History Film / ThePrestige

* SuperOCD: Tesla's obsessions.

* CutLexLuthorACheck: The machine Tesla makes for Angier has an amazing variety of potential uses. Even just as a magician, it could be the basis for a variety of tricks. Angier uses it for one specific trick to one up something Borden did.

** The title is unnervingly close to the word "prestidigitation", meaning sleight of hand or magic. Wiki/TheOtherWiki denies a shared etymology, but the phonetic similarities are obvious.

** Cutter repeatedly tells Angier that there's only one way for Borden to do The Transported Man. He's right, but Angier refuses to believe it.

* OneDialogueTwoConversations: [[spoiler:Borden (probably the Jerkassy one) has a final argument with Sarah. On first viewing it sounds like Sarah is simply confronting him on being an adulterer, with Borden saying he cannot live in their mercurial relationship. On re-watch and with the line, "I know what you really are," Borden's sudden explosion to NOT talk about "it" carries whole new dimensions. YMMV on what exactly they are really talking about. For some it's Sarah confronting a Borden that her entire life is based on deception, while Borden all but admits it and expresses the exhaustion of keeping the charade.]]

* AlternativeForeignThemeSong: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amXKQ351QBw&feature=related "Returner"]] by Gackt was used as the theme song in the Japanese version.

* ExactWords: Quite often, especially when Borden is telling Olivia that a part of him loves his wife, but a part of him love her.

* ByronicHero + VillainProtagonist: The magicians. [[spoiler:And the twin that is Jess's father is the only one to be cast in a better light than the other two. The other twin is a paranoid {{jerkass}} that drives his brother's love to suicide. Angier, on the other hand, is a MadArtist so obsessed with revenge that [[TheDeterminator he's willing to clone and drown himself dozens of times just to upstage Borden]].]]

** In a second, actually romantic but equally unusual example that's hard to realize until the end of the film [[spoiler: the second twin and Olivia]].

** Part of Cutter's escape artist trick with Julia as the drowning Houdini. [[spoiler: She dies in the tank due to an accident.]]
** Angier also uses the tank for his "The Real Transported Man" trick. [[spoiler: Numerous of his clones die in there.]]

* EvilWillFail: The more absorbed the dueling magicians become in their vengeance-fueled-rivalry, the more their lives fall apart until finally [[spoiler: Angier's ingénieur abandons and betrays him when he crosses the MoralEventHorizon.]]

** In the novel, Borden's diary begins with the entry "I was born in the year 1901. My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the secret by which I have lived my life. They are described in the narrative for the first and the last time. This is the only copy." A few pages later, he describes the process of a magician showing he has nothing up his sleeves before a trick, and states that "Already without once having written a falsehood, I have started the deception that is my life. The lie is contained in these words, even in the very first of them. It is the fabric of everything that follows yet nowhere will it be apparent. I have misdirected you with the talk of truth, objective records and motives. Just as it is when I show my hands to be empty I have omitted the significant information, and now you are looking in the wrong place." [[spoiler: And he really does mean the first words: "I was" instead of "we were"]].
* ExpendableClone: [[spoiler: Angier constantly clones himself and kills one of them in order to perform a magic trick night after night. However, he never knows whether the trick kills the clone, or if he kills himself and the clone carries on.]]

* {{Fingore}}: Borden jamming Angier's harmless birdcage trick, causing a poor volunteer's hand to get crushed, then Borden losing two fingers, [[spoiler: and subsequently his twin brother]].

** [[spoiler: Starting with Borden immediately understanding the fishbowl trick, and the elaborate lie behind it.]]
** Borden saying: "He came in to demand an answer and I told him the truth. That I have fought with myself over that night, ''one half of me'' swearing blind that I tied a simple slipknot, ''the other half'' convinced that I tied the Langford double. I can never know for sure." [[spoiler: He really did argue with "himself".]]
** [[spoiler: And the pairs of birds of whom one is killed every time the trick is performed. "Today you've been the lucky one."]]
** [[spoiler: And Sarah's nephew, when he sees Borden perform the bird trick, cries even when Borden shows him a bird that's alive, asking Borden, "Where's his brother?"]]
** [[spoiler: Sarah telling Borden, "Some days, you love magic more than me."]]
** [[spoiler: Borden telling Olivia, "Part of me loves Sarah."]]
** [[spoiler: Borden forgetting that he promised to take his daughter to the zoo (it was actually his twin).]]
** [[spoiler: Sarah noting that Borden's bandaged hand is bleeding more than it should be (it's his twin, who cut off his own fingers to replicate Borden's injury).]]
** Angier hypothesizes that Chung Ling Soo is actually a young man acting as an old man, and is so dedicated to maintaining his act that he acts like an old man even when off stage and in public. [[spoiler: This is very strongly related to Borden's secret.]]
** When Sarah reveals that she's pregnant, Borden excitedly says that they should have told Fallon. [[spoiler: This Borden is the brother, so "Fallon" is Jess's actual father]].

