[SPOILERS] Are you watching closely?

The 2006 film about rival magicians desperately trying to learn the secrets of each others tricks.
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nevermindpopfilm wrote:I actually thought the film was a metaphor about the existence of God.

Would you care to elaborate?

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George wrote:
nevermindpopfilm wrote:I actually thought the film was a metaphor about the existence of God.

Would you care to elaborate?
Sure. Magic was representative of God and the inability of Man to simply acknowledge that it was impossible for magic(God) to exist but we continue the charade rather than accept the brutality of it.

I think Jackman's line at the end summed it up for me:

The audience knows the truth- that
the world is simple. Miserable.
Solid all the way through. But if
you could fool them, even for a
second, you could make them wonder.
Then you got to see something very
special...

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nevermindpopfilm wrote:
George wrote:
nevermindpopfilm wrote:I actually thought the film was a metaphor about the existence of God.

Would you care to elaborate?
Sure. Magic was representative of God and the inability of Man to simply acknowledge that it was impossible for magic(God) to exist but we continue the charade rather than accept the brutality of it.

I think Jackman's line at the end summed it up for me:

The audience knows the truth- that
the world is simple. Miserable.
Solid all the way through. But if
you could fool them, even for a
second, you could make them wonder.
Then you got to see something very
special...
Disagree tbh, I didn't see that in the film at all.

I think it was mean't as escapism, to break away from the rules of the world. I agree with what Nolan said on the DVD with comparing the world of magic to filmmaking.

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I saw the central conflict as a metaphor for science vs. religion. The machine was representative of forces in the world which cannot be explained or understood.

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nevermindpopfilm wrote:
George wrote:
nevermindpopfilm wrote:I actually thought the film was a metaphor about the existence of God.

Would you care to elaborate?
Sure. Magic was representative of God and the inability of Man to simply acknowledge that it was impossible for magic(God) to exist but we continue the charade rather than accept the brutality of it.

I think Jackman's line at the end summed it up for me:

The audience knows the truth- that
the world is simple. Miserable.
Solid all the way through. But if
you could fool them, even for a
second, you could make them wonder.
Then you got to see something very
special...

I take it more in a general supernatural terms, but I think your application is valid and quite good.

I saw the central conflict as a metaphor for science vs. religion. The machine was representative of forces in the world which cannot be explained or understood.
So yes, basically this. :thumbup:
I think it was mean't as escapism, to break away from the rules of the world. I agree with what Nolan said on the DVD with comparing the world of magic to filmmaking.
I think you can look at the film in both ways. The magic trick structure explained in the film is the actual way the film is structured. But the involvement of Tesla and supernatural elements open the film up to a lot more.

To view the film as just twist-filled escapism isn't giving it nearly enough credit.

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rbevanx wrote: Disagree tbh, I didn't see that in the film at all.

I think it was mean't as escapism, to break away from the rules of the world. I agree with what Nolan said on the DVD with comparing the world of magic to filmmaking.
Like George said, escapism is far too easy for Nolan to do, and the metaphor for filmmaking while easily relatable for him just seems underwhelming.

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Erik wrote:WARNING: This topic will pretty much contain all spoilers about the ending of The Prestige. If you haven't seen the movie, I would advise you to stop reading here.




I just watched The Prestige again, for the first time in like 12 months (which is very long for a movie I like so much!)
Now, the last words that where spoken are these:

Cutter: Now you're looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.

I can't get this off my mind. To me, in the ending, everything is explained. Borden has a twin brother, they both take turns and pretend to be Fallon one at a time, that's his trick on the Transported Man. Algiers uses something different. A machine that hasn't even a name. It's not a transporting device, it's a duplicator. It places a copy of something or someone, on a specific place. Every question raised in the movie, is answered.

Yet still Cutter tries to convince us something we haven't seen.
Is there something in this movie we didn't see. Something that wasn't shown or more likely: was shown, but we didn't see? Is there like a second twist-ending?
No, he was only telling us that throughout the movie the "twist" was quite obvious, but we're still looking because we assume it couldn't be that simple. The entire movie foreshadowed this.

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Referring to Cutter's final line - I think this is just Nolan's writing tendencies coming through. With each film, a character (or multiple) discusses the theme of the story, what they learned, and what it means for them going forward. Cutter was basically summarizing the mental trip Angier had taken.

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gluvnast wrote:
Erik wrote:WARNING: This topic will pretty much contain all spoilers about the ending of The Prestige. If you haven't seen the movie, I would advise you to stop reading here.




I just watched The Prestige again, for the first time in like 12 months (which is very long for a movie I like so much!)
Now, the last words that where spoken are these:

Cutter: Now you're looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.

I can't get this off my mind. To me, in the ending, everything is explained. Borden has a twin brother, they both take turns and pretend to be Fallon one at a time, that's his trick on the Transported Man. Algiers uses something different. A machine that hasn't even a name. It's not a transporting device, it's a duplicator. It places a copy of something or someone, on a specific place. Every question raised in the movie, is answered.

Yet still Cutter tries to convince us something we haven't seen.
Is there something in this movie we didn't see. Something that wasn't shown or more likely: was shown, but we didn't see? Is there like a second twist-ending?
No, he was only telling us that throughout the movie the "twist" was quite obvious, but we're still looking because we assume it couldn't be that simple. The entire movie foreshadowed this.


no....cutter is referring to borden having a twin as THE secret.....he's saying we didnt see it coming because we didnt want it to be so simple and realistic...we wanted magic...we wanted to be amazed...thats why when angier finds the machine, we roll with him, we believe that that was the way borden created the trick.....

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"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."

I always saw this as the metaphor for filmmaking because I want to be a filmmaker, of how films can convince, attract, mesmerize and fool people, how illusions can transform people and make them believe in something beyond.

It's about lies, about everything.

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