angier becomes obsessed with it. Although
Cutter insists it's done with a double, Angier is convinced otherwise. The audience should
believe Cutter, since he's consistently shown to be wise and knowledgeable.
Later, after Olivia and Borden begin their affair, she tells Angier that she found disguise
materials not used for the show, at times Borden couldn't possibly be watching.
We should be listening to these characters, but we're too caught up in Angier's passion.
His attempt to duplicate the trick involves him hiring a double of his own, Gerald Root,
also played by Jackman in a sly nod to Borden's true secret. Root is sleazy, an alcoholic
with too much pride and not enough to live for, a disturbing mirror to the vices that
Angier dabbles with throughout the film.
But though Root is played by Jackman, he can't possibly live like Borden does with his trick.
It rankles Angier to spend his prestige huddled underneath the stage while his double takes
a bow. He's jealous of himself in a way Borden can never be, the self-sacrifice demanded
of real magic too much for him. It pushes him to send Olivia to infiltrate Borden's
trust, leading to disaster for everyone.
Until one of the Borden twins falls in love with Olivia, they're united in their desires.
They achieve success, a family, and the art they dreamed of, but once they fracture, it
leads to strife. Angier kidnaps Fallon and buries him to get the cipher for a fake notebook
of Borden's, thinking this will lead him to the secret behind the Transported Man. It
won't, of course, but the point of the scene is that Fallon's near-death encounter leads
one of the Borden twins to arrive to a dinner date with Sarah stinking drunk with Olivia
along for the ride.
"I had a terrible ordeal today. I thought that something very precious had been lost."
The line is in reference to the other Borden twin's near death experience, but regardless,
the blatant appearance of Olivia pushes Sarah towards alcoholism, and eventually ends with
her taking her own life when she can't stand Borden's lies anymore. The openness with which
Borden conducts his affair with Olivia brings to the fore all the repressed feelings Sarah
was able to push down, forcing her to kill herself rather than fully betray Borden and
reveal his secret.
Of all the plot points in the film,Tesla and his cloning machine receive the most derision.
While it's true that the science-fiction addition is a surprise, it serves a few important points.
First, Tesla and Edison's rivalry mirrors Angier and Borden's, continuing the motif
of reflections and doubles that pervades the movie.
Second, it's symbolic of the corruption of Angier as a magician. He's not disappearing
and bringing himself back, the way the Turn and the Prestige require. He's just copying
himself over and over, killing himself in a sickening penance for the death of his wife
in the same manner.
Finally, in his own way, Angier is ultimately proven right in his assertion that "every
trick can be duplicated." By cloning himself, he's able to duplicate the ultimate trick
of Borden's act, the use of an identical twin. The difference between them is that he'd rather
kill his twin than live his life pretending to be someone he's not.
Angier arrives at Borden's cell to gloat and tear apart the secret to the Transported Man
that he'd so obsessed over throughout the entire movie. Borden gives Fallon a tearful
goodbye, admitting that he was right, that they should've left Angier alone.
"We go alone now. Both of us."
It's the closest the two brothers get to openly speaking to each other, with Borden apologizing
for the way his affair with Olivia led to Sarah's death. Borden's escorted to the hangman's
noose, where he's asked about his final words.
"Abracadabra."
He disappears, but that's not magic. You can't just make something disappear. You have to
bring it back.
Borden shoots Angier, standing alone in a hall of his drowned clones, and lays out the
truth. He was Fallon, and Fallon was Borden, the two men sharing one life. He reiterates
that that's what magic costs, that the art requires devotion and sacrifice, a sacrifice
Angier could never match. All this, he tells him, was for nothing.
Angier tells Borden that he never understood why they did this.
"The audience knows the truth. The world is simple. Miserable."
Angier goes on to explain that if you have the ability to make an audience wonder in
spite of this, then "you got to see something very special."
It's a direct plea to the audience, straight from writers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan,
that the ability to trick the audience, to make them imagine a world like their own,
but different, that exists right at their fingertips. Borden says earlier in the film
that the secret impresses no one, but we're not so sure. Some tricks are even more impressive
once you see the self-sacrifice, the total devotion to the art.
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