The Prestige

I highly recommend this movie for anyone who would love to follow along with a mysterious thriller that deals with magic and illusion. We have a philosophy assignment on it, and I can't help but talk about it outside of the assignment, too. So I figured that this would be a great place to do that. There are going to be major spoiler alerts, of course, so if you haven't seen the movie and are thinking about it, definitely stop reading right now, and go watch the movie.

For those who have seen it, I want you to consider the final few minutes. This is where we see Angier perform his final trick, The Real Transported Man, where he literally transports himself across the theatre. Or does he? I'm not so convinced that Angier is actually transported. The key to this question lies in two factors - the trap door, and the trial run that Angier performs. During the trial run, Angier is duplicated, and this duplicate Angier appears about 10 feet from the real Angier. The real Angier shoots and kills the duplicate. Pay attention to where the real Angier is in this scene, however - he hasn't moved from his spot in the machine. This implies that he would stay in that one spot every time the machine is run, and that the duplicate that is created is in a different location.

Alright, so the duplicate Angier is in a different location each time the machine is run. It would then follow that when Angier performs the trick for the first time during his act, that the real Angier falls through the trap door to the water tank, where he subsequently dies. If this is the case, then the duplicate Angier is transported to the top of the balcony, to be seen by everyone applauding. It seems as though this "new" Angier knows everything the previous one did, and acts like him, etc. (Sidenote: Root, Angier's double for his tricks, isn't involved in the end at all.) So the trick is performed n times, there are a total of n+1 Angiers, but the only living Angier is the most recent duplicate from the most recent machine run. This is also true for the Angier who talks to Borden at the end. (For the record, this is the real Borden as well - his twin, the one who loved Olivia, was the one who was hanged.)

So amidst the convolution at the end of the movie, the real Robert Angier died a while ago, the real Borden was alive the entire time, and Cutter is still the man. I can't wait to watch this movie again and follow the movie from the beginning, with my knowledge of the end.

(Sidenote #2: I love how that works out (watching movies after the first time). It's the same thing with Inception. The first time I saw Inception, I was totally blown away by everything, but each time I saw the movie afterward, I used what happened at the end of the movie to determine what was going on in the beginning and middle of the movie. I still haven't figured out Inception yet, but I have my theories. But that's another blog post for another time, perhaps.)