Did the Tesla's Machine actually work? [SPOILERS AHEAD]

The 2006 film about rival magicians desperately trying to learn the secrets of each others tricks.
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The Prestige is a beautifully intricate movie with a very disappointing end. Or at least that was what I thought as I watched, somewhat mystified, the “Deus ex machina” that the Nolan brothers decided to pull at the last minute to extricate themselves from a plot that, perhaps, was starting to spin out of control from some many “twists and turns”.

However, I couldn't keep my mind from the last few lines of the movie that seemed to speak directly to the viewer, urging him to echo them in his head until he understood them.

“Now you’re looking for the secret…
But you won’t find it…
…because you don’t really want to know…
…you want to be fooled.”

Was there more to be seen then what was being shown? Were we as the audience “watching close” enough, as we had been advised to? Were we wanting to be fooled by the lightning and thunder of the Tesla machine, wanting it to be real, because the true explanation of the trick is just too simple and uninteresting?

And so it dawned on me, as it has, it seems, on a number of other viewers, the idea that the Tesla Machine isn’t real, that it doesn't really work. That the Prestige is not a sci-fi film, nor is it naturalistic up until the end and 99% of the time, but that it is 100% realistic all throughout. That, in fact, one of its many ideas is that behind all the hocus-pocus of magic lie simple, rational and oftentimes disappointing explanations.

However, as many have pointed out, the idea that there is no “science magic” at all – that the machine Tesla built was simply a ruse to finance his research, which Angier was able to put to good use in playing his greatest and cruelest trick ever –, while solving some of the plot inconsistencies, raises at the same time many of its own. So, what follows is my opinion of what really happened in the Prestige. I think it can provide for an interesting reinterpretation of many of the film’s scenes and dialogs.

I believe Tesla, a man with evident showmanship as depicted in his public exhibition in the Albert Hall, while initially reluctant, ended up agreeing to build the transporting machine for the wealthy and obsessed Angier, in order to fund his now unappreciated research. Not being able, of course, of constructing such an impossible device, he planned with his magic-enthusiast assistant a little bit of a magic show of their own for Angier. The cats and the hats scene were staged by them to led Angier to believe that the machine worked as a replicator.

The scientific-naïve Angier was played upon in the same manner as he had played upon the ingenuous audience of his magic shows, with the two men of science humoring him with good-natured irony. For indeed Tesla did not really want to swindle Angier. He did build and supplied him with the machine. That is, the only possible machine that could be built: an illusionist’s contraption.

Angier eventually tested his new acquisition and realized that no such replicating machine existed, and that Borden must have been using a double all along as Cutter had suggested. He understood now, however, the deceptive power of science, and returned to London with the idea of employing the machine in a new trick and in the enactment of his final revenge upon Borden. Ironically, his new trick was not new at all, but was the same old simple trick of the transported man he had performed before, only with more glare and gloss, and a few water tanks being moved out of the theater every night.

He knew Borden would come to see the act, so whenever he spotted him in the audience we would present “the pledge” and “the turn” of the Real Transported Man himself and his double would only appear for “the prestige” far away in the balcony, and therefore not recognizable by Borden, who was now starting to be taken in, as Angier had been, by the power of the “true magic” of science (for had he not been informed of the “mysterious” water-tanks?). Whenever Borden was not present, Angier himself appeared in the prestige, being finally able to personally receive the audience’s applause at the end.

In the day Borden came intending to expose the trick, Angier, who was preparing for the prestige but also watching and waiting for this moment, spotted him among the volunteers from the public and quickly placed (or had placed by the blindmen) the water-tank under the trap door. Borden, much more interested in studying the machine then the presenter (whom he knew to be Angier from previous shows) doesn’t even notice that, this time, a double is on stage.

