The Prestige

Okay, first of all, I do recommend this movie, because it was well made by Christopher Nolan, and the themes of duality, obsession, and rivalry are well represented on screen. I think a lot of people felt very strongly for it, and it's not that I'm against it, but I felt a little duped at the end of it, more confused than surprised. And with that, a warning for those who have not seen the movie, and should not read on if they have not seen "The Prestige."

SPOILERS!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!! ARRRGGHH!!!!

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Right.

Okay, I had to read the outcome on Wikipedia, and on forums, and a little bit more to get the whole story. I mostly got the ending, though I think I didn't know why that was the twist. See, I was expecting a twist, but I think I was expecting a different twist. I think the primary problem for me was that usually the twist occurs for the benefit of the protagonist, and the antagonist in the movie is the one that gets screwed, right? Well, my issue is that the movie had convinced me that Angier was the protagonist all along, and Borden was the bad guy! So when the movie ended, it felt as if the movie had resurrected the bad guy, and killed the good guy!

Reading the forums, I saw the bigger picture. Yeah, Angier was the lazier magician, wanted a machine to duplicate himself so that he could do a trick, rather than trying to figure out how to do the trick himself, the hard way. Angier disregarded Olivia's feelings and sent her off to the enemy. Angier was so obsessed with Borden, that he tried repeatedly to sabotage Borden. Angier did shoot Borden. Angier even went so far as to kill his clone every night, for 100 nights, (or whatever), to stage a performance. He framed Borden and gained custody of Borden's little girl. Yeah, that kinda makes him not the nicest guy.

HOWEVER...

The movie presented Angier as the protagonist to me because he was the one with the dead wife, who was mourning her death and rightfully sought revenge from a man who seemingly had no regard for what he had done, tying a knot that may or may not have caused his wife's death. Angier was Cutter's ally, and Cutter was a seemingly neutral party in the whole thing, a good guy, and one whom you could trust with your life. Angier had the nicer personality, despite the things he did. He didn't come across as a villian inasmuch, until the last few minutes.

But more than who Angier was, Borden classified himself to be more the villian, because of his manner and actions. He is arrogant, arguing about what knot to tie when a person's life depended on it. At the funeral, he was apologetic, but the same way mob bosses apologizes to the family that they've just killed, insincere, cold. He loved Sarah, which was great, but then he didn't, and acted like a jerk. We know at the end why he did that, but during most of the movie, you can't help but despise him because he tooled Sarah around. He always had Fallon around, which was a problem for me because Fallon did not fade into the background as the filmmakers had hoped, in fact, he stood out like a sore thumb. He was obviously disguised, he was obviously secretive, and he was like a giant pink elephant in the room. I didn't know throughout the whole film that he was a twin, but I thought he was either a clone (since he sent Angier to Tesla, perhaps he had the machine as well, even though Tesla, we learned, had never built a machine before) or someone we've been watching all along. But anyway, Fallon being someone crucial was not a surprise for me. And also, in the first few minutes, we were lead to believe that Borden was responsible for Angier's death. This turned out to be false, but nonetheless, misleading.

So anyway, now I get it. The line in the movie even says that part of the magic is just sitting back and letting the illusion fool you, because if you figured out how it was done, you'd be disappointed. Having the whole movie turned your perception around in the last 5 minutes is a little cruel, I think, but one of the things this movie does that I wanna attempt to do is to switch perceptions, having the audience sympathize with one and hate the other, but then have that shift slowly throughout the film. I think The Prestige attempts this with mixed results, with too subtle clues and too much hinging on the last few minutes. At the end of it, I kept waiting for Angier to pull another one out of the hat because I thought he was the protagonist.