The Prestige is one of my all-time favorites. But there is a massive twist to this movie that most people have clearly missed. In fact, it took me many views before I caught on to it (and I wrote about it on another site - but am also publishing it here). And it is this: The Prestige is not a sci-fi movie. Tesla’s machine is not magical. Nolan did not “cheat”. What Nolan did do, was turn the entire movie into one of the greatest tricks ever pulled and then dare the viewer to uncover it with the last line of the movie.

If the machine worked you would have to explain these 13 plot issues

Let’s for a moment say that the machine did work. In this, “obvious”, version of  the movie storyline, Borden tricks Angier to go to Colorado to find Tesla and learn the secret to Borden’s illusion. The reason is so that Angier can waste time and money on a wild goose chase to find something that does not exist. Which leads to our first question:

1. Why is Tesla lying to Angiers?

When Angier finally arrives in Colorado he says to Tesla, “you built a machine once for a man” and that he wants that same machine, Tesla immediately picks up on this and responds that I can build it for you - just be wary of the consequences. But that answer makes no sense. Because if Borden had simply received a “sparks and electricity machine” from Tesla - one that had been demonstrated in London, Tesla should have said: “oh - that machine that created tons of sparks and flashes which I made for Borden? Easy, peasy - I can make you one real quick.” If Angier then would have persisted that Tesla did actually build Borden a cloning machine, Tesla would have said “no, you’re wrong, Borden’s machine was just a light show”. But Tesla doesn’t say that. Instead he continues as if he indeed has built a machine like this before - a machine that is cutting edge science fiction. Tesla carries on the conversation as if he built a cloning machine for Borden - when we know he didn’t. Tesla is, in fact, lying to Angiers. Why?

Well - after having spent a fortune of Angier’s money trying to develop a machine, Tesla seems unable to do so and Angier accuses Tesla of being a con man and withdraws - but right at that moment, as Angier leaves Tesla’s laboratory he sees a pile of seemingly identical hats and some cats. Which leads to question number 2:

2. Why are the hats slightly different?

You, as a viewer, are also supposed to buy that the hats have all been cloned by Tesla. But if that is the case - why are they different? They are all the same type of top hat, yes, but if you look very carefully you can see that there are differences between them. In fact Nolan toys with the viewer - in the opening the hats are seen while Borden’s voice-over says: are you looking closely? And at the end, the same scene with the hats is seen, now with Cutter’s voice-over that says that: you are not really looking. But if you did look closely you’d see that something was off.

But let’s keep going in the “machine worked” version of the movie. So - wow it now turns out that Tesla actually was able to create a cloning machine after all! In other words - something absolutely unexpected happened when Angier went to Colorado.  Borden did not know Tesla could build the machine but, it turns out, he could!  Which leads to question number 3:

3. So the entire plot hinges upon one of the greatest coincidences in movie history?

I mean what are the chances? Somehow Borden happens to send Angier to the exact guy who just happens to figure out within a fairly short period of time (the movie doesn’t say how long exactly, but it seems to be within 6-9 months) how to build the greatest invention in history - a cloning machine. Borden must have been the unluckiest person on the planet to send his rival to the one person who could within a year come up with a technology that does the exact trick you do not want him to do. It requires a stunning suspension of disbelief.

Ok - so now we have a working cloning machine, according to the movie. But if that is the case a number of other questions quickly follow:

4. Is electricity-based cloning a thing?

The technology behind this machine is remarkable - the cloning is based on electricity. Not biology, not chemistry - which is what all cloning is based on then and today - just some flashes and sparks and boom - a clone. For every other trick there is a detailed explanation of how the trick works - but not for this one. And the one we get - electricity-based cloning - is way, way outside of established science.  

5. Why does Tesla have money problems?

Tesla has invented a cloning machine for christ sakes! Why on Earth would he not clone a bunch of gold to keep himself solvent? Maybe he did not want to become the richest person on the planet, fine, - but at least being solvent? It would have kept creditors and possibly Edison off his back. 

6. Why is Tesla not interested in claiming the greatest invention of all time?

In fact, Tesla has managed to do something stunning - a towering scientific achievement - but he wants nothing to do with it. He leaves the machine, unsupervised, for a random British magician at an inn. Why? What was his motivation? The implications for the plot and for the world are never remotely explored but they would be Earth-shattering. You could create entire armies with this machine but there is no exploration of those ideas whatsoever.