*** Not only that but [[spoiler:the night the "New Transported Man" went bad, Root talked to Borden in a pub, where he told Root about how he did a similar trick by using a ''double'']].

** Angier experimenting with the pain of drowning in his washbasin. [[spoiler: He later comes to drown himself every night in order to do his Transported Man trick and dispose of the bodies]]
** Angier discusses with his wife at the start how he changed his name so his career in magic wouldn't embarrass his family. This hints that he is from a powerful and wealthy family. [[spoiler: In the end he is revealed to be Lord Caldlow.]]
** [[spoiler: Sarah declaring, "I know what you really are, Alfred."]]

** Olivia says that Sarah wanted to tell her something, but Olivia did not muster the courage. [[spoiler: Sarah wanted to tell Olivia the truth about Borden.]]
** Borden's distress and near-breakdown when Angier kidnaps Fallon and buries him alive hints that [[spoiler:Fallon isn't just an assistant]].
* GenreShift: While the central story remains a thriller centered around two stage magicians with a bitter rivalry, the setting starts out as a Victorian PeriodPiece until [[spoiler: we see Nikola Tesla's cloning machine, and it becomes {{Steampunk}} science fiction.]]

** Sarah can always tell when Borden loves her more than magic. [[spoiler: If Olivia or others had listened to Sarah they would have recognized that Borden is really two people.]]

* InMediasRes: The movie's title card shows a pile of identical top hats, which is a later scene in the film. [[spoiler: The scene takes place in the middle of the story, where Angier discovers that Tesla's machine can clone objects, and those are his hats that were cloned multiple times into a small pile.]]

* KillingYourAlternateSelf: [[spoiler:The machine creates a perfect clone of Angier each time he uses it. Every time he did the trick, however, it was apparently random as to who would wind up in the box and who would wind up on stage. This is highlighted in the final shot of the movie, which depicts rows and rows of water tanks, with the implication that there's a dead Angier in ''every single one of them''.]].

* LiquidCourage: During the FlashbackMontageRealization, we see Borden taking a sip of booze before [[spoiler: getting his [[{{Fingore}} fingers chopped off]]]].

* LyingToProtectYourFeelings: At Julia's funeral, Cutter consoles Angier by recounting a story of a sailor getting resurrected after almost drowning to death. The experience supposedly was like "going home". At the end of the movie, Cutter reveals to Angier that he was lying, the feeling was of agony. [[spoiler: Angier is taken aback as he since had [[ExpendableClone many clones of himself]] drowned in good faith.]]

* MagiciansAreWizards: Subverted: the movie explains every trick, and at one point Cutter snaps "You're a magician, not a bloody wizard! If you want to do magic, you've got to get your hands dirty." [[spoiler:Perhaps more specifically, Tesla is the wizard, having created Angier's cloning device.]]

* MisappliedPhlebotinum: Deliberately invoked. Tesla's invention of [[spoiler: a perfect matter replicator [[CutLexLuthorACheck could be put to many more benevolent and/or lucrative uses than a stage performance]]. However, Angier only cared about the show and taking on revenge against Borden, and Tesla, aware of Angier's obsession, wants him to destroy the machine to stop him from going too far.]] The story also deliberately cuts off all further developments by having Edison's men destroying Tesla's lab.
* MundaneSolution: Angier originally achieves the Transported Man using a body double, [[spoiler:and so do the Bordens]]. Later, he instead [[spoiler:uses Tesla's cloning machine to create the illusion of transporting himself when he is in fact cloning and drowning himself over and over.]]

* OccamsRazor: The truth behind Borden's Transported Man trick. [[spoiler: Cutter insists that Borden is using a double, but Angier thinks it's too simple. It turns out Cutter was right the whole time.]]

