Cinema 1544: The As-Official-As-It-Gets Site

For her second film, Taylor took a stab in the dark with a film she hadn’t seen.  Let’s be real, it wasn’t a stab in the dark, it was more that she blindfolded herself, spun herself around until she puked, randomly threw a dart, and managed to hit the bullseye.  You know, metaphorically.  And that bullseye that she hit just happened to be the very best Christopher Nolan film, at least that I’ve seen. I’ll leave the door very slightly open for Oppenheimer, but let’s be honest.  Inception, Tenet, and Interstellar are all kind of hot messes, the Batman films are stylish but they’re comic book films, the time cutting in Dunkirk is clever but actually detracts from the impact of the film, and Memento, as good as it is, comes in second.  That’s right, Nolan’s very best film is the 2006 revenge-flick-posing-as-a-magician-vehicle known as The Prestige.

Although Nolan just can’t avoid playing around with the linearity of the narrative a bit – as with Tarantino, I think it’s just a genetic condition – for the most part the timeline of the film was pretty straightforward.  Instead, the film relies on developing three major themes – dedication to one’s craft, deception, and of course, revenge.

I do not like it, Sam I Am

The film opens with a scene that at first goes unexplained as the camera pans silently over a strange field of hats.

Forty-winking in the belfry

We then watch one of our two (kind of!) co-antagonists Alfred Borden, in disguise, acting as a member of the audience and inspecting the device about to be used in Robert Angier’s (our other co-antagonist) greatest magic trick – The Real Transported Man.  Instead of returning to the audience, Borden hustles below the stage, where he finds a water-filled escape tank hidden beneath a trap door.  As the trick is run, Angier falls into the escape tank, the door closes upon him, and he drowns.  So much for that trick, right?

Well, the next bit we see is Borden on trial for Angier’s murder, under the theory that Borden has maliciously placed the tank under the trap door.  We next see Borden convicted, in prison, being visited by a representative for an amateur magician, Lord Caldlow, who is offering both to buy Borden’s secrets (including his famous trick The Transported Man) and to take custody of Borden’s daughter, who will otherwise become a ward of the state.

This way.  Don’t follow the lights!

This representative, in turn, hands Borden Angier’s (fake) diary, which allows us to transport say halfway back in the film to a time shortly before the hat scene when Angier – in possession of Borden’s (fake) diary – has traveled to Colorado Springs to meet Nikola Tesla under the impression that the inventor created a machine that underlies Borden’s trick.

It’s an *illusion*.  Tricks are what prostitutes turn for money.

Finally we get a chance to jump back all the way to the beginning of the film, and see the genesis of this long revenge arc.  It begins with Borden and Angier both working – frequently as audience plants – under the employ of a senior stage magician Cutter.  One of their tricks is a standard one – dropping a tied up female assistant (in this case, Angier’s wife Julia) into a water-filled escape tank, from which she dutifully escapes (while behind a curtain) in a short time.  There comes, however, some backstage discussion about which knot ought to be used – a discussion which will ultimately result in tragedy.  You see, if the looser knot is used, she may slip while being hoisted, and fall and break her legs on the stage, but if the better knot is used, she may not be able to slip it in the tank…

First to fall over when the atmosphere is less than perfect/Your sensibilities are shaken by the slightest defect

Before the tragedy, however, we’ve got a few things to get through.  First, Cutter sends his two somewhat-rival understudies to learn how a old Chinese magician performs an act where a large goldfish bowl – complete with water and goldfish – appears on a table when it is briefly obscured by a cape.  Borden insists that the magician is initially holding the bowl between his knees under his robe costume.  Angier insists that this can’t possibly be true, as they can see the magician in public and he is clearly an old, feeble man who can hardly walk – but Borden is the one who is able to realize that this is the real trick.  The man is not feeble, but he lives his entire life as if he were – complete self-sacrifice to his craft.

But there’s a reason Borden can see this while Angier cannot – and I may as well come out with it now even though the movie won’t come out with it for another two hours: Borden is himself living in complete self-sacrifice looking forward to a time when he can perform a great magic trick.  And that sacrifice is this: there are TWO Bordens – identical twins – but they live effectively a single life, with one or the other at all times disguised as Fallon, Borden’s assistant.

You know, I read somewhere that giraffes have the same number of cervical vertebrae as humans

The second thing (as we continue to establish backstory) is that one of the Bordens falls in love with Sarah, who he met at one of his own shows.  She has brought her nephew, who (rightly) becomes distressed at the collapsing birdcage trick.  “You killed him!” he cries, and refuses to be comforted even after Borden produces what would appear to be the same bird, unharmed.  “But where’s his brother?” cries the young boy, presciently.

The Escape Tank at Otter Creek

But back to our tragedy.  One night at the show, Borden, getting the cue from Julia, evidently ties the tighter knot.  Julia is unable to slip it, and before the time the crew is able to rescue her from teh tank, she has drowned.

At Julia’s funeral, Cutter tells Angier that he knew a sailor that had nearly drowned once, and that when he came to, he said it didn’t hurt – that it was like going home. Meanwhile one of the Bordens (let’s allow “Borden” to shorthand that from now on) appears at the funeral (probably a bad call), but is unable to tell which knot he tied, enraging Angier.

Somebody did NOT pay attention to their 7th grade woodshop teacher

And so, with Angier’s life in the dumps and Borden on the rise, with a new wife and a young girl, Angier decides to show up in disguise to Borden’s show and sabotage his bullet-catch trick by actually putting a bullet in the gun.  Of course, Fallon should have recognized Angier and never selected him from the audience, but so it goes.  Fallon realizes quickly enough and manages to divert the shot – just enough that Borden is not killed, but loses two fingers.  And of course, that means that both Bordens have to suffer the same fate (though again, the film doesn’t tell us this just yet).

