(no subject)

[ivyfic]

The Prestige has eaten my brain. I'm sitting here trying to do other work and - nope. Can't stop pondering.

I was discussing with trakkie on the train after the movie how the end sort of implies that Borden's obsession with his magic was somehow pure and Angier was monstrous, and I don't really buy that. But the more I think about it, the more I see the difference between the two as this:

Borden is obsessed with the art of illusion. The two brothers must have started living a single life before Angier met them, long before there was any hope of being able to perform The Transported Man. They did this for one trick - one. All the sacrifice to be able do one thing that no magician before or after would be able to duplicate. And to them, that was enough. Their life was this one secret; their devotion to illusion was absolute.

Angier, on the other hand, was obsessed with the prestige. He did it out of an egotistical love of the audience's applause. As he said to his wife early on, he could never live his life as an illusion because what was most important to him was the recognition. This is why when Cutter first tells him that it's done with a double, he refuses to believe it. At heart, in a way, Angiers believes in magic. Which is why it makes sense that he, in the end, uses magic. At first I was a little worried over this turn of the plot. But now I see how well it works. Angier has to believe in something more than he can do, something that if he learns it will make him as good as Borden. But he never can because he's focusing on the wrong part of the act.

Angier is a performer (as Cutter points out, the best performer on stage), but Borden is a true magician. Borden's tricks are so good the audience doesn't even like them, and that doesn't seem to matter to him.

What I've been left with after watching this film is a bone-deep horror with what Angier has done. It's that lush, Victorian horror that made the film work for me, especially since it underlined everything else about Angier's character. Tesla's machine is not monstrous. Angier is the one that makes it monstrous. Cutter says no one cares about the man in the box and the horror comes from the fact that Angier doesn't care about the man in the box. All he cares about is the prestige -- the prestige which he can't share with anyone, not Borden, and not even with himself. Tesla gave him real magic and all he used it for was to murder himself over and over again for applause. He even chose to do it in a horrible and personally significant way.

Towards the end of the film you see more and more that Borden cares about something other than the illusion. In the scene where he says goodbye to his daughter, and again to Fallon, he does see that there are things more important than the trick. Angier never does. Even when he dies, he never really sees what he is doing. He says it takes courage for him to go on stage every night not knowing if he'll be the one in the box or the one in the prestige, but the truth is that he never sees is that he's always both.

I'd love to see an AU where Borden frees Angier from the tank just because it's only in those moments of drowning that I think Angier realizes what he's done.

Even though the depths of Angier's obsession are so much more horrifying than Borden's, I loved that both are shown to be destructive. The very first accident, the death of Angier's wife, is probably the result of Borden's secret. One of the brother's could have heard the warning about the knot, the other could have tried it. Either way, I don't think either of them truly knows what happened, but if it were not for the secret identities, Angier's wife probably wouldn't have drowned. Later on, even when Sarah has reached desperation and is begging for the truth, Borden will not tell her. He can't reveal the illusion because the illusion is everything to him, and she dies because of it.

Borden is illusion, Angiers is magic, but in the end, both are monstrous. As Cutter said in the beginning, you don't really want to know how the illusion is done.

I could probably write a ten page paper deconstructing this. I'm forcing myself to stop now before I launch into the devices used for the different timelines, the foreshadowing, the roles of the two brothers... sheesh. Too many layers in this movie.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Your analysis is more interesting to me than the film itself played to be. Because these undercurrents were there, but the film took its title too seriously and worked too hard at the Prestige and not enough at the secret. The secret was one "we don't want to know" according to Cutter, but the secret is what I wanted to know, that is what is horrifying, and it's not really dwelt upon with the structure of the thing. Knowing how Angiers dies at the beginning, not seeing that first tranportation in full, I dunno, I felt like the horror was blunted and Angiers dying at the end is a tad exposition and flashback heavy. I'm guessing the novel probably weaves them better.

I love your analysis of Borden and Angiers, though, and I completely agree with the performer/illusionist divide, but I don't think it's wrong to say Borden's devotion was pure and Angiers' monstrous (or should that be "Angiers's"?). Borden's devotion is untainted by emotion; it is purity, and pure things can seem a little sterile, even dull. It's also more frightening to me than Angiers self-murdering ways because he does his through something unnatural, so killing off his double is sort of restoring the balance, cosmically. Borden is a natural double, and they've become an unnatural one-that-is-two, using the equally bizarre nature of identical twins and their honestly magical connection to one another to do it. They make a conscious decision not to destroy one personality but to mutually inhabit two, so that never can one be any more Fallon or Borden than the other (the scene with the mirror swapping of Fallon's gear for Borden's is scarier than Jackman shooting himself). It's terrifying to see two people submerge any ambition of independence or definition of individuality for this purest magic, but they do. One wonders how the surviving brother will manage with the daughter now.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

One wonders how the surviving brother will manage with the daughter now.