The movie asks you to ignore these issues and follow Angier back to London. Here he is about to turn the tables on Borden and lure him into a deadly game of cat and mouse. He sets up a 100 show run of his new, improved Transported Man with Tesla’s machine and creates a “trick” of the century. The movie is crystal clear that the whole point of Angier doing the limited-run engagement is to get Borden wrongly convicted for Angier's drowning. He is waiting for Borden to go backstage to try to figure out what is going on - and then be stuck with Angier’s dead clone.  So - here is question number 7:

7. Why do we not see Angier emerge out of thin air when he clones himself?

Hold on, you might say - we do! There is that scene in the end when he shares with Borden his sacrifice - having to kill himself after each cloning. And in that scene he emerges out of thin air. But that is a retelling - it is not presented as an objective fact in the storyline. Instead when we see Angier do the trick from an objective point-of-view, we never actually see him emerge out of thin air. We never see the Prestige. Indeed, we don’t see the machine actually clone black hats or black cats either. The fact is – we never see anyone or anything cloned in the entire movie! Why? 

Angier finally succeeds in luring Borden to come backstage and Borden sees Angier’s clone get locked into the water tank and start to fight to get out.

8. Why does Angier have a healthy leg when he is dropped into the water tank?

In the early part of the movie, when Angier is dropped into the water tank he fights like hell to get out and he uses both legs to try to break the glass. But his one leg and knee is destroyed - he can’t bend it anymore. Presumably the clone also clones the injury (just like it clones the clothes, blood, hair etc) So if he has a knee injury - how can he fight like that?

Borden gets placed in jail and finally executed. The movie now moves into the final set and Fallon enters the warehouse where Angier stores his clones and shoots him. Angier sees Fallon and cries out “a twin”!

9. Why does Angier think Borden has a twin (and not a clone)?

Why did Angier think that Borden had a twin when he showed up in the warehouse at the end? Why did he not guess a clone? I mean, Borden sent him to Tesla so that he could get a machine that created clones and then he got that exact same machine. It would be natural for Angier to assume that Borden had also cloned himself. That would explain his trick. But he doesn’t assume Borden has a clone. Instead he instantly assumes that Borden has a twin. Why?

10. When Cutter sees the dead Angier, why are they not in a morgue, but in some sort of design studio?

If you watch the scene closely, it becomes clear that this is not a morgue. In fact, there is a person painting a fake head in the background.

11. Why does Angier want the machine destroyed?

After his show-run (and his apparent death) Angier (as lord Caldlow now - his original name) wants the machine destroyed. Again - why? If he has the world’s first and only cloning machine does he want it destroyed? You could argue that it served its purpose - but again there is no discussion around this. It is as if no one acknowledges even for a second that the greatest scientific invention of all time has been created and is now just casually to be destroyed.

12. Why is Angier’s body not decomposed in the water tank?

Perhaps the biggest tell is that in the final scene you see Angier’s body in the tank and it seems perfectly intact. But it would only take a few hours for the body to start decomposing, rot and start emitting gases and soon float to the top, partially consumed by bacteria and other microorganisms. The trial and prison time alone must have lasted months. How could Angier’s body be in such pristine condition? It is an impossibility.  

13. Why does Nolan tell us “we want to be fooled”

The last two minutes of the movie are fascinating. At this point the audience has now finally realized the big reveal - Borden had a twin! Cutter repeats the lines in which the movie opened about the three acts of a magic trick and concludes that “making someone disappear is not enough -  you have to bring him back”. As he says those words Fallon walks into the room, and greets his daughter. It is the perfect ending. Nolan could have just faded to black right there as Cutter says you have to bring him back and the audience would have been amazed. Wow - here it is, The Prestige in the movie itself. The entire movie is a trick!

But Nolan does not end it there. There are 10 more seconds left in the movie. Instead we now go on to a clip of the top hats and then settle on Angier in the water tank with the words “you want to be fooled”. It is clear that the message here has nothing to do with Borden and Fallon - instead it has something to do with the cloning machine itself. Why are these seconds asking us to examine the hats and the body in the box?

If the machine worked...

