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The Prestige:

WARNING: Contains potential spoilers!

The Prestige (2006) is a period film adapted from Christopher Priest's novel of the same name. It is directed by Christopher Nolan and features Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier, Christian Bale as Alfred Borden, and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla. It also stars Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson, Piper Perabo and Andy Serkis. The Prestige depicts the rivalry of Robert Angier and Alfred Borden, two Victorian era stage magicians in late 19th and early 20th century London. After Angier, in his grief, blames Borden for a tragic accident, their full-fledged rivalry begins, and both magicians become obsessed with creating the best illusion.

At the beginning of the movie, Alfred Borden is on trial for the murder of Robert Angier. As the only witness to Angier's death, Borden is convicted on circumstantial evidence. Borden begins to read Angier's diary as he is awaiting his execution. At this point, there is a flashback to 1887 in which Angier and Borden are ringers for Milton the Magician, with Harry Cutter as Milton's illusion engineer. Julia, Angier's wife, drowns while performing an escape from a Chinese water torture cell, and suspicion falls on Borden for taking risks when tying the knot for the trick. At Julia's funeral, Angier asks Borden which knot he tied, but Borden says he doesn't know.

The two men begin separate careers as magicians. Borden becomes "The Professor" and hires an aide named Fallon. During a parlor magic job, he meets Sarah, who he later marries. After a while, Sarah begins to feel uneasy about Borden; she claims to know when he loves her and when he does not. During Borden's performance of the bullet catch, Angier, in disguise, again demands to know which knot Borden tied. As he plans to shoot Borden with a live bullet, Fallon steps out of the shadows and pushes Angier's arm. The bullet then strikes Borden's left hand, severing two fingers. Meanwhile, Angier performs as "The Great Danton," with Cutter helping him. When he performs the vanishing bird cage illusion, Borden, in disguise, sabotages the trick. This greatly damages Angier's reputation. Borden soon astonishes crowds with "The Transported Man," in which he disappears into a box and instantly reappears within another box across the stage. The new illusion amazes Angier and Olivia, Angier's assistant. Obsessed with besting Borden, Angier hires a double and steals Borden's trick, with a slight variation, as "The New Transported Man." The double enjoys the applause while Angier can only listen from below the stage. Unhappy at missing the applause and obsessed with figuring out Borden's version of the teleportation illusion, Angier sends Olivia to steal Borden's secrets. Although Olivia provides Angier with Borden's enciphered diary, she double-crosses him, and Borden humiliates Angier by binding up the double at Angier's show. In return, Angier and Cutter capture Fallon, releasing him in exchange for the key to Borden's illusion. Borden gives Angier one word, "TESLA," and suggests that it is not merely the key to the transposition cipher of Borden's notebook but also the key to the illusion.

To uncover this secret, Angier travels to Colorado Springs to meet Nikola Tesla. Angier hires Tesla to construct a teleportation machine, but the device fails to work. Angier learns from Borden's notebook that he has been sent on a wild goose chase. Feeling he has wasted his money, he returns to Tesla's lab to discover that the machine creates a duplicate of any item placed in it. Tesla's rivalry with Thomas Edison forces him to leave his home and laboratory, but in the end Angier gets the device. In a letter, Tesla warns Angier to destroy it and never use it.

Back in London, Sarah's relationship with Borden takes its toll, driving her to drink. The suspicion of an extramarital relationship between Borden and Olivia leads to a blowup with Sarah, after which she hangs herself. Angier returns to London to produce a final set of 100 performances with his new act, "The Real Transported Man." Only blind stagehands are allowed backstage during these performances, to preserve the secret. In the new illusion, Angier disappears under huge arcs of electricity and "teleports" from the stage to the balcony in only a matter of seconds. Borden is baffled by Angier's quick reappearance so far from the stage, but suspects a trap door is used. After a show one night, Fallon follows Angier's stagehands. They move a large, concealed water tank across town and discard it in an abandoned building. When Borden attends Angier's performance again, he slips backstage and finds a water tank with a drowning Angier inside. Borden tries to save Angier's life, but a padlock on the latch of the tank prevents Angier's escape. Borden is convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. In prison, he learns his daughter will become a ward of the state unless he gives up the secret of his illusion to a Lord Caldlow. He is forced to oblige but refuses to reveal all unless he can see his daughter, Jess, before his execution. He reaches the end of Angier's diary and reads that Angier hopes Borden enjoys his time in prison, where he should be rotting for Angier's murder. When Lord Caldlow visits Borden in prison with Jess, Borden realizes that Caldlow is Angier. Beaten, Borden gives Angier the secret of the Transported Man, but Angier tears it up without reading it. Cutter is invited to see Lord Caldlow, who reveals to him that he is in fact, Angier. Cutter's astonishment at seeing Angier alive with Jess gives way to a grim realization of what Angier's obsession has accomplished.

Cutter follows Angier to the abandoned building and confronts him. After learning of the dead, replicated Angiers, Cutter leaves in disgust. Angier is ambushed by a shot from the dark as Borden appears and reveals that he and Fallon were twins who lived as a single individual. One twin loved Sarah, the other Olivia. For the original illusion, a twin acted as the double. They were so committed to the lie that they amputated Fallon's/Borden's fingers to replicate the other brother. Angier, gravely wounded by the gunshot, reveals that each time he disappeared during his illusion, he fell into a locked tank and drowned. The machine created a double who was transported to the balcony. Angier's first experiment with the machine had resulted in his murder of the copy (or the copy's murder of the original?), the price he continued to pay each time he performed the act. The movie closes as fire begins to consume the building, and Borden leaves a dead Angier to reunite with his daughter.

Information gathered from Wikipedia

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