sourabh sarkar or Looper is just dried up on material, the ending as awesome as it is, doesn’t really need a UA-cam video explanation. Nolan explains everything at the end and it’s really not that complex, but it is highly effective and still one of my favorite endings
For me the greatest scene in this movie was when Cutter told Angier the story about the sailor who almost drowned was a lie, and that he didnt felt like going home but actually it was agonizing. You can see Angier realizing what he (the other Angiers who died) went through. Also when Borden went under the stage you can see how desperate Angier was to get out of the cage. Truly underrated movie
@@therebel4332 If we are talking about acting performances, I would say American Psycho actually. He gave the best performance of the year 2000. Bale should have won the Oscar over Russell Crowe who should have won for A Beautiful Mind a year later rather than Gladiator. American Psycho is Bale's best acting performance along with The Prestige a close second and Vice a close third.
this video misses an obvious detail about sarah's pregnancy announcement which is even shown in the video: when borden says "we should've told fallon" it's because the brother acting as fallon at the time was the father. after all, this was the borden who "didn't mean it today" when he told sarah he loved her.
@@timothygarcia3192 Yes she knew. This was what she was saying that she knew his secret and that she couldn't live like that anymore. Also this was what the news was that she wanted to say to Olivia but Olivia never went to meet with her.
When the boy asked: "but where is his brother?", I knew he had to be a twin. The line seemed to important, I knew Nolan was making a point there. And later on, the "I love you today/not today"....made it pretty clear. At the end, one twin is saccrificed, just like with the birds, for the sake of the illusion, but also to be able to live a full life and because of the love for his child. Angier saccrifices himself, over and over again, because the illusion and the admiration from the public was more important for him. It was not because of his wifes dead, it was for his ego.
You missed out on discussing the deception of Robert Angier. Lord Caldlow isn't Robert Angier's alias. Robert Angier is Lord Caldlow's alias. Angier's wife stated that Robert was playing someone else, where he replied that he would not embarrass his family with his theatrical endeavours. He is also independently wealthy. At the end of the film, Robert Angier revealed his true identity with his true accent. An English lord from the prestigious Caldlow family.
It's exactly like Cutter said - he knows how he did it but Angier couldn't accept it. It was too simple, he wanted to believe in something greater, we all did which is why we couldn't see it until the end.
@@Stiitchjones The Fallon part was to show how dedicated they were to the craft...the whole Tesla angle was ingenious.... especially because sending Angier to him was part of an elaborate scheme meant to just frustrate and make him waste time and money. The final exchange between them really hits on how utterly crazy both were at trying to one up the other.
Yeah I remember towards the end when borden says to Fallon "you have to live for both of us" that's when I realised they were twins as you never really hear/or see much from Fallon throughout the entirety of the movie.
@@lordfarquad8337 at first I thought maybe Borden created one clone of himself using Tesla's machine but realized i was wrong...I think that part is why so many people think there's more to the story. The whole Borden/Tesla angle...but in the end, Borden was simply sharing a life with his twin and it turned out that Tesla was actually capable of making a machine that could replicate living beings.
Every Christopher Nolan movies ending is difficult to understand but that's why I love his movies because he is neo noir director like he's from the future.
@@Bootoomee what the hell are you even talking about. All I'm saying that there are no other directors like him on earth. All the directors make the happy endings or sad endings but Christopher Nolan takes it another direction he makes ending between happy and sad.
@@southpark645 I pay attention to his all movies god damn it. I'm 17 years old I watched almost all the movies he directed. Don't say I don't understand his movies.
@Thomas Pickens The movie doesn't explain if the machine makes a copy elsewhere or the original is transported leaving a sort of an "after-image" in it's original place so we don't know who is who. We do know that the ORIGINAL Angier died for sure but we don't know when that happened (either during the first dry-run when the away version got shot or during the first "entrapment" show when the in-machine version got drowned). From then on we know that each new cycle drowns the in-machine version but we still don't know if the surviving version is the very first clone of the original or the Nth clone of the N-1 clone.
@Thomas Pickens And? The hat not moving doesn't exclude the possibility where the original is teleported while leaving behind the copy as an after-image making the impression of the object not moving at all. They were trying to achieve a "transportation" device after all, not a copying machine.
@Thomas Pickens It appears that you are reading selectively as I already explained twice how it would work. I suppose there is no point in continuing this dialogue further.
Guys if you look closely of was kind of life story of Tesla and Edison, Tesla being Borden and Edison being Angier. Angier robs ideas from other people and tell his own (what Edison did with light bulb). Whereas Borden through a lot of sacrifices does his trick (exactly what Tesla had to face). Nolan is truly a great director
He forgot the Angier secretly wanted to die the same way his wife did, in a way to know how she felt in her last moments. He just couldn't commit to it.
One of the most powerful quotes in this movie, that shows his obsession with Bordens Secret is the "I don't care about my wife" line. I don't think his wife was that important to him, just the idea of his wife. The idea that started his obsession.
Olivia never knew about the twins. If she did she wouldn't have minded Scarlet Johansson being with Falon/Second Twin. Its the split personality she can't take.
There was no split personality as we all know by now. But on rewatching it’s cool to know when they (the twins) were switching. When the twin she fell in love with told her he loved her she knew he meant it.
Or she eventually found out (the scene where she tells one of the borden that she knows who he really is and borden says you can't talk like this hints that she knew and borden knew that she knew) and after figuring it out herself she just couldn't believe that she was lied to their whole marriage and couldn't trust him again.. I mean imagine being married to a person and having a kid and then finding out that there was a secret twin switching roles... no one would be just fine with that
@@black9085 THAT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE THAT SHE COMMITTED SUICIDE AS A SOLUTION FOR FINDING OUT THE TRUTH. Borden's twin brother loved Olivia, and Borden couldn't afford for Sarah to know the truth so he told her to shutup. He couldn't let fallen lose Olivia. So Sarah distraught with the truth killed herself because she didn't know how to handle being with someone who lived a double life. Olivia caught on quicker than Sarah when she mentioned to Angier about Borden wearing fake hair and a disguise. Hence why at the restaurant she told fallen she couldn't trust him anymore because he was living a double life
The moment i noticed the trick i was like: Ok, that is why he instandly said that the Asian is just playing a role and that this is his trick... "that guy is really commited and that is his illusion". And YES, that is why the knots someday work and someday they dont... and the wife said that he sometimes is like a different person. MIND BLOWN!
I don’t understand why Borden couldn’t just go to Fallon and ask “Hey bud, what knot did you tie the night Julia drowned in front of a live audience? Asking for a friend....”