* OneDialogueTwoConversations: [[spoiler: Borden (probably the Jerkassy one) has a final argument with Sarah. On first viewing it sounds like Sarah is simply confronting him on being an adulterer, with Borden saying he cannot live in their mercurial relationship. On re-watch and with the line "I know what you really are," Borden's sudden explosion to NOT talk about "it" carries whole new dimensions. YMMV on what exactly they are really talking about. For some it's Sarah confronting a Borden that her entire life is based on deception, while Borden all but admits it and expresses the exhaustion of keeping the charade.]]

* TheReveal: The secrets to both Borden's and Angier's Transported Man tricks. [[spoiler: Angier was replicating himself using one of Tesla's machines, then killing his clones by locking them in his water tank. Borden secretly has an identical twin who shares his identity with him.]]

** Fallon [[spoiler: is a near-perfect disguise on a technical level, since both twin Bordens utilize heavy make-up and mirror injuries to cover up the fact they switch between both identities, but neither twin can ''quite'' copy the other, thus allowing the audience on [[RewatchBonus a second viewing to distinguish which twin is which]] and the trick consistently fails to fool Borden's wife completely.]]
** The English Lord Caldlow, on the other hand, [[spoiler: pretty perfectly plays himself as the [[TheReveal American Robert Angier throughout the film]] with no clues given to the deception save for one line spoken to his wife, alongside his seemingly inexhaustible funds, thus performing at a higher and more intuitive level than Borden in his disguise.]]

* TwinSwitch: Angier and his double, Root. [[spoiler:Played even more straight with the Borden brothers, identical twins who swap roles, and the Fallon disguise, without anyone knowing. It works better since with the Borden twins, and with Angier and Root, Jackman and Bale are ActingForTwo]].

* WasItReallyWorthIt: Both Angier and Borden are confronted by this at the end of the movie, if their obsession with the craft and their rivalry was truly worth it. [[spoiler: Borden decides no, definitely not. Angier is unrepentant in his actions.]]

* AWizardDidIt: It's never described how UsefulNotes/NikolaTesla built [[spoiler:a cloning machine]]. Let's just leave it at "he's one hell of a genius".
* XanatosGambit: [[spoiler:Angier killed himself ''dozens'' of times so that when Borden inevitably made it backstage, he could be framed for murder on circumstantial evidence. Whether he's the man in the box or the man outside, Borden goes down.]] However, [[spoiler:Angier didn't know Borden had a twin who could avenge him, then take back his daughter. Incidentally, this turns his Xanatos Gambit into a BatmanGambit which was, adequately enough, pulled off by Batman himself, Creator/ChristianBale.]] Also qualifies as a [[spoiler: ThanatosGambit for the Angier clones that end up as the "man in the box."]]

->''"Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be... fooled."''

* WeddingRingRemoval: During the TheReveal that Borden's having an affair with Olivia, there's a scene where he kisses her while rolling his wedding ring across his knuckles with his free hand. [[spoiler: Then again, Borden is secretly a pair of identical twins and only one of them, Alfred, is in love with his wife, Sarah, unlike the other twin Frederick.]]

* TechnicianVersusPerformer: A key thematic element of the rivalry between Borden (the technician) and Angier (the performer). There's also a bit of this between Angier and his double (whose drunken antics have quite the theatric touch) [[spoiler: There are hints that the two Bordens differ on this as well--one is a technician, the other more or less along for the ride.]] The above is proved even more by the movie-long and incredibly spoilerific deceptions of Lord Caldlow and Fallon:

* PaperThinDisguise: Averted: That Root is the body double for Angier's Transported Man trick is something Borden can clearly see-through.

* LiquidCourage: During the FlashbackMontageRealization, we see Border taking a sip of booze before [[spoiler: getting his [[{{Fingore}} fingers chopped off]]]].

** Angier discusses with his wife at the start how he changed his name so his career in magic wouldn't embarrass his family. This hints that he is from a powerful and wealthy family. [[spoiler: In the end he is revealed to be Lord Caldlow]]

** Angier experimenting with the pain of drowning in his washbasin. [[spoiler: he later comes to drown himself every night in order to do his Transported Man trick and dispose of the bodies]]

* AdultFear:
** You have a little daughter, seven years old at the most. Imagine, years before, that you made a colossal mistake and killed the wife of your good friend, and now that friend is growing steadily more and more obsessed with getting revenge on you. Then your former friend is murdered, with you present. You are tried and sentenced to death, meaning your daughter is going to the workhouse. Until you get a lifeline - give up your most valuable secret to a rich benefactor, and he will take in your daughter and raise her. You do so.[[spoiler:..and it turns out the benefactor is the murdered man, who faked his death. That's right -- your former friend has murdered you and kidnapped your daughter, where she will be in close proximity to a man who is clearly very unstable, and he's made sure you are ''absolutely helpless to stop it.'']]
** Your spouse seems loving one day and irritated by you on another. You can't understand what causes them to switch between kind and unkind, and they refuse to change their behavior.

