“Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge.” The magician shows you something ordinary...He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course, it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn.” The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking...You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige.”
Ever go to a movie with an inscrutable title and then leave the theater still clueless about the title? This describes A Clockwork Orange for a great many viewers. And let’s face it, there is very little Fargo in Fargo. As for who or what Reservoir Dogs are and where they show up the movie…nobody seems to know. One could conceivably come out of The Prestige assuming the title referred to the prestige of the famous magicians. Or, perhaps, assuming it is some kind of unspoken shorthand for prestidigitation. Thankfully, however, the title is explained right at the beginning of the film. Now all you have to do is look for in the story…but you really aren’t looking for it.
“Are you watching closely?”
Borden is showing off a trick to young boy. While doing so, he asks the lad this question. But it is not really a question directed to the boy. It is really the audience to whom the question is posed. Because to those watching really closely and paying attention to the weird little things that seem a bit off, but are explicable enough to satisfy…for those viewers, the prestige of the movie will not come as surprise.
“Well some days it's not true. Maybe today you're more in love with magic. I like being able to tell the difference, it makes the days it is true mean something.”
Are you watching closely? Sarah seems to have married a man with a strange personality quirk: some days he is very expressive of his love while on other days he isn’t cruel or abusive, but very distant. On this particular day he tells her that he loves her, but her response is “not today.” There is something off about this relationship and some odd is going on. But it’s not because her husband loves magic as much as he loves her. Well, not really, anyway.
"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."
The two magicians engaged in a feud and a career-long series of one-upmanship started out as friendly rivals working for a famous musician. The rivalry became heated after Angier’s wife died during a trick because Borden tied the wrong knot; a more dangerous knot that both he and Angier had been warned could cause result in everything from a broken leg to death. Angier knows Borden tied the wrong knot. And he knows that Borden knows he tied the wrong knot. So how can Borden claim to be telling the truth when he says he doesn’t know which knot he tied? Are you watching closely? He just answered that question.
“They are all your hat, Mr. Angier.”
One of the things that really separates The Prestige from other movies about magicians is the appearance of actual historical legend, Nikola Tesla. Because it is Tesla, it makes it easier to buy that Angier’s Transported Man trick could actually exist. On the fringes of the theoretical, at any rate. Well, let’s put it this way: if there was any person throughout the entire history of man who could possibly build such a machine, it would be Tesla. The actual process by which Angier does his trick is only revealed at the end. But if you’re watching closely when Tesla answers Angier’s question about which hat is his, you can figure it out ahead of time.