Better still, why didn't Angier and Cutter just look at what the knot was when they were over Julia's dead body. It would have been the very first thing on everybody's minds ! (they didn't because of plot convenience)
Heard a theory about this movie recently that blew my mind, and it makes so much sense, and if it's what the Nolans actually intended, then this movie is just a masterpiece of storytelling sleight of hand and is low-key Nolan's best movie. And I'm a HUGE fan of The Dark Knight, so that's big coming from me. The teleportation machine didn't actually work. Think about it... everything else about this story is totally realistic. It's not a science fiction movie. The teleportation/cloning stuff being real is a pretty big leap for the story to take, when the movie is otherwise totally about... magic tricks! ... aka, deception. Convincing people that something extraordinary is possible, when it's really just an illusion. The first thing to realize is that Angier's diary that Borden is reading? Almost everything in it is bullshit that Angier made up to trick Borden. Angier's a MAJORLY unreliable narrator in this movie. Tesla did actually work on a teleportation machine... but he abandoned it. Not because it was too dangerous, as Angier claims... but because it didn't work. The real part of the conversation that we do see between Angier and Tesla, Tesla essentially tells him that he's just obsessed. But through Angier's unreliable narration, we're convinced this scene is Tesla just giving a fair warning before proceeding... but the reality was most likely that Tesla told him he's crazy and this isn't going to work. And Tesla was right. As usual. The ACTUAL way Angier did the trick? The same way he did it the first time. He used the actor double they found. We're left to assume that he left or they let him go because he was difficult and whatnot, and Angier wasn't happy with doing the trick that way... but no. Angier kept using him, he just started doing a better job of keeping him hidden... even from us. THAT'S who dies in the tank that Borden is framed for. The drowning only actually happened once. For every other performance, the actor probably just fell into a crash mat like we saw in the earlier version of the trick. That's why he's freaking out as he drowns... it's not an Angier clone pretending for Borden's benefit. It's the actor freaking out about drowning in a tank he didn't expect to be there this time, because he was expecting a crash mat again. The times we see the drowning happening during Angier's explanation/confession montage? All just imagined images to convince us that Angier's claims were real. Those scenes we see in flashback of Angier using the machine the first time, shooting the duplicate, then "going into the machine every night, not knowing if I'd be dead or be the prestige..." ALL of that is bullshit that Angier is feeding Borden to keep him believing that he actually achieved something, other than framing Borden's twin. He needs him to believe the teleportation machine actually worked. He convinces Cutter of this too, because he doesn't want Cutter knowing that he murdered a real man, the actor that Cutter himself found and brought to Angier. Telling him that he just killed a clone of himself makes it seem less horrible. He doesn't want anybody knowing how the trick was REALLY done. All the tanks we see at the end? They're all empty, if you look closely. The only one with an "Angier" in it is the one with the dead actor still in it, which is the only one Nolan focuses clearly on to give us some misdirection into thinking all the other tanks have the same. They don't. That's what Borden is realizing at the end. He turns around and looks closely at the rest of the tanks for the first time, realizing they're empty. Angier didn't have a real teleportation machine... but he DID succeed in pulling off the greatest magic trick. Convincing everybody, even us the audience... that the teleportation machine was real. If this is the Nolans' actual intent (or Christopher Priest's, though I'm pretty sure the book is pretty different, and honestly this feels totally like Johnathan Nolan's type of storytelling, based on season 1 of Westworld and its endless twists and deeper levels to things)... then wow. Just wow. Amazingly well done, because yeah... everybody seems to come away from this movie thinking the teleportation machine was real, and that the brilliant reveal is all about how the great length Angier went to was killing himself every night. But the actual reveal is that the great length he went to was murdering an innocent man and lying to everybody, including Cutter. When Cutter tells him that drowning is agony, we're left to assume that Angier's look of guilt is him realizing what he was subjecting the different versions of himself to every night... but it's actually his guilt about what he did to the actor. "It takes everything." is referring to his morality about being a murderer just frame Borden and steal his trick while lying to everybody just to keep the secret... not to killing himself. This is why Cutter's narration tells us "You won't find (the real answer). You're not really looking. You want to be fooled." This narration comes as the hats are shown, then over the final images of the tanks. We won't realize the tanks are empty, because we're not really looking at them. We won't realize the hats weren't really cloned, because we're not really looking at reality when we see them. That's another figment of Angier's imagination in the diary. We want to believe the teleportation machine was real, because it's fun to believe in outlandish things like that. We want magic to be real. We don't want to realize the real horror and relatively mundane explanation for what happened... We want the movie to fool us. And it did. But the REALLY brilliant thing about it is that it works either way. The movie is great and works whether you believe the teleportation was real or not. You can fall for the fake twist and unreliable narration, and still enjoy the movie and feel like you got the reveal and everything. Then years later, someone on Quora asks "What's the most misunderstood plot device in a movie?" and someone responds with a brilliant breakdown of this theory about the teleportation machine, and my mind is blown so much I have to spread it to others to help appreciate this movie even more. Amazing.
Really great theory but if that guy (who was still) in the tank is not a clone and/or is (Root) Angier's double, then who's that corpse in the morgue? Cutter was there looking at it.
I like the idea, but I don't think it works as well as you think it does. For one, as someone else explained, it was shown when presenting in front of the retired magician, that one Angier disappeared who the magician's been talking to for a little bit, and a second one appeared right behind him and talked just like Angier. And also, it was previously shown that the actor does not talk like Angier at all, so Angier talking before and after the trick would not work if it was the body double.
The prison guards would not have neccessarily been privy to seeing Angier's body at the theater or the morgue. Additionally, this was not the television age or even the newspaper age with photography within its pages, so a small minorty of folks would have a specific exposure to, and knowledge of, Angier's image.
I think I found a new detail. Angier says it is a 50/50 chance he'll end up in the tank. The very last shot shows what I think is the original Angier, not just another clone. Look at the expression on his face, he's not scared, there's no fear, it's a look of disappointment. Compare that to the fear the "clones" display, they are terrified.
This line MAY be a plot-hole. There's no 50/50 chance. The Angier performing the trick ends up in the tank 100% of the time. Angier presents the trick knowing that he will die by drowning.
@@tooleyheadbang4239 I think he's just referring to his own consciousness. That is, he's unsure if his next moment will be experiencing the agony of drowning, or the glory of the prestige atop the theatre balcony. The clone is an exact copy after all, so both men retain the memories of the moment right before entering the machine. In that sense, I guess you can think of it as 50/50.
I don't think the other guy was named Fallon, as the surviving brother says that they played Fallon, alternatively even. It makes more sense to call them Albert and Frederick (the Freddie line would make sense as well), as in the book.
This movie is so good. Movies with big twists usually have a shelf life of rewatchability. But this transcends that, yes the twists really give it that umpf but its just such a joy to rewatch even many times after watching. I remember when I first watched it I had to keep rewatching to catch the little things. But than when that ran out I kept coming back, and it was even more enjoyable. Its truly an underrated masterpiece, great story, intriguing personal relationships heightened only by the great acting. This movie keeps you engaged even when know the ending
The movie is just like the narrator says: Now you’re looking for the trick, but you’re not really looking because you want to be tricked. The fact that Borden and his brother was what the notebook was talking about, we didn’t really see that, instead we tricked ourselves into thinking it was about Borden and Angier.
You know, if you watch closely, you can see Borden is like having a split identity. Sometimes he looks like a wise man and loving husband. Sometimes you reckless, hothead man. If you can see it, you will know they are two Borden
The cunning & craftiness of an eduated rich man and his resources, make him seem impressively powerful.....but a poor man's raw zeal to survive and unwitting capacity for innovation, wields a formidable contestant. Who might be triumphant in the end?
Insane. This film for me is the definition of Cinema. The endless possibilities of executing one's thoughts/ideas and making the masses believe in the unbelievable.
Watched this movie recently and got very confused. It felt like for the whole movie that Nolan wanted to take a serious, realistic tone but Angier using a cloning device was such a drastic leap of faith it left me clueless till the credits began to roll. Once I've accepted it, however, and watched it a second time it felt like a completely different movie to me. That's Nolan's magic right there, it's never the surprise twist, it's the genius build-up that makes his movies so special.
Never heard of this movie until last year, finally got to watch it! So basically Angier keeps committing suicide for the trick after cloning himself, but with his memories intact and pretty much just transported somewhere "mentally"...come to think of it, does that still count as teleportation when it's only your mind and soul getting transferred and not your physical self? Anyway, this movie did something few managed to do: no villain and no hero. Both of them feels just as much a villain or a hero as the other. Such an epic movie easily missed by most!
Actually Angier isn't just teleporting. His splitting into two identical beings. At movie finale he said to Borden about sacrifice that after every performance he never knows if he becomes man in the box or man at prestige. When Angier uses machine for the first time we can see how one copy tries to reason with the other with gun, so Angier is fully aware of consciousness of "clone" (but none is clone and original at the same time). The same moral dilemma is tackled in horror game Soma, I recommend checking it plot if this topic is interesting you, because game explains whole idea much better.
I would argue there is a good guy-the Bordon that survives (Alfred). The one that dies (Freddy) is the one who did all of the abhorrent things. Freddy tied the knot that killed Juliet (hence why Alfred didn’t know), Freddy was verbally abusive to his wife, Freddy killed Danton’s bird and broke the woman’s finger, Freddy cheated on his wife and eventually drove her to suicide. Freddy didn’t even care about his brothers happiness, as he showed no remorse for his actions.
You forgot to mention the part where Cutter told Angier that his sailor friend said it was agonizing to drown. Angier appeared troubled when Cutter said it
I had the luxury of showing this film to my GF (she had never seen it) and while watching it, I got to pick out all the hidden hints during the film. All the while hoping my GF wouldn’t notice them. At the end of the film she loved the twist, and kept asking me about all the hints :)
Watched this movie for the first time yesterday (12th march 2022), i cant believe I hadn’t seen it before! Was chatting to a friend about how the i felt the latest batman by Reeves wasn’t as good as Nolan’s batman and the conversation led to Nolan’s other movies, majority of which I have seen but had never heard of this one! It was definitely a lot easier to follow and fairly well explained by the end unlike others which left me confused as hell until rewatching (inception, interstellar, tenant) Some great comments here, specifically the one which pointed out that Lord Caldlow was actually the real person and Angiers was his alias! That explained why money was no issue when he had Tesla make the machine!
@@eireyouok101 The man in the iron mask/ count of monte Cristo/ the illusionist and shawshank are in my top 5 movies and this is like all of them in one movie.