----

** In the novel, Borden's diary begins with the entry "I was born in the year 1901. My name, my real name, is Alfred Borden. The story of my life is the secret by which I have lived my life. They are described in the narrative for the first and the last time. This is the only copy." A few pages later, he describes the process of a magician showing he has nothing up his sleeves before a trick, and states that "Already without once having written a falsehood, I have started the deception that is my life. The lie is contained in these words, even in the very first of them. It is the fabric of everything that follows yet nowhere will it be apparent. I have misdirected you with the talk of truth, objective records and motives. Just as it is when I show my hands to be empty I have omitted the significant information, and now you are looking in the wrong place. [[spoiler: And he really does mean the first words "I was" instead of "we were"]].

* PoorCommunicationKills: In the original novel: The reason for Borden and Angier's feud is presented differently, and intensifies as a result of this. Angier had briefly been helping his wife with a PhonyPsychic routine, and Borden was upset that they had a family friend thinking they could talk to her husband. He stored into the seance, making a scene and shoving around Julia briefly, accidentally causing her to have a miscarriage. Angier has no idea that the woman wanting to talk to her dead husband was a friend of Borden and simply assumes that he was trying to humiliate a rival when he killed their baby, and Borden never finds out about the miscarriage and assumes that Angier is just sabotaging him over an extreme case of DisproportionateRetribution for embarrassing him during his act.

* LyingToProtectYourFeelings: At Julia's funeral, Cutter consoles Angier by recounting a story of a sailor getting resurrected after almost drowning to death. The experience supposedly was like "going home". At the end of the movie, Cutter reveals to Angier that he was lying, the feeling was of agony. Angier is taken aback as he since had [[ExpendableClone many clones of himself]] drowned in good faith.

* ALighterShadeOfGray: While both magicians do some highly questionable things, it's ultimately [[spoiler:Angier]] who crosses the line near the end of the film, [[spoiler:framing Borden for his death and taking Borden’s daughter into his custody]], meaning that overall, [[spoiler:Borden]] comes off as the more sympathetic one.

* ALighterShadeOfGray: While both magicians do some highly questionable things, it's ultimately [[spoiler:Angier]] who crosses the line near the end of the film, [[spoiler:framing Borden for his death and taking Angier's daughter into his custody]], meaning that overall, [[spoiler:Borden]] comes off as the more sympathetic one.

* DestructiveTeleportation: Angier assures that his magical teleportation doesn't [[spoiler:create multiple versions of himself by drowning the original after the copying is done.]]

** Also the clerk at Angier's hotel in Colorado Springs. A polite but seemingly unimportant side character... until he reveals he hid Tesla's machine from Thomas Edison's minions as a favor to Tesla, and hands it over to Angier.

** [[spoiler:Despite what the movie states, it isn't ''actually'' made clear if Tesla's machine really worked. All we have to go off of is the portions of the movie from ''Angier's'' perspective. Also, Angier had previously used Root as a double for his act, so there's nothing to suggest he wouldn't still be doing that. Even during the ending shot, with all the water-filled tanks, only ''one'' is clearly shown to have a duplicate of Angier, but the image is distorted from the water.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[TagLine A friendship that became a rivalry. A rivalry that turned deadly.]]'']]

The story follows an escalating rivalry between two late 19th-Century magicians, Alfred Borden (Bale) and Robert Angier (Jackman). They started their careers as "voluntaries" to another stage magician until Angier's wife died during a performance, possibly because Borden may have tied a stronger rope knot than necessary (with the wife's permission). The rivalry extends into the magician scene as the two compete to see who is the best at their craft while sabotaging each other's acts.

Interestingly, ''The Prestige'' cannot really be said to have a central protagonist. Both sides are portrayed neutrally [[GreyAndGrayMorality without either being favored by the film's point of view]]. This gives a different slant on a story instead of just the normal protagonist vs. antagonist story. Instead we get a story about the conflict between two obsessed, flawed men.

* MeaningfulEcho: When Angier proposes "The Great Danton" as his new stage name, Cutter voices concerns about it being old-fashioned. Angier replies with "it's sophisticated", the same words with which his deceased wife pitched the name to him in the first place.