I shall make this bird disappear…and the dove too!

So, with Borden convalescing, it’s Angier’s time to rise.  He gets a new assistant, Olivia, and Cutter (now disgraced by the death of Julia in his act and unemployable) brings in Angier with his great stage presence as the face of his newest acts, where he designs the props.  One prop that he designs is a new version of the collapsing birdcage trick that doesn’t actually kill the bird, as Angier is reluctant, for now, to “get his hands dirty”.  But of course, what happens but that Borden, in disguise, comes up as an audience member and sabotages this trick, injuring the other audience member and killing the bird – and getting Angier’s new show cancelled.

The last illusion is the longest

Finally, Borden is able to set up his great trick – The Transported Man – in which he disappears into one cabinet (while tossing a little rubber ball towards a second) and then emerges from the second cabinet to catch the ball.  Of course, knowing the Borden spoiler, this trick is very simple to explain, but Angier is mystified.  Cutter insists that he uses a double, but both Angier and Olivia insist that it’s the same man.  Despite Angier’s reluctance, Cutter manages to find a double (conveniently played by Hugh Jackman) named Root, an out-of work actor and drunkard who nonetheless looks remarkably like Angier.  “I don’t need him to be my brother, I need him to be me,” Angier says, and holy shit is that one of the best foreshadowing lines in history.  And so, Angier – a much better showman than Borden – kicks off his version of the trick, which is a great hit.  But the problem is that Angier’s showmanship is needed for the show, which means that it’s Root who takes the bow at the end when Angier is hidden under the trapdoor.  Angier can’t stand not being on stage for the applause, which is problem number one. So he sends Olivia to Borden in a staged defection to have her learn his secret.  Problem number two, however, is that Olivia truly defects, and helps Borden find Root and convince him that the show depends upon him as the double – ultimately resulting in Root making financial demands and finally in Borden (once again) sabotaging Angier’s show – this time for good.

First time?

But Olivia convinces Angier that she’s still on his side – at least a bit – and gives him a fake diary of Borden’s, in code, knowing that Angier will go to extremes to learn the cipher.  And he does – he kidnaps Fallon, burying him alive to get the cipher to the diary from Borden. The cipher?  “TESLA.”  Borden manages to dig Fallon out in time, of course.

You know how I know that’s a dirty book?

And so, as Borden is falling in love with Olivia (or at least one of him), Angier follows the fake diary, goes in search of Nikola Tesla, and asks him to build a Transported Man machine just as the diary claims Tesla has done for Borden.  It’s a nice diversion to get Angier out of town, but as it turns out Tesla in fact does attempt to create a teleportation machine for Angier.

Palpatine, not the scale model again!

The machine, however, seems to not work, and when Angier finally learns that the diary is a fake and that Tesla never in fact built a machine for Borden, he believes that his money is being stolen from him, and decides to abandon the project.  However, this is just the time that Tesla, uncertain why his machine has not been working on Angier’s hat – which he has tried dozens of times – tries instead on a cat.  Again, it appears not to work, and the cat runs off, only to attract Angier’s attention to a pile of hats outside…and a second cat.  It turns out that the machine was not only teleporting its target but also creating a copy which remains in place.  Well, to be fair, which is the copy, and which remains in place?  There’s no real answer.  Both copies are real.

And so begins the painful decay of the film.  Sarah, believing (partially correctly) that Borden is sleeping with Olivia, hangs herself.  Meanwhile Angier with his new machine begins the end of his Borden obsession with The Real Transported Man – a trick that Borden cannot possibly ignore.  But we know what Borden does not – that each time the trick is run, Angier both is transported, and Angier dies, drowning beneath the stage in a locked escape tank.  And Angier runs the trick over and over, killing himself nightly until Borden takes the bait and is framed – and ultimately hanged – for his murder.

But when Cutter, in his attempt to buy and destroy the machine that caused the death of his protégé, learns that Lord Caldlow, the purchaser of all of Borden’s secrets, is Angier in disguise he guesses the secret of the machine and – somehow already knowing Borden’s secret (I haven’t figured out that one yet) – leads Borden-as-Fallon to Angier’s theater where he is hiding all the bodies (literally), where Borden shoots Angier and explains the mystery, finally revealing to the audience in the Villain’s Monologue about the secret of the twins.  The End.

Everything comes in parallel in this movie.  Like, everything.  We’ve got Angier’s wife drowning in an escape tank, followed by hundreds of Angiers.  We’ve got dueling fake diaries.  We’ve got dueling magicians appearing in disguise to sabotage their opponent’s act; we’ve got dueling magicians appearing in disguise for other reasons.  We’ve got Borden’s ability to identify the self-sacrifice of the Chinese magician because he knows about self-sacrifice for this craft (and this before one of the Bordens has to sacrifice his fingers).  We’ve got the trick that replaces the bird with his brother, and the trick that replaces the magician with his brother; we’ve got the trick that kills the bird, and the trick that kills the magician.  And of course, we’ve got two brothers trying to lead the same life.

The hints that the film drops about its own secret are uncountable.  There must be 50 or 100 of them, subtle and oblique references that you just can’t see until you know the answer.  Alfred Borden, it seems, is simply a man torn between two natures, until we realize how he is really torn.  This is one of those films that needs three viewings, and gets better on each one.  Simply a masterpiece, and, as I said, Nolan’s best.