There is one more scene where they hint that there might be a twin- When bordan first met sarah he was outside but when sarah closes the door he was inside
Everybody has something different. Something unique. It is something that differentiates the outside world from the one within. It could be everything, but not everything at the same time. The way of thinking. The way of talking. The way of listening. Painting. Writing. Singing. Dreaming. Leading. Following. Holding on. Letting go. Living the moment. Never forgetting. Dancing. Keeping calm. Standing still. Fighting. The way of carrying the ideas... If only I had time to mention them all. Is infinite. Being unique is infinite. We don’t have to be good in everything. We don’t even have to try to be good in everything. “Everything” is flat. It is so general. Something-“Something” is special. That something that can be touched, seen, felt or heard. That something that fills the soul so much that you forget about ‘everything’. We don’t have to look different, sound different or be different. We just have to feel different,and everything else follows.
When I watched it I was shocked to see Bale had a twin late in movie when it was so obvious and right in front of me. Definitely one of Nolans best movies.
Just watched it today 25/12/2020, what a movie, rewatched the first hour just to see all the hidden pieces and especially the pile of hats in the first shot that you couldn't know the meaning behind at first. Absolutely brilliant film
Today I realized that the Nolan Brothers stole the idea of the Tesla Teleportation/Clone machine from a 1995 Novelette called "Think like a Dinosaur". In the Novelette they have a machine that will teleport a person to a different planet in an instant but it doesn't move the actual person the the plantet just a copy. So the original person is still on earth but the machine is set to incinerate once the duplicate is confirmed from the distant planet.
There is only one plot point which confuses me a lot. It was Borden who *led* Angier to Tesla. Does that mean Borden knew Tesla was somebody capable of making a machine which could duplicate people? Or was that just to mislead Angier and by sheer coincidence or accident Tesla turned out to be competent enough to build the machine that Angier wanted.
I thought it meant that his twin was created by a machine that Tesla made. Borden didn't lead him astray, he told the truth. They allude to it a few times in the movie. Borden wasn't able to kill his clone while Angier killed all his clones easily.
@@Shootskas No Borden had a real twin since birth. This is revealed in the ending and also hinted from the beginning of the movie when Borden somewhere alludes that he has a master magic trick for which he has dedicated his whole life (keeping secret of twin brother). Also, when Angier approached Tesla for the machine, Tesla said such a machine has never been made. As a result, he had to wait several months of experimentation, trials and errors by Tesla before he could develop that machine.
The reason why Nolan deserves to be in the top 20 directors of all time is because he doesn’t just create a movie, he creates an experience. He knew how to make you as confused as the main character was in Memento. He knew how to pull a magic trick on you in the Prestige as they do in the film. What he does is creative, new, and he suceeds. His last few movies have been a let down, but still…
Cool video @Looper! 7:42 - When he says, "I had a terrible ordeal today. I thought that something very precious had been lost", I think he's talking about himself, not referring to the other Borden twin's near death experience. Meaning the ordeal he went through was being buried alive in a box (not digging up his twin), and the "something very precious" is his own life (not his twin's life).
The standard for filmmaking and storytelling!! My all time top favorite. Anyone can make Marvel/007/X-Men etc. movies. ONLY Nolan can make a Prestige. It is unfortunate, this movie gets overlooked amidst Inception/Interstellar/Dark Knight Trilogy. All Nolan films are class apart..no doubt. But this one is, his craftsman ship at its best.
Even Angier did sacrifice, himself, every time he performed the trick, he knew he was committing to certain death in a gruesome method. Your essay's sympathies lie with Borden, but I see both of them as obsessed with their profession at the cost of destroying their kin (:)) and significant others, all for what?
There were no clones. Angier did learn to get his hands dirty, but he didn't "kill himself" up to potentially 101 times (including the "test" where he supposedly kills the first clone).
Every other trick in the Prestige has a normal "simple" (ok maybe not that simple, but realistic explanation); yet, people choose to believe that all of a sudden, Nolan (one of the smartest directors of all time, IMHO) just introduces sci-fi into the middle of the movie to explain stuff. You've missed the whole point of the movie.
to be honest I wasn't very surprised with the ending (it was great though). the movie is filled with clues (true identity, are you watching closely, being someone else). Fallon's face was never entirely shown, all characters had camera zooms on their faces except for him, which felt a bit suspicious.
@@Hellzood he didn't survive. Every time he uses the machine it creates 'another angier' with the exact same memory meaning he essentially kills himself every time he uses the machine
I miss that era in the mid 2000s when every time Christian Bale did an awesome movie I was able to say "Wow, now I'm even more excited to see him in the next Batman film!"
Okay hot take here, but am I the only one that was rooting for Angier the whole time? He was the one that lost his wife to start with, and that makes his subsequent obsession really relatable.
A bit of vengeance is one thing, but to take the child of someone else and have her grow up without a father out of your need for revenge makes him more of a monster than anyone else in the film remotely was. One half of Borden and Angier's wife both wanted to live on the edge and try tricks in the most breathtaking way. His wife was complicit in the trick, it wasn't done out of malice. Angier just wanted someone to hate for her loss, but she chose to live as she did and it dishonors her to say she had no agency in her own life and death.
Yes ...still do tho some might think he went to far but so is fooling ur wife letting ur brother sleep with her .....driving her to suicide etc.... So again i still do .
@ 100% agree man!! I loved this movie and was floored with the ending and the character development was so great. Glad to see someone else values this movie as much as i do
The Mma Addict I’m not saying we have to agree, I was just wondering if you had seen Memento. There are a lot of people who will say a certain movie is a director’s best film when they haven’t even seen the entire director’s work is why I was asking. I personally think Memento is Nolan’s best work despite the dark knight being my favorite film of all time, but the prestige and memento are Nolan’s best in terms of pure storytelling in my opinion. If you think the prestige is better than Memento, more power to you!
@@southpark645 Nah I didn't take your comment as combative but yeah I saw it and its a badass movie also but I just enjoyed the prestige a little more is all. Both are excellent films imo
I realized that the cloning machine of Tesla was a symbolism of 'vanishing bird trick'. The bird in the cage always get to die and so was the versions of Angrier.
Not a serious proposal but does anyone else ever imagine prequel stories where we see the Borden Bros. growing up in a harsh Dickens style workhouse setting and Angier amid aristocratic intrigue? Both parties becoming enchanted with different yet equally important elements of great trick -- the actual cost/secret of the trick and the showmanship to help audience recognize how good the truck is, thus maximizing the experience. I actually like how we just get little snippets about their backgrounds and the consistency with the actors' performances. When the movie first came out, it did well enough but was still sort of like when Borden first started doing Transported Man. Now decade + years later it's seen more like Angier's final version, post Tesla. Also, still cracks me up how sending Angier to Colorado was a decent misdirection by Borden but he should've foreseen how that could backfire lol
Here's my take: Tesla made the cloning machine for Borden first. Fallon was a clone not a twin. Borden went to Tesla first made a clone by accident and kept it a secret. That is why Fallon shows up later in the movie. It shows the differences of Borden and Angier through their reaction to the cloning. Angier can't stand a duplicate and kills him immediately, unable to share the spotlight or life. While Borden can sacrifice half of his life to a duplicate for the sake of the art. Remember, Angier reads Borden's journal about the secret to the act and that the secret is at Tesla's lab. Angier even says to Andy Serkis's character, " I need to see Tesla....He made a machine for a colleague of mine." (The Cloning Machine) The part where Angier and Borden go to the fish bowl trick is meant to show you that Borden understands how to fully commit his life to the art. While Angier sees the art as a challenge to be conquered.
Why did Borden send Angier to Tesla then? Why did he need to see what Angier’s trick was? Where did he get the money to pay for Teslas work when he was just an assistant? The theory sounds nice until you realize all the loop holes it creates...
Diego Blömken Borden sent Algier to Tesla to get his own clone to understand his trick. Also, it could be that Borden simply went into the machine at Tesla’s to try it, instead of buying it outright. Since he is the type to risk his life for the Art. When nothing happened and he left Tesla, Borden probably ran into his clone on the way home. You’re right, I forgot he probably could afford his own machine. Or, it is possible that he convinced Tesla that he would pay him when he became a success.
I think, Tesla was under the illusion that his machine s original purpose failed until his aid found the the true result by accident. But bordon is different he is commited so he and the clone disregard everything and live a illusion.
My personal feeling is that this film is as close to perfection as you can get with a piece of cinema. It’s flawless. One thing that most people don’t get is that it has far more layers than you think and as with a lot of Nolan’s work, you never know if those layers are intentional. I like to think they are. The real trick in this film is on us and getting us to believe that Tesla’s machine really works. For me, the scene where Angier took his wedding ring off before entering the machine just bugged me. I figured half the story out, but the internet helped me with the rest. The wedding ring pastiche is something I’ve noticed Nolan use in a lot of his films, but it is especially important in The Prestige.