The look on the drowning man’s face as he is struggling, first to understand what happened to him, and then to save his life, cannot be the look of Angier or one of his supposed clones in the moment of their greatest victory, for which he had prepared for so long, and whose “price” he had willingly accepted. No, it is the face of a desperate man, crying for help – the face of Angier's double.

Angier had thus finally and resoundingly beaten Borden in the magician’s game, completely destroying his opponent’s life in the process. He even went so far as to taunt him by offering to buy his secret, only to tear it to pieces in front of him without reading it – a trick he was no longer interested in and which he now believed to be very simple indeed.

However, things turned for Angier when Cutter went to see him and learned of the truth. Upon meeting “Lord Caldlow”, the pragmatically minded Cutter finally understood the true and only possible nature of the trick. In his mind, Angier had gone too far that time by killing an innocent man, his double Root, and using Cutter himself to incriminate and sentence to death their former colleague, Borden.

Cutter suspected, from the first Transported Man, that Borden might have a twin, which he eventually confirmed when Fallon was kidnapped. Even though he cared for Angier, he thought, in face of his terrible deeds, that the only fair thing to do was to give the surviving Borden the chance of retribution for his brother’s death.

As the film draws to a close we find Cutter and Angier in the old warehouse, darkness filling the place, except for the small light coming from the lantern. A disenchanted Cutter sets the tone for the final sequence:

“Take a minute to consider your achievement.”

He then tells him about the sailor who said drowning was like going home. Angier had taken comfort in that thought, not only in connection with his wife death, but to appease his mind for the murder he commited. Ironically for Cutter, his white lie about drowning had helped Angier in getting the necessary nerve to proceed with his act.

Angier, who had struggled with the idea of drowning (remember him submerging his face in the basin?), upon seeing Cutter leave instinctively turns his lantern towards a water-tank, and what does he see? A corpse strongly resembling himself. In a split second he understands that it must have been put there by Cutter. He even knows how he did it:

“No one cares about the man in the box”.

Cutter, who was a master of characterization, obtained and appropriately characterized several corpses (men in boxes no one cares about) to resemble Angier, the effect being aided by the obfuscation in the warehouse and of the water-tanks themselves.

However, Angier was still not able to understand the purpose of all this scenario. It was then that in entered Fallon, who tells him about the true nature of his relation to “Borden” and how they performed their trick, not before shooting Angier in the chest.

Angier, a dying man, now understands that the twin was let in by Cutter in order to kill him, but also that Cutter in his sympathy did not wish to dispossess him of his strange “achievement”, which he so greatly prized. And so Angier takes advantage of the scenario Cutter prepared for him and proceeds to play on Borden the final part of his great trick, telling him the imaginary story of his first use of the machine, what it did and the “price” that he had paid for his art.

For he knew well that he had paid a great price for his obsession – an innocent man’s life and his own. But in the game of illusion and masterful deceit, Borden’s secret disclosed and his own preserved, he had been the victor – and he had, after all, performed a most wonderful magic trick in this “solid, solid world”.

In the end, a close shot of one of the tanks is shown. Not just any tank, but a special one. The tank where Root, Angier’s double, lies.

A beautiful film that really plays its own magic trick on its audience, isn’t it?

Note - Found it in internet!! Thought of sharing here! I think this explanation justifies the statement - "You want to be fooled!"

Posts: 128
Joined: February 2011
This is a film version of a book. In the book there are slight differences but the machine works. I like your idea that Root would be there, but you are simply reading into the film.
The trick is that at one point, Angier believes that Bordon had played a trick, which was to have Tesla pretend to build a machine for Angier, to take all of his time and money. But it really does work. Remember the bird trick, you as the audience want to believe it is magic, but the truth is, one bird is killed while another is shown to trick the audience into believing that the bird disappeared and reappeared. Also, the fact that Angier would not create a double and stop using the machine (he could do the trick as Borden and his twin did) was foreshadowed when the two cats fought with each other. So, Angier and his double always fought to be the one that stays alive. The water tank let Angier keep the upper hand.