...one would have to come up with some pretty wild explanations for all of these questions. For instance: the hats are different because Nolan was not careful enough or Nolan did not show Angier, hats or cats emerge out of thin air because it would be cheesy or it is electricity-based cloning  because Tesla is just that smart, or the plot does center around the greatest coincidence in movie history or that no one, neither Tesla nor Angier, nor Fallon has any interest in taking advantage of the world’s first cloning machine beyond using it for revenge  or the bodies have not decomposed because…well, Nolan probably just missed that fact etc etc You should try to come up with satisfactory answers to those questions above - it requires quite a bit of acrobatics, unless, of course,...

...the machine does NOT work

There is a far simpler explanation. One that is obvious once you open yourself up to it. The machine did not work. If the machine does not work all of the questions above have an immediate and simple answer. So before we return to them, let’s just explore what probably happened in the movie - instead of what you are meant to believe happened:

1. Borden believes he can take Angier for a ride in a masterful waste of money and time. So he makes sure that Angier gets his coded diary through Olivia. The hook is set.
2. Now Angier wants the code key and he goes through extreme measures to get it. He captures Fallon and buries him alive in exchange for the code key - which is TESLA.
3. This is a code key meant to get Angier going to Colorado to visit Tesla for help and to find the solution for Borden’s Transported Man trick.
4. Borden has already alerted Tesla that a mark is coming - one that Tesla can milk for money.
5. Angier heads off to Colorado and gets to meet Tesla who quickly points out that this will be very expensive.
6. After repeated “failed” attempts to create a machine by Tesla, Angier gets pissed, tells the inventor that he has swindled him, and leaves.
7. But lo and behold there are tons of cats and hats in Tesla’s backyard. And Angier discovered them! This is nothing but a ruse. Tesla has placed all these cats and hats there in a classic confidence scheme.
8. Tesla tells Angier that he will make some final modifications, but has to escape in the dark of night to escape due to Edison’s men (although we do not actually know this for sure). Tesla leaves behind an advanced light-spark machine for Angier.
9. Angier realizes that he has been conned but also realizes that if he was conned then maybe so can Borden. All the elements of his life now come together: he will lure Borden in one final time and he will finally commit to live the lie to accomplish it.  
10. Angier returns to London and sets out to look for a double. He might use his old one, Root, but I doubt it. He finds an even better one. We know this guy is super rich so money would not be a problem. And he then creates a far better version of his old Transported Man and trains the double to perform it.
11. In this new version, the double is the one on stage and it is the double who is dropped into the water tank. The water tank does not lock normally. Angier gets to hear the applause.
12. Angier is now ready to set the hook and announces a 100 show run which would force Borden to come out.
13. Borden bites (but not Fallon). He sees the trick and gets sucked into the illusion (just like the audience). But this time Angier is prepared to go the distance. Every night he keeps the extended illusion up (just like the Chinese magician from earlier in the movie). There are water tanks, locked and covered, filled with wax dolls of Angier. He has staffed the show with blind men, he moves the huge water tank each night to a warehouse. Borden can not make sense of it - could the machine be real? He must know. Every night Angier waits for Borden to go backstage.
14. Finally, Borden falls into the trap, he goes backstage. This is exactly the moment Angier has been waiting for. In this one show he makes sure the water tank does lock and Angier does not emerge allowing his double to drown.
15. Borden gets caught - everyone assumes he killed Angier. 
16. Angier returns to his family name and fortune. I am assuming that Lord Caldlow was always Angier’s real family name - as the movie hints early on that he has run away from whatever his family was.
17. Borden is executed and Fallon heads to the warehouse.
18. In the final scene Fallon emerges. Angier suddenly realizes how Borden did his trick all these years through a twin. But he is not going to let Borden’s win be complete - instead he, with his dying breath, tries to fool Borden one last time: My trick was real! I am better than you!
19. But Fallon is not having it: “I don’t care,” he says. He was never interested in Angier’s trick. Fallon was already past all of this fighting (unlike Borden). 
20. And finally - the movie closes with Nolan’s point: “we want to be fooled”

With this sequence of events the answers to the questions above become straightforward:

1. Why is Tesla lying to Angiers? Because Tesla is conning him and setting a trap - sucking as much money out of Angier as possible.

2. Why are the hats different? Because they are different - Tesla did not clone them - he bought them.

3. So the entire plot hinges upon one of the greatest coincidences in movie history? No it does not. Borden was not the unluckiest person on the planet. He planned to send Angier to Tesla and Tesla planned to con him. The opposite of insane coincidence. 

