if you haven’t seen the prestige, retrieve it and watch it, just go. the things i’d do to watch this movie for the first time again. 

this is not a review or whatever, just some things i need to say.

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the prestige, like other nolan movies, is ambiguous, so there are several levels to it.

after watching it closely i went to imdb to check out its reviews, faqs and some felt like they were cheated because it happened to have a sci-fi twist with tesla’s duplicator/teleporter invention.

well i think one of the movie’s most important line would be the counterpoint to that.

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 know. You want to be fooled. 

it also ties in with angier refusing to believe that borden did the trick with a double because it was too simple. you feel cheated when you actually find out the secret. it is the idea of wanting to be fooled which blocks you from believing/accepting the truth. 

anyone who despised the tesla machine plot would be like angier ripping the paper which supposedly borden wrote his secret on, in prison or when he refuses to listen to cutter. he’s all how could it be? i think when i first watched it before, i was with angier. going all no it couldn’t be that simple could it? just a double? that’s it?!

oh and the thing about nolan’s movies, you could go on forever asking questions with no correct/wrong answers.

so, the movie itself is a great magic trick.

nolan revealing the secret to the tricks could be relevant to this very line borden mentioned to sarah’s nephew about secrets

Borden: Never show anyone. They’ll beg you and they’ll flatter you for the secret, but as soon as you give it up… you’ll be nothing to them. You understand? Nothing. The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything. 

it’s as if as you watch the movie, nolan grabs you and tells you to never reveal secrets to the tricks because the secret impresses no one. then he shows you what happens when the secret’s revealed. movie ends, critics critic and critics are not at all impressed with the twist of the movie (which is the secret..) it’s like nolan’s right beside you smirking and saying “told you so”.

moving on..

this line is practically nolan justifying what he’s trying to do all along

Cutter: They’re magicians, your honor. Men who live by dressing up plain and simple truths to shock, to amaze. 

and this is why nolan does what he does

Robert Angier: You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you… then you got to see something really special… you really don’t know?… it was… it was the look on their faces… 

conclusion: nolan’s a magician.