In the movie The Prestige in the end of the movie was there more to be discovered ?

Question

ok I watched the movie and loved it I thought I had it all figured out except near the end when cutter says "but your not really looking u dont want to figure it out u want to be fooled" that left me thinking if there was something more in the movie ok the Tesla Machine made doubles of angier and one of the doubles was killed after each performance which sort of represnted the act with the birds where one is killed ann Borden had a Twin Brother in his act which he used for his magic trick so it seemed pretty simple and i thought i had it all. Yet the ending with Cutters phrase keeps me wondering if theres more to be discovered because it takes me back to the beginning where the same scene is shown and Borden is saying "Are you watching closely?" So what im asking is did i get everything to be discovered from the movie or is there something left ?

Answer 1

The point he is making is that deep down people want to believe in magic. It is the whole you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette theory.

Here is the trick you didn't see. A magician starts off with three assistants and trains them work in his act. They do the work he gets paid. One of them dies in the act and the magician disappears telling the other two how to make acts of their own all the while he is getting paid. One magician steals an act from another magician. He gets the other magician to steal the act and he gets paid. The two magicians start trying to kill each other to be the center of the act and still he gets paid. When the big act is finished he gets paid yet again. Each magician has died over and over again in one way or another and yet nothing has happened to him. Now who is the real magician and who is the magic trick? He has the machine and all the count's fortune. All the magician has is his family and no way of providing for them.

Here's a thought. Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, the old magician drowned the girl on purpose to start this feud so that he would never be out of the money? He send them out to steal the chinese man's magic trick. He warned them about the knots. He warned them about the kissing. They switch places for a night. A different person ties the knot. The old magician , however, hooks up the girl. She drowns. The old magician stands idly by with the axe. What says that the knot was the problem? They killed alot of clones in that tank. It must be possible to lock the tank so you can't get out. What says the old magician didn't lock the tank that night?

Hmmm.

Answer 2

Ok, well the one guy with the twin brother, I'm fairly sure that wasn't his twin. He used the machine built by the scientist originally and created a clone. Except unlike Hugh Jackmann's character he didn't kill him, they became "twins" and each lived half of the guy's life. That's why for example in the beginning when he ties the wrong knot...he keeps saying he didn't know what knot was tied. Well he didn't because the clone was filling in for him during that performance. Also why his wife kept saying she could tell he didn't mean it when he said he loved her but only sometimes.

The ending was a bit odd to me also (when he said that), and I wondered if I was missing anything obvious...but I haven't thought of anything else.