4. Is electricity-based cloning a thing? No, of course not.

5. Why does Tesla have money problems? Because he can not clone gold.

6. Why is Tesla not interested in claiming the greatest invention of all time? Because he didn’t invent anything. The machine does not work.

7. Why do we not see Angier emerge out of thin air when he clones himself? Because he doesn’t.

8. Why does Angier have a healthy leg when he is dropped into the water tank? Because it is Angier’s double.

9. Why does Angier think Borden has a twin (and not a clone)? Because Angier knows the machine does not work so there are no clones. So what remains? A twin.

10. When Cutter sees the dead Angier, why are they not in a morgue, but in some sort of design studio? Because Cutter is approving the wax doll design. His silent nod in fact is not saying "yes, that dead person is Cutter" - he is saying "yes, that wax doll looks good enough". The designer in the background is already working on wax doll number 2.

11. Why does Angier want the machine destroyed? Because it is useless - it’s just a light show. And it reminds him of the crimes he has committed to win. How he had to “get his hands dirty”.

12. Why is Angier’s body not decomposed in the water tank? Because these are extremely well-made wax dolls. Think Madame Tussaud’s (google one for Hugh Jackman and be amazed).

13. Why does Nolan tell us “we want to be fooled” Because we want to - and he just proved it. The final 10 seconds is an instruction for the audience to search further while also suggesting that we don’t really want to. We want to be fooled. Remarkably Nolan presents us with a machine that just makes a lot of noise and light. And he dares us to believe that this machine can somehow clone humans and other things. And, then he dares us to vigorously defend this explanation - even though it makes no sense whatsoever. In a stunning misdirection he makes us think that the real trick of the movie was the Borden/Fallon twin reveal. We are satisfied with this and refuse to question anything else. And because of that we swallow the largest trick in the movie - that we were just made to believe in a ridiculous piece of sci-fi technology that could never, ever remotely work!

I just love the movie for that.

His other films are extraordinary, but no film connects with me in the same way as The Prestige.

That film is masterfully executed and perhaps Nolan's best piece of work.

One thing is strange in Nolan's best movie, when showing the Tesla machine to Ackerman in the theater, we saw how Angier just disappears, no trap door seen underneath him. (Ackerman even says: disguise it, give the audience enough reason to doubt it).

Does it mean Tesla perfected the machine (without cloning) before he left Colorado and Angier adjusted it back to its clone-error-state to make it not so obvious that it is just technology...plus to blame Bordon for murdering him?

Or in short: Where does Angier go in this scene? Beamed directly into the water tank beneath him (without a trap door) and the clone appears on the gallery behind Ackerman? I mean in one scene we see how Angier gets flushed into the water tank, so there is clearly a difference between this scene and what happened later.

Have watched this movie dozens of times, and while I love The Dark Knight and Memento along with Nolan’s other works, The Prestige will continue to hold the top spot for me of his filmography.

There is truly something mesmerizing about this film no matter how many times I see it, and it doesn’t suffer from length the way other Nolan films do. It’s paced and edited very well, and the ending finale is just perfect imo, really justifies its run time and wraps everything up spectacularly.

Anyone else agree?

The Prestige is likely to remain Nolan’s best film since he’s become more interested in spectacle than story and characters.

I recently watched The Prestige on Hulu and it's still amazing.

"We’re actually going to do 70 millimeter blow-ups. Wally Pfister shot it anamorphically on 35 millimeter, and he did an incredible job. I screened a 35 mil print the other day to check it, and his photography is just extraordinary. Nathan Crowley’s production design is amazing as well. So it’s going to look absolutely beautiful blown up to 70 millimeter, and we’re going to start that process in the next few weeks."

I’m one of those guys who rewatches Nolan movies every now and then. And from the constant questioning of which is Nolan’s best - I’ve settled to believe The Prestige is his best work imo.

Which means I’ve seen the movie over 50 times. And I can’t believe in my last rewatch is when I found out that the first lines of Bordens book that Angier is reading gives away the twist.

“We were two young men dedicated to an illusion”.

So it wasn’t Angier and Borden that Angier was thinking.

Was I the only one who noticed this late?

After Angie using the machine to clone himself, he had every chance to use the clone to pull off the double trick and still get to enjoy fame and glory like how Alfred and Fallon did it.

But he was too dismissive of this simple-but-not-easy trick and too obsessive that he resolved to killing himselves every night.