The ring can be seen on Angier's left hand just before he steps into Tesla's machine the first time. If you look closely at the newly created clone right before Angier shoots him, the clone also has a wedding ring on his left hand, proving that the ring also gets copied by the machine. My theory of why he takes it off before drowning himself or possibly a clone in a tank is because to him the ring represents the memory of his late wife, who also drowned in a locked water tank, and he thinks it would disrespect that memory to leave the ring on his body while intentionally doing the same thing to himself.
@@Charlie_Xplorer Ah, but when he steps into the machine, he is actually telling a story and what we see on screen is a rendering of what he tells us/Borden and because we are watching a film, we take it as told/shown. And like people watching a magic trick, we all secretly want the magic to be real, but we know it’s a trick:)
Everyone discuses the clones dying in the water tank while passing over the fact that it was a mere clone of Angier that Borden shot at the end of the film. The last seconds of the film show Angier in a tank, but His not actually dead! He is holding His breath, the tiny air bubbles above His head Prove this.
The reason Borden wrote that 'TESLA' (an anagram of both 'steal' and 'tales', btw.) was merely the 'key' to his/their 'diary', was because Tesla was well known proponent of 'Alternating Current' ... Which is a subliminal word-play for the method that Borden/Fallon were using, whereby each brother would 'alternate' (take turns) in who was 'currently' playing each role each 'day', which is how they lived their lives. It was a way to subtly hint at the 'key' to their day-to-day 'alternating current' method without revealing the whole elect-'trick'-all display, in this story where each each magician tells 'tales' (lies) in their goal to 'steal' each other's secrets [The key: "TESLA"].
I think borden not knowing about the knot might be because fallon tied the knot and then claimed not too. He can never really know the truth because he's not fallon but can never rly claim to know the truth because of the lie that is his trick, his double
Damn it man! I was feeling so stupid not understanding the cloning part. My dumb ass forgot I was watching a scifi and I was expecting a realistic answer.... What a relief.
It does for some. I've seen people trying to argue that Borden was a duplicate from Tesla's machine, which doesn't fit because it's clear from the explanation the twins had been living the trick for their entire lives.
Baba Yaga THANK YOU!! I love this ending, it’s one of my personal favorites, and I love the film as well, BUT if you paid attention during the film, you really don’t need an explanation because Nolan literally explains everything in the film
I agree. It is one of those things where when you first watch it you wonder how you missed it, but it is explained at the end which makes you watch it again for all of the telltale signs.
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the highest, how blown was your mind after watching this movie?
10!
10
12
69
That's a 10 out of 10
Nolan told it in the beginning with the child: where is his brother :(. Never thought that makes so much sense
Ikr? The dialogue could have been where is his sister or mother. But, no...
Its just brilliant foreshadowing. Especially because one bird died for the trick to work.
@@IdocarebutIdont Exactly!! Borden's face when the kid says it!
Sai Vinay Palakodeti he actually told it with the very opening scene with Michael Caine showing Borden’s daughter the trick with the bird!
Brilliant
If you're talking about a film even after 14 years, you got to believe that it's a masterpiece.
We are still talking about The Room.
an underrated masterpiece.
@@mactony4 hell yes a true masterpiece
sourabh sarkar or Looper is just dried up on material, the ending as awesome as it is, doesn’t really need a UA-cam video explanation. Nolan explains everything at the end and it’s really not that complex, but it is highly effective and still one of my favorite endings
I direct people to this movie all the time.
For me the greatest scene in this movie was when Cutter told Angier the story about the sailor who almost drowned was a lie, and that he didnt felt like going home but actually it was agonizing. You can see Angier realizing what he (the other Angiers who died) went through. Also when Borden went under the stage you can see how desperate Angier was to get out of the cage. Truly underrated movie
underrated underrated underrated = likes likes likes
@@outsidethepyramid dawg stfu
It shows how romanticizing things can be harmful since it is honestly a lie. All that blood was never beautiful, it was just red.
@@outsidethepyramid why you so obsessed with likes......
@@Rahul-002b2 you know nothing
Such an underrated Christopher Nolan film.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Jo Simpson Uh, oh. Is someone stocking me? lol
@@josimpson8853 not once have i wanted to get up through out the movie.
And hugh
One of my favorite movies...
Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale gave phenomenal performances in a mind boggling thriller, this movie deserves more praise.
Agree. I feel like Hugh Jackman is soo underrated
Its probably Bales best movie, although The Machinist runs it very close. Bale is made for these types of movies.
@@therebel4332 If we are talking about acting performances, I would say American Psycho actually. He gave the best performance of the year 2000. Bale should have won the Oscar over Russell Crowe who should have won for A Beautiful Mind a year later rather than Gladiator. American Psycho is Bale's best acting performance along with The Prestige a close second and Vice a close third.
@@mov-e6612 no hugh jackman is one the greatest actors in hollywood he is not underrated
this video misses an obvious detail about sarah's pregnancy announcement which is even shown in the video: when borden says "we should've told fallon" it's because the brother acting as fallon at the time was the father. after all, this was the borden who "didn't mean it today" when he told sarah he loved her.
exactly
So does Sarah ever know that Borden had a twin?
This part was just obvious, they didn't miss that "detail".
@@timothygarcia3192 Yes she knew. This was what she was saying that she knew his secret and that she couldn't live like that anymore. Also this was what the news was that she wanted to say to Olivia but Olivia never went to meet with her.
Wow.
man I Just know it
When the boy asked: "but where is his brother?", I knew he had to be a twin. The line seemed to important, I knew Nolan was making a point there. And later on, the "I love you today/not today"....made it pretty clear. At the end, one twin is saccrificed, just like with the birds, for the sake of the illusion, but also to be able to live a full life and because of the love for his child. Angier saccrifices himself, over and over again, because the illusion and the admiration from the public was more important for him. It was not because of his wifes dead, it was for his ego.
Wasn't for his ego. He genuinely enjoyed freeing peoples minds. It was for "the look on their faces". Not of admiration, but of wonder and curiosity.
My dudes the machine Never worked. There were no clones.
Pretty obvious from the beginning
Romain Vannier then why did Nolan pan towards the empty stage room with all of the dead bodies in their water tanks?
@@bennettvanpelt2791 teach you that the ego and narcissism is the most corrupt thing going
You missed out on discussing the deception of Robert Angier.
Lord Caldlow isn't Robert Angier's alias. Robert Angier is Lord Caldlow's alias.
Angier's wife stated that Robert was playing someone else, where he replied that he would not embarrass his family with his theatrical endeavours. He is also independently wealthy.
At the end of the film, Robert Angier revealed his true identity with his true accent. An English lord from the prestigious Caldlow family.
Didnt know this before, thanks for sharing
Great observation.
shit!!! 10 years i didn't know this? yutube recommendation !!!!
Now it's makes sense when he says money doesn't matter to Tesla .
@@bingbongparty You didn't really read the initial comment, did you?
It’s insane how many times they actually tell and show the secret and we still “want to be fooled”
How many times?
It's exactly like Cutter said - he knows how he did it but Angier couldn't accept it. It was too simple, he wanted to believe in something greater, we all did which is why we couldn't see it until the end.
This movie is an all time great...the ending was shocking.
It was great...not really shocking, but what if the plot would've been not showing who Fallon really was. That would be a shocking ending.
@@Stiitchjones The Fallon part was to show how dedicated they were to the craft...the whole Tesla angle was ingenious.... especially because sending Angier to him was part of an elaborate scheme meant to just frustrate and make him waste time and money. The final exchange between them really hits on how utterly crazy both were at trying to one up the other.
Yeah I remember towards the end when borden says to Fallon "you have to live for both of us" that's when I realised they were twins as you never really hear/or see much from Fallon throughout the entirety of the movie.
@@lordfarquad8337 at first I thought maybe Borden created one clone of himself using Tesla's machine but realized i was wrong...I think that part is why so many people think there's more to the story. The whole Borden/Tesla angle...but in the end, Borden was simply sharing a life with his twin and it turned out that Tesla was actually capable of making a machine that could replicate living beings.
beint how did you need an explanation? Everything that needs answering is literally right there in the film
My favorite Batman / Wolverine collaboration.
Lol and black widow
Wait nvm
And Black Widow & Two Alfred (in reference To Batman, not Borden)
Totally agree!
ur cringe and u know it.
