Essay Questions

What are the personalities of Freddy and Alfred Borden, and how are they displayed throughout the movie?

Alfred Borden is a gentle and quiet person. He has a stable personality and doesn't like taking risks. Alfred's primary goals in life are to take care of his wife and young daughter, and to develop his craft of magic. Throughout the movie, Alfred consistently shows love and adoration for his wife. He asks Freddy to take care of his family in the event that something should happen to him. Onstage, Alfred respects all safety protocols and procedures. Alfred is happiest at home with his family, or working on his magic in a safe and controlled environment.

Freddy Borden is a risk-taker who is obsessed with becoming the best magician ever. He falls in love with his assistant, a woman who shares his obsession with magic. Freddy is willing to take a chance on dangerous magic tricks and doesn't always use the safety protocols of other magicians. He is happiest out about town with his girlfriend, or working on some of the more spectacular elements of his magic show. Freddy is sometimes unstable. He often erupts into fits of anger, rage, or all-consuming sadness and despair.

How does Nolan use non-chronological storytelling in order to "trick" the audience?

Nolan uses non-chronological storytelling by beginning the movie in the middle of the chronological story. He uses a unique framing device of telling the story through the diaries of the two main characters. Each character reads the other character's diary entries, from a point in time earlier than the first scenes of the movie. In this way, Nolan allows the audience to come into the story without knowing any context for what is presented on screen. Nolan's storytelling mirrors what ingénieur John Cutter describes as the three parts of a magic trick: the promise, the turn, and the prestige. The first third of the movie can be considered the promise. It's the portion of the magic trick where the audience is presented with objects that appear to be normal. The second part of the trick is called the turn. The turn is what happens when the ordinary is transformed into (or does something) extraordinary. In the movie, the second act is where we learn that Angiers is gruesomely cloning himself, and that Borden is a set of twins not a single person. Finally, the third act of the movie is the prestige, in which something we thought had been dead (Borden) is brought back to life.

What is the significance of the bird trick Cutter performs at the beginning and the end of the movie?

Cutter's bird trick points to the ugly unseen side of magic, and also serves as a metaphor for the cost of the Borden twins' magic trick. When we first see the magic trick, it seems to us that a bird disappears, then suddenly reappears. Similarly, it seems that the singular Borden character often simply disappears, only to reappear somewhere else moments later. When Borden performs this trick in front of a young precocious child, the child recognizes that the trick involves two birds: one bird that gets to live, and a second bird that is smothered to death. In performing the transporting man trick, Angiers ruthlessly kills off one of his clones each night. Finally, Freddy Borden himself dies by hanging, preserving the illusion that he is just one man (and not a set of twins), in a proud, defiant final magic act.