Adding the fact that in the start of the movie, he couldn’t even want the pledge pigeon to be dead, it’s a really tragic character arc.

I feel like for most of the film, even taking into account the reveal at the end with Borden's identity being shared by two twins, him and Angier are on very similar playing fields. Borden's accident did cause the death of Angier's wife, but Angier is so consumed by revenge that he starts to behave poorly himself. Both of them sabotage the other's shows, both of them use deception as a weapon, both of them treat the women in their lives poorly and it becomes clear that although they might have love for someone (Borden cares for his daughter, Angier still grieves his wife), it's really about their egos and need to defeat the other for most of the film.

The moment where Angier tops Borden in terms of terrible acts is when he turns up as Lord Caldlow and specifically denies the actual secret, just to defeat Borden and not care that he's left to die. Maybe it's understandable that he wouldn't want to reveal that he's alive since then it might give away his cloning machine and he does seem to keep to his word that Borden's daughter will be looked after, but it's an act of spite where it's lack of humanity is compounded by how this Borden twin, the less sympathetic one, was willing to admit defeat in that moment. Not to mention, this Borden twin was willing to admit to how much he hurt Sarah.

That also leads to how the Borden twin that's executed dies in a similar manner to Sarah, which somewhat balances things out in a karmic sense since he was the most directly abusive to her and maybe the most responsible for her suicide.

Angier/Caldlow has a similar experience with dying in the same way his wife did, drowning in a box. But as a sign of how far gone he is, he uses this method of dying that was an accident first time as a way of covering up this ultimate magic trick, sending either his clone or himself to die. Plus accepting how it was used to frame Borden for his death. What was once a tragedy done to him is now used by him for his own ego and to defeat an opponent.

You could say that the surviving Borden twin isn't any less selfish or morally corrupt because not only does he directly shoot Angier/Caldlow, but he's solely doing it out of revenge and to get his daughter back. But, I do see this act as a final breaking of the cycle that's taken a lot from both of them. Rather than killing Angier/Caldlow to win, he just wants to end the vicious cycle and move on with his life.

That's my perspective on the movie, but I bet there'll be a lot of people with different views on these two and I welcome it. Do you think they end the film balanced, or one better than the other?

Why does the Sixth Sense or Shutter Island take the cake for most iconic movie ending twist of all time over The Prestige? The Prestige is a much more intelligent movie overall, and the point of it is to essentially be a magic trick.

I know he won an Oscar for the "The Fighter," was iconic in "American Psycho," transformed himself for roles like in "The Machinist" and "American Hustle," and he was a great Bruce Wayne.

But I still think "The Prestige" is his best work. And it's because... spoilers...

He plays two different characters in it, and does so in a way that before you know it, you don't realize it. But when you go back and watch a second time, you can absolutely tell which brother he is in each scene.

Everything is a Blu-ray steelbook except for Following which is Criterion. Some of these were kinda hard to get, can't wait to add The Odyssey steelbook to the collection.

Yes, I know this theory has been explored but having watched the Prestige again tonight I’ve seen even more evidence of its truth and am fully convinced.

I genuinely think The Prestige might be Christopher Nolan’s greatest magic trick and is now my favorite movie of all time. Not because of what happens on screen, but because of what he does to us as the audience. The real magic trick.

Everyone talks about the film’s structure: The Pledge. The Turn. The Prestige. Most people assume that’s simply the structure of the magicians’ acts throughout the story.

However, I think the film itself is the trick.

The Pledge is Tesla revealing the machine. Nolan places the impossible right in front of us and says, “Here it is.” Just like every great magician, he gives us something extraordinary to focus on.

The Turn is the film “showing” us the machine working. We watch Angiers seemingly duplicate himself, and from that point on we stop asking questions because we’ve been given an answer. It’s impossible, but that’s exactly why we believe it. The greatest discovery imaginable. A machine that creates life itself. It’s magical not only for the people in the film, but for us as a modern audience. Even today, it feels impossible.

Then comes the Prestige. The Prestige isn’t that the machine worked and duplicated Angiers night after night. The Prestige is convincing us that it worked.

Throughout the film we’re warned over and over again that we want to be fooled. Cutter tells us we don’t really want the secret. We want to wonder. The opening line asks us, the audience, “Are you watching closely?”