''ENDING EXPLAINED'': SUMMARIZES THE WHOLE MOVIE LOL
Yeah...this channel is garbage.
A good movie makes every part meaningful. Clearly, each piece is necessary to decode this puzzle of a cinematic masterpiece.
@@andreawalker5891 You are right :D
@@Shootskas agreed
Jackman playing himself as a double is quite impressive honestly
Every Christopher Nolan movies ending is difficult to understand but that's why I love his movies because he is neo noir director like he's from the future.
@mike meeks Very mature response.
Mutiu Shokanmbi they are not pretentious lol, if you pay enough attention, you’ll easily understand these film’s endings...
Ali Azhar not if you pay enough attention like you should be doing while watching a movie
@@Bootoomee what the hell are you even talking about. All I'm saying that there are no other directors like him on earth. All the directors make the happy endings or sad endings but Christopher Nolan takes it another direction he makes ending between happy and sad.
@@southpark645 I pay attention to his all movies god damn it. I'm 17 years old I watched almost all the movies he directed. Don't say I don't understand his movies.
And just like the other 500 movies Looper tried to explain, they didn't.
@Thomas Pickens The movie doesn't explain if the machine makes a copy elsewhere or the original is transported leaving a sort of an "after-image" in it's original place so we don't know who is who. We do know that the ORIGINAL Angier died for sure but we don't know when that happened (either during the first dry-run when the away version got shot or during the first "entrapment" show when the in-machine version got drowned). From then on we know that each new cycle drowns the in-machine version but we still don't know if the surviving version is the very first clone of the original or the Nth clone of the N-1 clone.
@Thomas Pickens And? The hat not moving doesn't exclude the possibility where the original is teleported while leaving behind the copy as an after-image making the impression of the object not moving at all. They were trying to achieve a "transportation" device after all, not a copying machine.
@Thomas Pickens It appears that you are reading selectively as I already explained twice how it would work. I suppose there is no point in continuing this dialogue further.
@Thomas Pickens Right.
Thomas Pickens no ur just not listening to what he is saying
Guys if you look closely of was kind of life story of Tesla and Edison, Tesla being Borden and Edison being Angier.
Angier robs ideas from other people and tell his own (what Edison did with light bulb). Whereas Borden through a lot of sacrifices does his trick (exactly what Tesla had to face).
Nolan is truly a great director
He forgot the Angier secretly wanted to die the same way his wife did, in a way to know how she felt in her last moments. He just couldn't commit to it.
@David Clinging No he didn't.
@@purpleplanetary Think about it. The problem with his competition is he doesn't truly commit to magic like his nemesis.
So the question is, did he already know that drowning wasn’t as peaceful as Cutter said it was.
One of the most powerful quotes in this movie, that shows his obsession with Bordens Secret is the "I don't care about my wife" line. I don't think his wife was that important to him, just the idea of his wife. The idea that started his obsession.
@@alexschlaeft i’m not sure whether to think bail was truly committed to the magic act, or if both of them would be executed if the secret was told.
I was amazed when bale has a twin and cut his fingers. A truly great script.
Olivia never knew about the twins. If she did she wouldn't have minded Scarlet Johansson being with Falon/Second Twin. Its the split personality she can't take.
There was no split personality as we all know by now. But on rewatching it’s cool to know when they (the twins) were switching. When the twin she fell in love with told her he loved her she knew he meant it.
Mark Roxas Scarlett Johansson IS Olivia lol 😂
Thomas Pickens 😂😂
Or she eventually found out (the scene where she tells one of the borden that she knows who he really is and borden says you can't talk like this hints that she knew and borden knew that she knew) and after figuring it out herself she just couldn't believe that she was lied to their whole marriage and couldn't trust him again.. I mean imagine being married to a person and having a kid and then finding out that there was a secret twin switching roles... no one would be just fine with that
@@black9085 THAT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE THAT SHE COMMITTED SUICIDE AS A SOLUTION FOR FINDING OUT THE TRUTH. Borden's twin brother loved Olivia, and Borden couldn't afford for Sarah to know the truth so he told her to shutup. He couldn't let fallen lose Olivia. So Sarah distraught with the truth killed herself because she didn't know how to handle being with someone who lived a double life. Olivia caught on quicker than Sarah when she mentioned to Angier about Borden wearing fake hair and a disguise. Hence why at the restaurant she told fallen she couldn't trust him anymore because he was living a double life
The Prestige is the reason I became such a Christian Bale fan ❤️
Me too
The moment i noticed the trick i was like: Ok, that is why he instandly said that the Asian is just playing a role and that this is his trick... "that guy is really commited and that is his illusion".
And YES, that is why the knots someday work and someday they dont... and the wife said that he sometimes is like a different person. MIND BLOWN!
Why didn't Angier take Borden to court immediately after his wife's death?
@@anirudhpuranik5222 no movie
@@anirudhpuranik5222 It was an accident. It's difficult to prove such accidents in court - what's the proof that Borden did it intentionally.
@@proudmalayali389 Still, manslaughter is a serious offense.
But it was an accident either way.
I don’t understand why Borden couldn’t just go to Fallon and ask “Hey bud, what knot did you tie the night Julia drowned in front of a live audience? Asking for a friend....”
Better still, why didn't Angier and Cutter just look at what the knot was when they were over Julia's dead body. It would have been the very first thing on everybody's minds !
(they didn't because of plot convenience)
@@outsidethepyramid made my day
The Borden who tied the knot genuinely doesn't remember cause they always kept switching off.
@@choicemeatrandy6572 but it doesn't make sense. The brother that watched her die on stage after he tied the knot would surely remember it.
@@shaghawm5980 yeah thats what i was thinking..
It’s brilliant. Everyone in it is brilliant. That’s the key to the entire film, it’s quality the whole way through.
Heard a theory about this movie recently that blew my mind, and it makes so much sense, and if it's what the Nolans actually intended, then this movie is just a masterpiece of storytelling sleight of hand and is low-key Nolan's best movie. And I'm a HUGE fan of The Dark Knight, so that's big coming from me.
The teleportation machine didn't actually work. Think about it... everything else about this story is totally realistic. It's not a science fiction movie. The teleportation/cloning stuff being real is a pretty big leap for the story to take, when the movie is otherwise totally about... magic tricks! ... aka, deception. Convincing people that something extraordinary is possible, when it's really just an illusion.
The first thing to realize is that Angier's diary that Borden is reading? Almost everything in it is bullshit that Angier made up to trick Borden. Angier's a MAJORLY unreliable narrator in this movie. Tesla did actually work on a teleportation machine... but he abandoned it. Not because it was too dangerous, as Angier claims... but because it didn't work. The real part of the conversation that we do see between Angier and Tesla, Tesla essentially tells him that he's just obsessed. But through Angier's unreliable narration, we're convinced this scene is Tesla just giving a fair warning before proceeding... but the reality was most likely that Tesla told him he's crazy and this isn't going to work. And Tesla was right. As usual.
The ACTUAL way Angier did the trick? The same way he did it the first time. He used the actor double they found. We're left to assume that he left or they let him go because he was difficult and whatnot, and Angier wasn't happy with doing the trick that way... but no. Angier kept using him, he just started doing a better job of keeping him hidden... even from us. THAT'S who dies in the tank that Borden is framed for. The drowning only actually happened once. For every other performance, the actor probably just fell into a crash mat like we saw in the earlier version of the trick. That's why he's freaking out as he drowns... it's not an Angier clone pretending for Borden's benefit. It's the actor freaking out about drowning in a tank he didn't expect to be there this time, because he was expecting a crash mat again.
The times we see the drowning happening during Angier's explanation/confession montage? All just imagined images to convince us that Angier's claims were real. Those scenes we see in flashback of Angier using the machine the first time, shooting the duplicate, then "going into the machine every night, not knowing if I'd be dead or be the prestige..." ALL of that is bullshit that Angier is feeding Borden to keep him believing that he actually achieved something, other than framing Borden's twin. He needs him to believe the teleportation machine actually worked. He convinces Cutter of this too, because he doesn't want Cutter knowing that he murdered a real man, the actor that Cutter himself found and brought to Angier. Telling him that he just killed a clone of himself makes it seem less horrible. He doesn't want anybody knowing how the trick was REALLY done.
All the tanks we see at the end? They're all empty, if you look closely. The only one with an "Angier" in it is the one with the dead actor still in it, which is the only one Nolan focuses clearly on to give us some misdirection into thinking all the other tanks have the same. They don't. That's what Borden is realizing at the end. He turns around and looks closely at the rest of the tanks for the first time, realizing they're empty. Angier didn't have a real teleportation machine... but he DID succeed in pulling off the greatest magic trick. Convincing everybody, even us the audience... that the teleportation machine was real.
