"The Prestige" wtf? (spoilers)

[mused01]

[ QUOTE ]
Weird. I rewatched this movie the other night. I had a long debate with a friend about what actually happened, so I watched it again.

Upon second viewing I'm even more convinced the film is brilliant. The whole thing is a trick on the audience and I feel like the vast majority of people who watch it buy into it.

lolotrickedu

[/ QUOTE ]

are you talking about the big coincidence with tesla?

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
Its worth watching this a second time just to watch Bale's performance. Once you know what's going on, you can actually see subtle differences between his two characters.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes! I was a very big fan of that.

As for the finish, I agree that the film is very clear in suggesting that there's an explanation for everything; Caine's voiceover saying, basically, "you probably don't give enough of a [censored] to figure out what just happened," seems like it's supposed to be the provocation to get you to figure out how the ending isn't a total cheat.

Now, one thing that occurs to me, is that one of the central messages of the film is a willingness to live a lie in order to preserve the integrity of the art. So I think it's worth questioning what evidence there is for the cloning. It is only ever explicitly referenced by Angier, who can't be a very trustworthy narrator. And certainly, an Angier substitute was drowned in the tank underneath the stage. (Is the body we see at the end the same one? That wouldn't make much sense, but it seems the only other possibilities are cloning or a dummy commissioned by Angier to help him keep up the secret.)

For a long time, I found this unsatisfactory. Because how does Angier know to put the water tank under the stage the one time that Borden actually shows up? If there's no cloning, then it would seem like you have to involve some kind of prescience instead to allow for everything, which isn't any better as a solution. But, thinking about it now, the tank could be there every time. It's just that this time, it locks, and there's nobody there to unlock it. So, with that piece of preparation out of the way, it becomes a more manageable problem to convert the knowledge that Borden is there into a smaller shift in the routine that leads to Angier2 getting drowned.

But who is his confederate that tips him off to Borden? Is the blind stagehand supposed to be letting Angier2 out of the tank? These questions still seem vague. And it's unclear in the final stretch who the narrator is, which generally the movie is pretty explicit about through the journal tricks. Is it Michael Caine? If so, is he giving an honest portrayal at the end? At this point, my interest in the problem wanes, because without at least some level of trust in what the film asserts I can posit anything I like and there's not evidence to say one way or the other what happened. I had the same problem with The Usual Suspects, but I watched that a long time ago and maybe my opinion would change now.

[traz]

What? As said in this thread, I thought it was pretty clear that an Angier clone was dying in the tank every performance

[4thstreetpete]

[ QUOTE ]
This was the most confusing movie I have ever seen in my life. It jumped around so much, I did not know which character I was even watching half the time. I spent most of the scenes trying to figure out which guy was which.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was the same way. Watched it and was like WTF??? Got to
the ending and had no clue what was going on. Came to this thread and now it's even more confusing. Was there a clone or wasn't there? WTF happened? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[kurosh]

I think that if some of you guys read up about Nikola Tesla, the movie will seem much better.

[peachy]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So the one in the tank was the original? Did he use the machine right before Bale showed up?

[/ QUOTE ]

every night he preformed a clone died.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know this thread is old, but Im just now reading through because it was bumped, so sorry if this was already said a year ago!!


What I got from this was that he had to have courage every night because he didnt know if it was "him" or the clone that would end up in the water drowning every night, therefore it took immense sacrifice and courage knowing he might be killing himself, and if so, then the clone would live on just as he was and make the same choices again, with the person drowning being the new self or a clone randomly. Maybe I was all off on this. The rest of the movie I followed fine, but this is just what I got at the end.

And no I dont think Caine's character knew about the "twins" until the end because of his shocked reaction and his determination to figure out the trick earlier on. His lack of surprise in the end was due to a feeling of justification for the way Jackman's character behaved and satisfaction in returning a daughter to her rightful father, etc.


I loved Tesla being added to the movie, and I loved that David Bowie played him even more. He was just as weird and secretive in real life, which the movie portrayed him great IMO. He built weird machines like that, and produced all kinds of weird ways to make/create electricity (he really did experiments with wireless electricity similar to that portrayed in the snow in the movie), and spent an obscene fortune doing all these things and more. If you didnt know much about him, read a little, it will make you appreciate his character a little more if you didnt like him in the movie. To me, it actually made the crazy turn in the plot (the cloning) MORE believable because of who Tesla was, and linked it into our history as an event that could have actually occurred.

Here...if you dont want to go digging. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
Its short and simple. Seriously, I think it will make you appreciate that part of the movie and the twist more! He was a nut no doubt, but an amazingly brilliant man by far.

[kurosh]

Peachy a closet Tesla fan??? Didn't see that one coming.

[Yeti]

[thesilkworm]

[ QUOTE ]


[/ QUOTE ]

lol, so I'm not the only one that gets this image in my head whenever I read the word "Tesla" in this thread.

[gumpzilla]

[ QUOTE ]
What? As said in this thread, I thought it was pretty clear that an Angier clone was dying in the tank every performance

[/ QUOTE ]

So this is the twist of true magic in the movie? Don't you think it's more likely (given that the entire movie is about stage magic and deception, and that Michael Caine character pointedly alludes to the end of the movie being the culmination of a magic trick) that there's a naturalistic explanation? Besides, part of the point of my post was to question how we "know" this. Since nobody but Angier ever discusses the cloning, and the movie is full of magicians keeping ridiculous, over the top secrets to protect their art (the goldfish bowl guy, the Bordens), one has to at least consider that Angier is feeding the clone story as [censored] to conceal the secret of his superior Transported Man act, even as he dies.

If the planned explanation really is "Oh, yeah, you can totally clone things. Duh," then the movie is one hell of an aggravating copout with some nice performances. If the explanation is that there's supposed to be enough evidence to show how the trick was worked within the confines of reality, then the movie rules. My feeling is that it's probably somewhere in between - there is a naturalistic explanation, obviously, but we aren't given quite enough in the movie to construct it, and need to fill in the blanks ourselves.