I've been pondering this as well. As I think about the two brothers, I can't bring myself to really see them as two seperate people. Bale plays only extremely subtle differences; I doubt I'd be able to track in any given scene which brother it is. It's more like there is one person in two bodies. When Borden says he doesn't know which knot he used, he probably doesn't. He probably doesn't even know which brother was on the stage that night and what knot was used. I've seen interviews with identical twins that were as enmeshed as these two. So I really don't know how the surviving brother will be able to manage. The most important relationship in either of their lives must have been to each other; I can't imagine the grief he'd be going through. I also wonder if the daughter will be able to tell that though her father is there, part of him has been lost.

The brother angle also puts a whole new spin on the escalating rivalry between Borden and Angier. It's quite possible that when Borden goes after Angier after the bullet catch, it's one brother avenging the other, which makes Borden a whole lot less petty.

trakkie and I are trying to decide if we think Angier set up his final act to frame Borden or if he just took advantage of the situation. Thoughts? I lean towards the latter because it seems to me that by the end of the film what is most important to Angier is the act, not revenge.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I think it is a trick to get Borden. He said at the beginning that Borden has all that he doesn't deserve--a home, a family, etc--and the fact he was willing to take the daughter (Jessie?) away from Fallon suggests a truly personal bent to this. If not, he could have retired content in knowing he one-upped Borden with a move he couldn't better by any means. His continued hatred of the man was so putrid, he murdered himself over and over in a psychotically personally relevant way just to get Borden in the end. He let Borden die, not knowing Borden was two people, because he hated him that much. I wonder if he would have let Borden die if he'd read the paper with Borden's secret on it (Borden, as another example of his purity, didn't lie the first time he wrote a secret on paper, so I believe the truth was written the second time).

Borden is made to be a lot less petty as you can't understand which brother avenges which act. It's harder to excuse if you believe them to be so very entwined that they are one man in two bodies, though, because any insult on one is an insult on the other (having to chop off fingers? ugh). I'm biased though, as I like the Bale better than the Jackman, and I find Borden's level of devotion both more magical and pure and insane than Angiers's.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

But Angier also says that he doesn't care about his dead wife. At the beginning it is about Borden having what he lost, but it becomes all about the trick, the Transported Man. When he does his final act, it's after he's read in Borden's journal and written in his own that Borden did not actually have the happiness that he envied, that he was tormented by his obsession with magic. I think by the end of the film the rivalry has transcended petty acts of revenge.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Ah, but just because he doesn't care about his wife doesn't mean it isn't still about getting Borden. Borden is the superior magician, the true artist, who came up with a terrific trick that Angiers could not better (he could only duplicate it in a more grandiose way). It's about jealousy and hatred on a more and less personal level than just revenge for the wife. Borden has, naturally, what Angiers wants, and he cannot stand that a man as apparently contemptuous of it as Borden gets it. It's about Borden having to suffer for his talent and luck.

[sasha-b.livejournal.com]

I just got back from seeing it - and you've put my thoughts down exactly. Christopher Nolan never ceases to amaze me.

[linaerys.livejournal.com]

You've put down a lot of great points. One thing I loved about the movie is how the previews are part of the misdirection. The previews definitely made us think that Borden was the "real" magician, but that is not what we found at all in the theater.

It was really brilliantly set up, from start to finish--lots of misdirection but all the vital clues keep building from the beginning.

I do kind of wish there had been no "real" magic. I prefered to think that Angier had been waiting for Borden to come back stage, and set up his own double from before to drown on that day. I still wonder if there is a way they could do it without the real magic. That's the only thing that took away from the experience.

Other than that the movie was amazingly constructed, and an interesting psychological study. I didn't feel like I was manipulated by the twists and turns, because the clues were there if I wanted them.

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I think it's just about obsession. Both men--well, all three men--are utterly obsessed. And all obsessed with the same thing--the prestige. With being declared the greatest magician ever. That's all they want, and they'll do anything to get it. Borden (or, rather, the Bordens) finally realize this is self-destructive and stupid, and repent. Angiers never does.

I don't consider Borden a magician, though. Others have done the same trick, basically. It's just that they didn't have a twin for a double. He didn't really do anything new and clever, just had a secret advantage.

I do feel, though, that he was telling the truth when he revealed at the end that one of them loved Sarah and the daughter and the other loved Olivia. And I think the right one--the one that loves the girl--survived. The scene where he hugs her clinches that for me. And it was the other one who insisted they pursue finding out how Angiers did it, so it makes sense that he's the one who dies.

I also think Angiers set up that trick specifically to trap Borden. It was all worth it for him, just to know he was the best.