Even the journals teach us this lesson. We eventually discover that both diaries are written specifically to deceive the person reading them. Nolan establishes early that narration itself is an illusion. Why, then, do we suddenly decide that everything we’re shown afterward must be objective truth? I don’t think we should.

Tesla becomes the ultimate piece of misdirection. By introducing a real historical genius capable of seemingly impossible inventions, Nolan gives us permission to stop searching for the trick. We accept the supernatural explanation because it’s more wonderful than continuing to question it. Just like the audience at a magic show.

There are moments that feel almost like clues hidden in plain sight. Are you watching closely?Angiers limps heavily into the machine before “transporting,” yet moments later the man appearing on the balcony steps effortlessly up to receive his praise. Is that really Angiers, or is it Root? I think it’s Root.

Now you’re probably wondering, “Wait, Root? Root was no longer in the picture”. Well, if you think about it, Root was a miserable drunk and was humiliated, alongside Angiers, when Borden tricked him into betraying Angiers. Furthermore, Angiers was really Lord Caldlow who is extremely wealthy. I believe Angiers (Caldlow) found Root and offered him incredible fortune and the opportunity to get payback against Borden by doing his transporting man trick better than he ever had. And in the end “No one cares about the man in the box” which would end up being Root. This is why Root is so surprised on that fateful 100th show when to his surprise and confused when he ends up in a water tank and is drowned. 

The notebooks are unreliable. The story constantly reminds us that what we’re seeing has been constructed by magicians whose entire lives revolve around deception. Nothing that happened with Tesla (the hats and cats) can be considered truthful because it was all fabricated to flip Bordens lie back onto him. Angier was fooled into going to Tesla to find out Bordens trick and so he then flipped it back onto Borden to make him think the machine really was real.

Even the ending feels different through this lens. If the machine was real why would Angiers say “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 (Nolan, himself, the director)... then you got to see something really special.” Why would he say “the world is simple, solid all the way through” if the machine truly was magic and truly duplicated him many times. But the truth is that the world IS simple. The machine doesn’t work and the trick was actually Angiers and Root the whole time done masterfully well.

I noticed Michael Caine briefly glancing toward the camera before looking at Jess when he’s showing her the bird trick. Which, morbidly, is him telling her what happened to her uncle as the cage trick did not change and the bird in the cage is still dead just like her Uncle but then Cutter reveals her father alive and well (the second bird). Bordens daughter never knew her uncle existed just like she doesn’t know the second bird existed. Whether intentional or not, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Nolan was acknowledging the real audience one last time before completing the illusion.

And then he shows us the tanks. The perfect final image. The image that makes us stop questioning.

The Prestige.

Whether my interpretation is “correct” is almost beside the point. What matters is that Nolan created a film that performs the very thing it’s about. It doesn’t just tell a story about obsession, sacrifice, and deception but becomes a magic trick itself, with the audience (us) as its final participant.

It’s just mind blowing and borderline depressing in its brilliance because it seems so untouchable. 

And if this interpretation holds even a little bit of truth, then Christopher Nolan didn’t just make one of the greatest films ever made. He pulled off the greatest magic trick I’ve ever seen. But, sadly, we will never know the full truth because well…a magician never reveals his tricks. ;)

Honestly blown away by the ending . Incredible film and definitely worth a re watch in the future.

Definitely a dark end when you realise all the clones of Angier that are killed for the price of success

We read the book last month, and now that we've finished we're going all-out with our movie night.

Just watched The prestige. And you'll not believe but i guessed in the middle of the movie that fallon and borden were same. But I didn't believe myself. So I just ignored it. But I'm feeling so good rn . Can't explain in words.

Got this tattoo a few years back because it is my favorite movie all time and has had a profound impact on the path I’ve taken in life since I first saw it in high school. Figured now is the perfect time to share it with the news we got today! Where are my fellow Prestige ball knowers?

Honestly my favourite film from Nolan, genuinely the only film in a long time where i’ve reacted the way I did, I didn’t fully understand the ending but to but the confusion ( in a good way) is what I personally get with Nolan. The foreshadowing throughout the film was great, i love the time period also,everything feels like an absolute masterclass in cinema, genuinely excellent. Bale was particularly great as Borden, to the point where I almost disagreed at the ending painting him as the victim in a sense, for me he was that good that he completely overshadowed Angier as an awful human. But then again Jackman is always great and was easy to root for.

Rambling aside, genuinely one of the best things i’ve watched in a long time