If this is the Nolans' actual intent (or Christopher Priest's, though I'm pretty sure the book is pretty different, and honestly this feels totally like Johnathan Nolan's type of storytelling, based on season 1 of Westworld and its endless twists and deeper levels to things)... then wow. Just wow. Amazingly well done, because yeah... everybody seems to come away from this movie thinking the teleportation machine was real, and that the brilliant reveal is all about how the great length Angier went to was killing himself every night. But the actual reveal is that the great length he went to was murdering an innocent man and lying to everybody, including Cutter. When Cutter tells him that drowning is agony, we're left to assume that Angier's look of guilt is him realizing what he was subjecting the different versions of himself to every night... but it's actually his guilt about what he did to the actor. "It takes everything." is referring to his morality about being a murderer just frame Borden and steal his trick while lying to everybody just to keep the secret... not to killing himself.
This is why Cutter's narration tells us "You won't find (the real answer). You're not really looking. You want to be fooled." This narration comes as the hats are shown, then over the final images of the tanks.
We won't realize the tanks are empty, because we're not really looking at them. We won't realize the hats weren't really cloned, because we're not really looking at reality when we see them. That's another figment of Angier's imagination in the diary. We want to believe the teleportation machine was real, because it's fun to believe in outlandish things like that. We want magic to be real. We don't want to realize the real horror and relatively mundane explanation for what happened... We want the movie to fool us. And it did.
But the REALLY brilliant thing about it is that it works either way. The movie is great and works whether you believe the teleportation was real or not. You can fall for the fake twist and unreliable narration, and still enjoy the movie and feel like you got the reveal and everything. Then years later, someone on Quora asks "What's the most misunderstood plot device in a movie?" and someone responds with a brilliant breakdown of this theory about the teleportation machine, and my mind is blown so much I have to spread it to others to help appreciate this movie even more. Amazing.
Thank you. I can sleep now.
Really great theory but if that guy (who was still) in the tank is not a clone and/or is (Root) Angier's double, then who's that corpse in the morgue? Cutter was there looking at it.
No
One quick question, what happens when he first performs the trick for that man in the presence of cutter? how did he make the switch then?
I like the idea, but I don't think it works as well as you think it does. For one, as someone else explained, it was shown when presenting in front of the retired magician, that one Angier disappeared who the magician's been talking to for a little bit, and a second one appeared right behind him and talked just like Angier. And also, it was previously shown that the actor does not talk like Angier at all, so Angier talking before and after the trick would not work if it was the body double.
What I don’t get is how none of the guards noticed that Lord Caldlow and Angie are the same person 😂
are you watching closely?
Foreal lol
Money
Because they wanted to be fooled, they all saw Angie's body and can't bring themselves to realise that you resurrected
The prison guards would not have neccessarily been privy to seeing Angier's body at the theater or the morgue. Additionally, this was not the television age or even the newspaper age with photography within its pages, so a small minorty of folks would have a specific exposure to, and knowledge of, Angier's image.
I think I found a new detail. Angier says it is a 50/50 chance he'll end up in the tank. The very last shot shows what I think is the original Angier, not just another clone. Look at the expression on his face, he's not scared, there's no fear, it's a look of disappointment. Compare that to the fear the "clones" display, they are terrified.
Angiers clones ARE Angier in the end. They should all react in the same way.
The surviving person is always a clone as the original is always locked into the tank
he clones himself before he experiences the drowning. So the clone who survives has the experiences of the original angier
This line MAY be a plot-hole.
There's no 50/50 chance. The Angier performing the trick ends up in the tank 100% of the time.
Angier presents the trick knowing that he will die by drowning.
@@tooleyheadbang4239 I think he's just referring to his own consciousness. That is, he's unsure if his next moment will be experiencing the agony of drowning, or the glory of the prestige atop the theatre balcony. The clone is an exact copy after all, so both men retain the memories of the moment right before entering the machine. In that sense, I guess you can think of it as 50/50.
This movie is G.O.A.T. And underrated af.
Forky true , not alot of people will watch it twice and its needed
This movie and Prisoners. High jacked man is the GOAT
@@superbennyboy1 Hugh Jackman?
You sound like tony two times. Imma go get the papers get the papers
@Chinese Virus nah
Executioner: Do you have any last words?
Fallon: Abra Cadabra!
That line was actually gangster.
Fallon was a ghost character.
DeVaughn Salter Facts. That was pretty badass
Ab-Alfred Borden ra-Robert Angier
I don't think the other guy was named Fallon, as the surviving brother says that they played Fallon, alternatively even. It makes more sense to call them Albert and Frederick (the Freddie line would make sense as well), as in the book.
It doesn't matter how many times I watch this movie, the twist always surprises me. Such a great movie
This movie is so good. Movies with big twists usually have a shelf life of rewatchability. But this transcends that, yes the twists really give it that umpf but its just such a joy to rewatch even many times after watching. I remember when I first watched it I had to keep rewatching to catch the little things. But than when that ran out I kept coming back, and it was even more enjoyable. Its truly an underrated masterpiece, great story, intriguing personal relationships heightened only by the great acting. This movie keeps you engaged even when know the ending
Hoping everybody who sees this has a great end to the week and month 😌❤️
🖕🏽
I love this movie two of the best actors in the world and the plot is amazing. But I don’t understand how anyone could give up Scarlett for anyone.
Guess when you're Ryan Reynolds the amount of beautiful women you encounter plays a part.
Now I have to watch this again. I remember Bowie as Tesla was epic. RiP
The first Christopher Nolan movie I saw. Absolute treasure
The movie is just like the narrator says: Now you’re looking for the trick, but you’re not really looking because you want to be tricked. The fact that Borden and his brother was what the notebook was talking about, we didn’t really see that, instead we tricked ourselves into thinking it was about Borden and Angier.
Could you explain it further
You know, if you watch closely, you can see Borden is like having a split identity. Sometimes he looks like a wise man and loving husband. Sometimes you reckless, hothead man. If you can see it, you will know they are two Borden
I knew it at one Point already
Bale's performance in this movie is so unbelievably incredible. One of the best of the century and very overlooked
The cunning & craftiness of an eduated rich man and his resources, make him seem impressively powerful.....but a poor man's raw zeal to survive and unwitting capacity for innovation, wields a formidable contestant. Who might be triumphant in the end?
Insane. This film for me is the definition of Cinema. The endless possibilities of executing one's thoughts/ideas and making the masses believe in the unbelievable.
Watched this movie recently and got very confused. It felt like for the whole movie that Nolan wanted to take a serious, realistic tone but Angier using a cloning device was such a drastic leap of faith it left me clueless till the credits began to roll. Once I've accepted it, however, and watched it a second time it felt like a completely different movie to me. That's Nolan's magic right there, it's never the surprise twist, it's the genius build-up that makes his movies so special.
I think you're right in your instincts that the cloning device is so wildly out of place. It didn't really exist. It was just another trick.
This is Hollywood's most underrated movie.
that's a good attempt at likes
@@outsidethepyramid thank you sir . Hope u like it.
This movie blew my mind on my first watch. I'd rank it number 1 best twist ending.
Q B 2nd to Shutter Island
Watch Memento
@@gocha4140 agreed, that messed up every single person's mind who watched that movie xd
Primal Fear
Eh I wouldn't say that, this is pretty predictable compared to Nolan's other works.
Never heard of this movie until last year, finally got to watch it! So basically Angier keeps committing suicide for the trick after cloning himself, but with his memories intact and pretty much just transported somewhere "mentally"...come to think of it, does that still count as teleportation when it's only your mind and soul getting transferred and not your physical self? Anyway, this movie did something few managed to do: no villain and no hero. Both of them feels just as much a villain or a hero as the other. Such an epic movie easily missed by most!
Actually Angier isn't just teleporting. His splitting into two identical beings. At movie finale he said to Borden about sacrifice that after every performance he never knows if he becomes man in the box or man at prestige. When Angier uses machine for the first time we can see how one copy tries to reason with the other with gun, so Angier is fully aware of consciousness of "clone" (but none is clone and original at the same time).
The same moral dilemma is tackled in horror game Soma, I recommend checking it plot if this topic is interesting you, because game explains whole idea much better.
Its a dupe glitch with extra steps.
I would argue there is a good guy-the Bordon that survives (Alfred). The one that dies (Freddy) is the one who did all of the abhorrent things. Freddy tied the knot that killed Juliet (hence why Alfred didn’t know), Freddy was verbally abusive to his wife, Freddy killed Danton’s bird and broke the woman’s finger, Freddy cheated on his wife and eventually drove her to suicide. Freddy didn’t even care about his brothers happiness, as he showed no remorse for his actions.