Book spoiler ahead
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In the book, Borden turns the machine off during the trick and Angier is split into two, a dead body and a half-man/half-spirit who continues living to eventually meet Borden's grandson (It's been a long time since I read it.) So, Nolan really added a great ending and a number of twists along the way.

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Joined: August 2014
Location: India
Wow another view of understanding the movie and it is also justifies every fact. I have to watch again closely.
Thanks for sharing.

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Joined: September 2014
Wow another view of understanding the movie and it is also justifies every fact. I have to watch again closely. :ugeek: :geek: :roll: :clap:

_______
waqas

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And so Angier takes advantage of the scenario Cutter prepared for him and proceeds to play on Borden the final part of his great trick, telling him the imaginary story of his first use of the machine, what it did and the “price” that he had paid for his art.
http://oppomobilephone.com/

Posts: 12
Joined: November 2014
Location: Dallas, TX
CakeLessEgg wrote:The Prestige is a beautifully intricate movie with a very disappointing end. Or at least that was what I thought as I watched, somewhat mystified, the “Deus ex machina” that the Nolan brothers decided to pull at the last minute to extricate themselves from a plot that, perhaps, was starting to spin out of control from some many “twists and turns”.

However, I couldn't keep my mind from the last few lines of the movie that seemed to speak directly to the viewer, urging him to echo them in his head until he understood them.

“Now you’re looking for the secret…
But you won’t find it…
…because you don’t really want to know…
…you want to be fooled.”

Was there more to be seen then what was being shown? Were we as the audience “watching close” enough, as we had been advised to? Were we wanting to be fooled by the lightning and thunder of the Tesla machine, wanting it to be real, because the true explanation of the trick is just too simple and uninteresting?

And so it dawned on me, as it has, it seems, on a number of other viewers, the idea that the Tesla Machine isn’t real, that it doesn't really work. That the Prestige is not a sci-fi film, nor is it naturalistic up until the end and 99% of the time, but that it is 100% realistic all throughout. That, in fact, one of its many ideas is that behind all the hocus-pocus of magic lie simple, rational and oftentimes disappointing explanations.

However, as many have pointed out, the idea that there is no “science magic” at all – that the machine Tesla built was simply a ruse to finance his research, which Angier was able to put to good use in playing his greatest and cruelest trick ever –, while solving some of the plot inconsistencies, raises at the same time many of its own. So, what follows is my opinion of what really happened in the Prestige. I think it can provide for an interesting reinterpretation of many of the film’s scenes and dialogs.

I believe Tesla, a man with evident showmanship as depicted in his public exhibition in the Albert Hall, while initially reluctant, ended up agreeing to build the transporting machine for the wealthy and obsessed Angier, in order to fund his now unappreciated research. Not being able, of course, of constructing such an impossible device, he planned with his magic-enthusiast assistant a little bit of a magic show of their own for Angier. The cats and the hats scene were staged by them to led Angier to believe that the machine worked as a replicator.

The scientific-naïve Angier was played upon in the same manner as he had played upon the ingenuous audience of his magic shows, with the two men of science humoring him with good-natured irony. For indeed Tesla did not really want to swindle Angier. He did build and supplied him with the machine. That is, the only possible machine that could be built: an illusionist’s contraption.

Angier eventually tested his new acquisition and realized that no such replicating machine existed, and that Borden must have been using a double all along as Cutter had suggested. He understood now, however, the deceptive power of science, and returned to London with the idea of employing the machine in a new trick and in the enactment of his final revenge upon Borden. Ironically, his new trick was not new at all, but was the same old simple trick of the transported man he had performed before, only with more glare and gloss, and a few water tanks being moved out of the theater every night.

