A friend of mine named Chris recently discovered this website, and he approached me with an intriguing topic he really wanted my opinion on. He wished to know my take on The Prestige.

The first thing you need to know about The Prestige is that it’s a Christopher Nolan film, which means that it doesn’t follow a very linear path on its way to an ending that could be considered ambiguous. The ending is what Chris wanted to know my opinion on. The second thing you need to know about The Prestige is that it’s organized like a magic trick, which consists of three parts:

1. The Pledge – The audience is shown someone or something ordinary.
2. The Turn – Something extraordinary happens to the person or object.
3. The Prestige – The person or object returns to its original state.

That is also how I have organized this article.

The Pledge

Huge spoiler alert if you haven’t seen The Prestige. It’s about two rival magicians (Alfred Borden played by Christian Bale and Robert Angier played by Hugh Jackman) who go to incredible lengths to sabotage and one-up each other. Angier hates Borden for accidentally making his wife die by drowning during a magic act. They physically attack each other on many occasions in an effort to figure out each other’s secrets. The biggest thing they each want to know is how the other man does The Transported Man magic trick. You see, late in the film, Angier obtains a machine from Nikola Tesla that produces a double of him.

Here’s what Chris told me:

“Some folks say the machine isn’t real and doesn’t actually work, others say the machine works and Angier dies every time and a new clone takes over. Others say the machine teleports Angier and the clone dies every time. Some people say the machine doesn’t work and Angier uses a double except for the last trick when Borden is arrested.”

The Turn

Let’s make something clear. I believe the machine works. The clones of cats and hats it produced make that a virtual certainty in my book. As do all the dead bodies in the basement. But it’s more than physical evidence that points in that direction. It’s also thematically sound.

As I’ll explain in the final section, the machine was the real magic that Angier was seeking the whole time. He couldn’t accept the idea that Borden was simply using a double in his Transported Man magic trick. He wanted something more, and he found it with that machine. But it also led to his immediate demise away from any audience that could have given him the applause he craved.

Angier is obsessed with two things in life: taking revenge on Borden and getting all the glory for himself. His final magic trick accomplishes both.

When Angier first gets the machine from Tesla, he tests it on himself. He inadvertently creates a perfect clone of himself standing a few yards away, and the Angier standing in the machine shoots and kills the man who seemingly just appeared out of nowhere. But is that what really happened? Was it Angier who shot his clone, or the clone who shot Angier? We’ll address that in a moment.

Notice that it’s the Angier in the machine who kills the one who appeared a ways away from it. That’s important because later on Angier gives a demonstration of his magic act to a man who is going to fund his magic act. This time, it’s the Angier who appears in the rafters of the auditorium who survives, while the Angier in the machine drops through a trapdoor and endures a horrible death in a waterfilled lockbox like the one his wife died in.

If Angier teleports each time and a clone is left behind, then the very first time that Angier teleported, he died. His clone shot him. And if he didn’t teleport, but remained where he was and a clone took his place each time, then the last time we see him is when he does the demonstration for the funder. After that, a new clone takes his place each time he steps into the machine. But that second way wouldn’t make sense thematically.

I am of the opinion that Angier teleported the first time, and then his clone killed him. That clone is responsible for all the atrocities from that time forward. Earlier in the film, Angier found a way to cheat and make his Transported Man trick seem authentic. He hired an actor who looked like him to appear on stage after Angier jumped down a trapdoor.

Angier wished he could be the prestige, the one to accept the audience’s applause at the end of his magic trick. He hated having to hide below the stage while an actor gratefully received the adoration of his audience.

“No one cares about the man in the box” was his mantra. That includes him. Once he had the machine to do The Transported Man trick for real, Angier didn’t care about the man he was dooming to an agonizing death every night inside a locked box full of water. That man came into existence a split-second before he was dropped into certain death, while Angier was safely teleported away.

The Prestige

The tragic irony is that Angier was never the man who got to experience being the prestige in front of an audience. Instead, he died far away from the crowds when he used the machine for the first time on himself. Nikola Tesla warned him never to use the machine because it would bring only pain. His words were truly prophetic. First, Angier’s clone killed Angier. And then that clone had the gall to destroy every clone after himself in a most cruel manner.

All for the sake of revenge and glory.

In the end, Angier’s clone was shot and killed by Borden’s double. It’s a fitting fate for the conniving clone. He shot his original self, and he tried to have Borden killed for his own clone’s murder. He was the guilty party in both of those murders, but he covered up his involvement in them.

Even though he thought he had gotten away with everything, he hadn’t counted on Borden’s secret coming back to bite him. Borden had never felt a hunger to be the prestige because he and his double had shared that privilege on multiple occasions. They both got to enjoy the setup and payoff of each other’s work, so there was no need for Angier’s extreme solution to this dilemma.

Angier got to be both the pledge and the prestige through the use of Tesla’s machine. Or at least his clone did. It would have been haunting enough if Angier had been the one to kill his doubles every night and take all the attention for himself, but for his clone to do so adds an extra layer of irony.

In his dying moments, Angier’s clone says it took courage to step into the machine each night not knowing for sure if he would be the man in the box or the prestige at the turn. But I don’t think it took courage at all. He knew he would be the one to reappear each time because that’s what happened that first fateful time when the real Angier took a leap of faith and paid the ultimate price.

However the machine works, one thing is clear. Angier dies shortly after he begins using it, and that’s not him at the end hiding his identity as Lord Caldlow. When all is said and done, the real magic word isn’t Abracadabra. It’s Abracadaver.

This is the Deja Reviewer bidding you farewell until we meet again.

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