You forgot to mention the part where Cutter told Angier that his sailor friend said it was agonizing to drown. Angier appeared troubled when Cutter said it
I had the luxury of showing this film to my GF (she had never seen it) and while watching it, I got to pick out all the hidden hints during the film. All the while hoping my GF wouldn’t notice them. At the end of the film she loved the twist, and kept asking me about all the hints :)
oh, what a guy.
Watched this movie for the first time yesterday (12th march 2022), i cant believe I hadn’t seen it before!
Was chatting to a friend about how the i felt the latest batman by Reeves wasn’t as good as Nolan’s batman and the conversation led to Nolan’s other movies, majority of which I have seen but had never heard of this one!
It was definitely a lot easier to follow and fairly well explained by the end unlike others which left me confused as hell until rewatching (inception, interstellar, tenant)
Some great comments here, specifically the one which pointed out that Lord Caldlow was actually the real person and Angiers was his alias! That explained why money was no issue when he had Tesla make the machine!
Just seen it. 11/2020. Fooking amazing movie. 3 of my favorite actors, 1 of my favorite directors. What could go right? Everything. I love it.
FR
Just watched it today, on Christmas, what a movie
@@eireyouok101 The man in the iron mask/ count of monte Cristo/ the illusionist and shawshank are in my top 5 movies and this is like all of them in one movie.
There is one more scene where they hint that there might be a twin-
When bordan first met sarah he was outside but when sarah closes the door he was inside
Everybody has something different. Something unique.
It is something that differentiates the outside world from the one within. It could be everything, but not everything at the same time.
The way of thinking. The way of talking. The way of listening. Painting. Writing. Singing. Dreaming. Leading. Following. Holding on. Letting go. Living the moment. Never forgetting. Dancing. Keeping calm. Standing still. Fighting. The way of carrying the ideas...
If only I had time to mention them all. Is infinite. Being unique is infinite.
We don’t have to be good in everything. We don’t even have to try to be good in everything. “Everything” is flat. It is so general.
Something-“Something” is special. That something that can be touched, seen, felt or heard. That something that fills the soul so much that you forget about ‘everything’.
We don’t have to look different, sound different or be different.
We just have to feel different,and everything else follows.
I watched it again just now, after so many years. And this video came out just short of a day ago. Damn!
I JUST watched that movie and wanted to search for an explanation of it. And you also JUST uploaded an explanation of the movie. That's trippy ngl
When I watched it I was shocked to see Bale had a twin late in movie when it was so obvious and right in front of me. Definitely one of Nolans best movies.
One of my favourite movies EVER!
I re-watched the movie immediately after my first viewing. It's one of my favorite films and I've lost count of the number of times I've watched it.
One of my favorite movies of all time with two of my favorite actors.
Just watched it today 25/12/2020, what a movie, rewatched the first hour just to see all the hidden pieces and especially the pile of hats in the first shot that you couldn't know the meaning behind at first. Absolutely brilliant film
I literally watched it the same day 2 years after.
First time I saw this movie I was like "what the hell did just happened". The after detailed explanation it totally became my favorite movie
I don’t get it can you explain
L
Woooooow. It tooks LOOPER almost 14 years to got this movie😬😬😁
And will take you forever to know the correct tense
@@shivangshukla4243 top level insult 💯 lmao
This still to this day is my favorite movie, for so many reasons
Remarkable film. It’s rare, great storytelling that is both complex and simple at the same time
This movie is perhaps a masterpiece.Definitely, Christopher Nolan's best movie.
Overrated Movie!
So that's why he always replied " I dont know" whenever robert asked him which knot did he tie???...Damn nolan films have a good foreshadowing
Today I realized that the Nolan Brothers stole the idea of the Tesla Teleportation/Clone machine from a 1995 Novelette called "Think like a Dinosaur". In the Novelette they have a machine that will teleport a person to a different planet in an instant but it doesn't move the actual person the the plantet just a copy. So the original person is still on earth but the machine is set to incinerate once the duplicate is confirmed from the distant planet.
Christopher nolan always leave you with a shock such a underrated movie of nolan
This Should be Batman Vs Wolverine fighting for Black Widow😂
This is one of my favorite movies. Glad u made this video
There is only one plot point which confuses me a lot. It was Borden who *led* Angier to Tesla. Does that mean Borden knew Tesla was somebody capable of making a machine which could duplicate people? Or was that just to mislead Angier and by sheer coincidence or accident Tesla turned out to be competent enough to build the machine that Angier wanted.
I thought it meant that his twin was created by a machine that Tesla made. Borden didn't lead him astray, he told the truth. They allude to it a few times in the movie. Borden wasn't able to kill his clone while Angier killed all his clones easily.
@@Shootskas No Borden had a real twin since birth. This is revealed in the ending and also hinted from the beginning of the movie when Borden somewhere alludes that he has a master magic trick for which he has dedicated his whole life (keeping secret of twin brother). Also, when Angier approached Tesla for the machine, Tesla said such a machine has never been made. As a result, he had to wait several months of experimentation, trials and errors by Tesla before he could develop that machine.
The reason why Nolan deserves to be in the top 20 directors of all time is because he doesn’t just create a movie, he creates an experience.
He knew how to make you as confused as the main character was in Memento.
He knew how to pull a magic trick on you in the Prestige as they do in the film.
What he does is creative, new, and he suceeds.
His last few movies have been a let down, but still…
Alsoo... when Borden pulls out a coin from the nephew's ear it's a double headed coin
some more fore shadowing and I didn't see anyone mention it
Mad
How did I miss that?
@@MadeByGod1973 I watched this movie like thrice it's insane
@@devynkumar1997 keep watching. I've been watching it over and over for 2 years. Find new things each time.
@@MadeByGod1973 that's what makes a movie good imo
I am a professional magician who does not watch many movies. Somehow, this movie I never watched until 2023. What a masterpiece.
The Prestige has always been my favorite Nolan film. I don't see Tenet changing that no matter how good it's going to be.
Haven't heard of that...Google google.
OK, I'm back! Thanks for sharing - that looks neat. And it looks like ol' RPatts is on the rise again.
@@steprockmedia yup
The Prestige is a masterpiece. Tenet is forgettable garbage.
Cool video @Looper!
7:42 - When he says, "I had a terrible ordeal today. I thought that something very precious had been lost", I think he's talking about himself, not referring to the other Borden twin's near death experience.
Meaning the ordeal he went through was being buried alive in a box (not digging up his twin), and the "something very precious" is his own life (not his twin's life).
Not to mention he says he wants to be buried alive on stage
“Keep the little girl close, he’ll come for her”
The standard for filmmaking and storytelling!! My all time top favorite.
Anyone can make Marvel/007/X-Men etc. movies. ONLY Nolan can make a Prestige. It is unfortunate, this movie gets overlooked amidst Inception/Interstellar/Dark Knight Trilogy. All Nolan films are class apart..no doubt. But this one is, his craftsman ship at its best.
Even Angier did sacrifice, himself, every time he performed the trick, he knew he was committing to certain death in a gruesome method. Your essay's sympathies lie with Borden, but I see both of them as obsessed with their profession at the cost of destroying their kin (:)) and significant others, all for what?
@@mutiushokanmbi1316 'Greatness'; fame/ legacy
@@sterlingarcher5698 or what the mind perceives as legacy.
The first time he tries the machine, he didn't shoot the clone. He shoots the original Angier.
There were no clones. Angier did learn to get his hands dirty, but he didn't "kill himself" up to potentially 101 times (including the "test" where he supposedly kills the first clone).
Every other trick in the Prestige has a normal "simple" (ok maybe not that simple, but realistic explanation); yet, people choose to believe that all of a sudden, Nolan (one of the smartest directors of all time, IMHO) just introduces sci-fi into the middle of the movie to explain stuff. You've missed the whole point of the movie.
to be honest I wasn't very surprised with the ending (it was great though). the movie is filled with clues (true identity, are you watching closely, being someone else). Fallon's face was never entirely shown, all characters had camera zooms on their faces except for him, which felt a bit suspicious.
He was shown full face towards the end
Don't you think the explanation is confusing enough !!!!!!
Finally someone said it!
The explanation was way too fast. If i hadn't have watched it, i wouldn't know what the hell he was explaining
I agreee
I want to know how did angier survived after he was drowned anyone ?