He knew Borden would come to see the act, so whenever he spotted him in the audience we would present “the pledge” and “the turn” of the Real Transported Man himself and his double would only appear for “the prestige” far away in the balcony, and therefore not recognizable by Borden, who was now starting to be taken in, as Angier had been, by the power of the “true magic” of science (for had he not been informed of the “mysterious” water-tanks?). Whenever Borden was not present, Angier himself appeared in the prestige, being finally able to personally receive the audience’s applause at the end.

In the day Borden came intending to expose the trick, Angier, who was preparing for the prestige but also watching and waiting for this moment, spotted him among the volunteers from the public and quickly placed (or had placed by the blindmen) the water-tank under the trap door. Borden, much more interested in studying the machine then the presenter (whom he knew to be Angier from previous shows) doesn’t even notice that, this time, a double is on stage.

The look on the drowning man’s face as he is struggling, first to understand what happened to him, and then to save his life, cannot be the look of Angier or one of his supposed clones in the moment of their greatest victory, for which he had prepared for so long, and whose “price” he had willingly accepted. No, it is the face of a desperate man, crying for help – the face of Angier's double.

Angier had thus finally and resoundingly beaten Borden in the magician’s game, completely destroying his opponent’s life in the process. He even went so far as to taunt him by offering to buy his secret, only to tear it to pieces in front of him without reading it – a trick he was no longer interested in and which he now believed to be very simple indeed.

However, things turned for Angier when Cutter went to see him and learned of the truth. Upon meeting “Lord Caldlow”, the pragmatically minded Cutter finally understood the true and only possible nature of the trick. In his mind, Angier had gone too far that time by killing an innocent man, his double Root, and using Cutter himself to incriminate and sentence to death their former colleague, Borden.

Cutter suspected, from the first Transported Man, that Borden might have a twin, which he eventually confirmed when Fallon was kidnapped. Even though he cared for Angier, he thought, in face of his terrible deeds, that the only fair thing to do was to give the surviving Borden the chance of retribution for his brother’s death.

As the film draws to a close we find Cutter and Angier in the old warehouse, darkness filling the place, except for the small light coming from the lantern. A disenchanted Cutter sets the tone for the final sequence:

“Take a minute to consider your achievement.”

He then tells him about the sailor who said drowning was like going home. Angier had taken comfort in that thought, not only in connection with his wife death, but to appease his mind for the murder he commited. Ironically for Cutter, his white lie about drowning had helped Angier in getting the necessary nerve to proceed with his act.

Angier, who had struggled with the idea of drowning (remember him submerging his face in the basin?), upon seeing Cutter leave instinctively turns his lantern towards a water-tank, and what does he see? A corpse strongly resembling himself. In a split second he understands that it must have been put there by Cutter. He even knows how he did it:

“No one cares about the man in the box”.

Cutter, who was a master of characterization, obtained and appropriately characterized several corpses (men in boxes no one cares about) to resemble Angier, the effect being aided by the obfuscation in the warehouse and of the water-tanks themselves.

However, Angier was still not able to understand the purpose of all this scenario. It was then that in entered Fallon, who tells him about the true nature of his relation to “Borden” and how they performed their trick, not before shooting Angier in the chest.

Angier, a dying man, now understands that the twin was let in by Cutter in order to kill him, but also that Cutter in his sympathy did not wish to dispossess him of his strange “achievement”, which he so greatly prized. And so Angier takes advantage of the scenario Cutter prepared for him and proceeds to play on Borden the final part of his great trick, telling him the imaginary story of his first use of the machine, what it did and the “price” that he had paid for his art.

For he knew well that he had paid a great price for his obsession – an innocent man’s life and his own. But in the game of illusion and masterful deceit, Borden’s secret disclosed and his own preserved, he had been the victor – and he had, after all, performed a most wonderful magic trick in this “solid, solid world”.

In the end, a close shot of one of the tanks is shown. Not just any tank, but a special one. The tank where Root, Angier’s double, lies.

A beautiful film that really plays its own magic trick on its audience, isn’t it?