@@Hellzood he didn't survive. Every time he uses the machine it creates 'another angier' with the exact same memory meaning he essentially kills himself every time he uses the machine
This movie is the best example of a feature length Tales from the Crypt episode. God I love (and miss) Tales from the Crypt
I miss that era in the mid 2000s when every time Christian Bale did an awesome movie I was able to say "Wow, now I'm even more excited to see him in the next Batman film!"
Wow, cant believe I didnt see this movie until today. What a treat!
Okay hot take here, but am I the only one that was rooting for Angier the whole time? He was the one that lost his wife to start with, and that makes his subsequent obsession really relatable.
A bit of vengeance is one thing, but to take the child of someone else and have her grow up without a father out of your need for revenge makes him more of a monster than anyone else in the film remotely was. One half of Borden and Angier's wife both wanted to live on the edge and try tricks in the most breathtaking way. His wife was complicit in the trick, it wasn't done out of malice. Angier just wanted someone to hate for her loss, but she chose to live as she did and it dishonors her to say she had no agency in her own life and death.
Yes ...still do tho some might think he went to far but so is fooling ur wife letting ur brother sleep with her .....driving her to suicide etc.... So again i still do .
Enzo Thunder right, I mean everybody around them(Borden & Fallon) doesn’t deserve their insanity. it deserve them, one gone for good.
It shows the irrationality of revenge if anything.
@@Prototyp3m1nd imagine letting the mother of your child commit suicide because of your obsession. The man was crazyyyyy
I've never said so many "ooooohhhh" in my life after watching this. Everything makes perfect sense now
Imo this is best film Nolan has ever done. Just my opinion
@ 100% agree man!! I loved this movie and was floored with the ending and the character development was so great. Glad to see someone else values this movie as much as i do
Have neither of you seen Memento?
@@southpark645 yes I have but still think this movie is better. Just my opinion. We don't have to agree
The Mma Addict I’m not saying we have to agree, I was just wondering if you had seen Memento. There are a lot of people who will say a certain movie is a director’s best film when they haven’t even seen the entire director’s work is why I was asking. I personally think Memento is Nolan’s best work despite the dark knight being my favorite film of all time, but the prestige and memento are Nolan’s best in terms of pure storytelling in my opinion. If you think the prestige is better than Memento, more power to you!
@@southpark645 Nah I didn't take your comment as combative but yeah I saw it and its a badass movie also but I just enjoyed the prestige a little more is all. Both are excellent films imo
I realized that the cloning machine of Tesla was a symbolism of 'vanishing bird trick'. The bird in the cage always get to die and so was the versions of Angrier.
The whole movie had the exact 3 acts of a magician
Not a serious proposal but does anyone else ever imagine prequel stories where we see the Borden Bros. growing up in a harsh Dickens style workhouse setting and Angier amid aristocratic intrigue? Both parties becoming enchanted with different yet equally important elements of great trick -- the actual cost/secret of the trick and the showmanship to help audience recognize how good the truck is, thus maximizing the experience. I actually like how we just get little snippets about their backgrounds and the consistency with the actors' performances.
When the movie first came out, it did well enough but was still sort of like when Borden first started doing Transported Man. Now decade + years later it's seen more like Angier's final version, post Tesla.
Also, still cracks me up how sending Angier to Colorado was a decent misdirection by Borden but he should've foreseen how that could backfire lol
Here's my take: Tesla made the cloning machine for Borden first. Fallon was a clone not a twin. Borden went to Tesla first made a clone by accident and kept it a secret. That is why Fallon shows up later in the movie. It shows the differences of Borden and Angier through their reaction to the cloning. Angier can't stand a duplicate and kills him immediately, unable to share the spotlight or life. While Borden can sacrifice half of his life to a duplicate for the sake of the art. Remember, Angier reads Borden's journal about the secret to the act and that the secret is at Tesla's lab. Angier even says to Andy Serkis's character, " I need to see Tesla....He made a machine for a colleague of mine." (The Cloning Machine) The part where Angier and Borden go to the fish bowl trick is meant to show you that Borden understands how to fully commit his life to the art. While Angier sees the art as a challenge to be conquered.
You have a point there. Never thought about that. Thanks for your take on it. 👌🏼
Why did Borden send Angier to Tesla then? Why did he need to see what Angier’s trick was? Where did he get the money to pay for Teslas work when he was just an assistant? The theory sounds nice until you realize all the loop holes it creates...
Diego Blömken Borden sent Algier to Tesla to get his own clone to understand his trick. Also, it could be that Borden simply went into the machine at Tesla’s to try it, instead of buying it outright. Since he is the type to risk his life for the Art. When nothing happened and he left Tesla, Borden probably ran into his clone on the way home. You’re right, I forgot he probably could afford his own machine. Or, it is possible that he convinced Tesla that he would pay him when he became a success.
I think, Tesla was under the illusion that his machine s original purpose failed until his aid found the the true result by accident. But bordon is different he is commited so he and the clone disregard everything and live a illusion.
The machine was never fully operational and was not working when Jackman went.
The Batman vs Wolverine we all wanted! 🎉
It's the Prestige Morty! You Prestige'd yourself!
it had all 3 superheroes from 3 universes Wolverine from X-Men, Batman from DC and Natasha from MCU wow
My personal feeling is that this film is as close to perfection as you can get with a piece of cinema. It’s flawless.
One thing that most people don’t get is that it has far more layers than you think and as with a lot of Nolan’s work, you never know if those layers are intentional.
I like to think they are.
The real trick in this film is on us and getting us to believe that Tesla’s machine really works.
For me, the scene where Angier took his wedding ring off before entering the machine just bugged me.
I figured half the story out, but the internet helped me with the rest.
The wedding ring pastiche is something I’ve noticed Nolan use in a lot of his films, but it is especially important in The Prestige.
Didn't Angier do it so he wouldn't know which was which? He said in the film he didn't know which place "he" would end up in.
What's the importance of that ring?
The ring can be seen on Angier's left hand just before he steps into Tesla's machine the first time. If you look closely at the newly created clone right before Angier shoots him, the clone also has a wedding ring on his left hand, proving that the ring also gets copied by the machine.
My theory of why he takes it off before drowning himself or possibly a clone in a tank is because to him the ring represents the memory of his late wife, who also drowned in a locked water tank, and he thinks it would disrespect that memory to leave the ring on his body while intentionally doing the same thing to himself.
@@Charlie_Xplorer Ah, but when he steps into the machine, he is actually telling a story and what we see on screen is a rendering of what he tells us/Borden and because we are watching a film, we take it as told/shown. And like people watching a magic trick, we all secretly want the magic to be real, but we know it’s a trick:)
Yep in inception he used that ring too
it is one of the rare videos you wish you had never seen before to watch it the first time.
Everyone discuses the clones dying in the water tank while passing over the fact that it was a mere clone of Angier that Borden shot at the end of the film. The last seconds of the film show Angier in a tank, but His not actually dead! He is holding His breath, the tiny air bubbles above His head Prove this.
The reason Borden wrote that 'TESLA' (an anagram of both 'steal' and 'tales', btw.) was merely the 'key' to his/their 'diary', was because Tesla was well known proponent of 'Alternating Current' ... Which is a subliminal word-play for the method that Borden/Fallon were using, whereby each brother would 'alternate' (take turns) in who was 'currently' playing each role each 'day', which is how they lived their lives. It was a way to subtly hint at the 'key' to their day-to-day 'alternating current' method without revealing the whole elect-'trick'-all display, in this story where each each magician tells 'tales' (lies) in their goal to 'steal' each other's secrets [The key: "TESLA"].
I think borden not knowing about the knot might be because fallon tied the knot and then claimed not too. He can never really know the truth because he's not fallon but can never rly claim to know the truth because of the lie that is his trick, his double
watched for the first time today, amazing
"He uses a bloody double" !!!
Damn it man! I was feeling so stupid not understanding the cloning part. My dumb ass forgot I was watching a scifi and I was expecting a realistic answer.... What a relief.
This movie is a masterpiece but it doesn't leave u asking questions. I thought it was pretty clear what happened.
It does for some. I've seen people trying to argue that Borden was a duplicate from Tesla's machine, which doesn't fit because it's clear from the explanation the twins had been living the trick for their entire lives.
Baba Yaga THANK YOU!! I love this ending, it’s one of my personal favorites, and I love the film as well, BUT if you paid attention during the film, you really don’t need an explanation because Nolan literally explains everything in the film
this was just a summary of the film. nothing more than that..
I agree. It is one of those things where when you first watch it you wonder how you missed it, but it is explained at the end which makes you watch it again for all of the telltale signs.
It left me with questions
i watched this for the first time and was certain i knew what was happening. then bam. mind blown