Note - Found it in internet!! Thought of sharing here! I think this explanation justifies the statement - "You want to be fooled!"
Well written and interesting, but the theory falls apart at the last shot of the movie. The tank at the end was not the one used for the final performance, because we see Angier's copy (or Root if you believe that) is inside. The body of the one Borden saw die was identified by Cutter after the performance on the table in the morgue. Unless Root has a twin, one of them had to have been a copy of Angier.

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Joined: December 2014
Root had different teeth, a different nose, and different ears to Angier .... it is not Root in the tank - or on the balcony ... unfortunately for Nolan's story ... the machine worked

The reference at the end about being fooled ... is because Nolan is fooling us ... Nolan has used classic misdirection the whole movie ... the audience is immersed with Angier and Borden ... when they should have been concentrating on Cutter ... there is a reason he is the narrator ... and his scenes with the little girl at the beginning and end ... hold the most crucial explanations of the movie ... Borden/Fallon himself is the Prestige .... and it is Cutter ... who "brings him back" ... it's just there is no crying little boy ... saying ... "where's his brother?" ....


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Joined: December 2019
I've been for the past week or so just exploring the things that I didnt really understand in my chemistry class. One if things brought me to what is called the many worlds interpretation, and its basically a way to interpret what wave functions are. If you have ever heard of the double slit experiment the idea of a wave function pops up and is a part of quantum mechanics. Basically in the experiment electrons are fired between two slits and they act differently depending on if you are "observing them or not". If you observe them they act as though they are particles and when you dont they act as though they are waves. If you have heard of wave particle duality, this is the experiment that led scientists to believe that wave particle duality is true. The wave function basically, in terms of the double slit experiment, is a way to predict where the electrons will land (like particles or like a wave with interference patterns). Before observing the electron, there is a "wave function" that encompasses the different possible ways the electron could move. It is only until you observe it that the wave function "collapses" and a spot for the electron to land is actually chosen. This basically means that before you look at it, the wave function holds the various possibilities where the electron could land in the double sphere experiment. It is only when you look at it that the wave function "collapses" and a "decision is mad" as to where the electron actually lands
This idea is reflected in the schrodinger's cat idea
Where until you open the box to see if the cat is still alive, the cat is in a superposition of either dead or alive.
An interpretation of how the wave function works is called the many worlds interpretation and basically says that (from my understanding) that different "worlds are created" in which one of them you observed the cat and he is alive and the other world is that you observed and that the cat is dead
The reason why I bring this up is in reference to the prestige. Where the main characters produce copies of themselves using Tesla's machine. My idea is that teslas machine grabs copies of the alternate dimensions of themselves somehow.
The different copies of them that are created via the "many worlds interpretation" somehow which I cannot fully explain.
It is also worth noting that Tesla died well before the "many worlds interpretation" was created; but it would be cool as hell as a movie for this idea and a genius such as Tesla to coincide together. Let me know what you think!

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Joined: December 2019
I think, the fact that Burden gave to Angier a reference to Tesla, as a key to his trick, must be taken to account. Along with the fact that Tesla did not deny building that Machine for Borden, it is implied, that Borden’s trick (swapping with Fallon) made possible thanks to the Machine (otherwise, reference to Tesla would be meaningless).

It is also confirmed by the episode in Borden’s workshop after the premiere of The Real Transported Man, where Borden and Fallon look in confusion at the Machine sketch in Borden’s diary wondering how it could be used for this trick. They could not imagine that Angier would meet the consequences of use of the Machine with such an anger (killing each of his twin), in contrast to Borden, who fully bears the burden of consequences. Just like the Angier in the end, who could imagine that Borden’s attitude to Fallon (sharing his life) could be possible only towards a brother (not a twin from the Machine).

This also makes sense to Nolan's emphasizing in the screenplay Angier staring obsessed and hypnotized at the lightnings of the Machine (facing his “birth” and death coming, as he knows the EXACT mechanics of his trick).

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