Actually, scratch almost everything I said up there. The living Angier's memory will never include the drowning, because the survivor never has that experience. He does have the memory of being the prestige every night -- his memory goes from the Tesla machine to the balcony -- so I guess he's just always really happy to not be dead. I probably would be.

Ah. Very good point.

Still, what a weird thing to have to deal with. "Hey, there's a dead me here. Better come up with a plan. I know... I'll take it to this dodgy basement...hey LOOK, there are tons more of me..."

And the Angier who finally buys the farm, seems fairly clear on the entire concept.

Damn. I would have said that while I liked the movie, I probably wouldn't rewatch it. I guess now I'll have to. Le Sigh.

Oh, I assumed that the body-disposal plan was set up in advance. That's part of why he hired the blind stagehands in the first place -- even if they were tempted to look under the cover, they still wouldn't know what they were transporting.

So, like in Memento, he is somehow reminded of what to do?

Interesting. And leads me to the comment about only 100 performances. Okay, killing only 100 himselves, is pretty horrible. But I wonder if he hit on this notion because, in his original thinking, he couldn't imagine getting away with it for much longer. As it is, even with blind stage hands, it was quite a feat.

Right. The issue in question is answered by Angier's own statement, "I was never sure whether I would be in the prestige, or in the box." The answer of course is that he would be both, but that the dude in the prestige would get to diverge from the dude in the box, and never have to know what drowning feels like.

Really, if you've got any empathy at all, you should be able to understand that, if you would like not to drown every night, then the OTHER YOU would ALSO like not to drown every night. The real revelation, to me, was the final understanding that Angier was a worthless turd of a man, even aside from his crazy revenge plot, and deserved anything and everything Alfred -- or fate, or Wayne Brady -- could think of to do to him.

That was really it for me too. Jeebus.

We get shown, in a number of ways, how callous Borden was...toward his wife...toward his lover...in his thirst to 'win', etc. While Angier comes off all gentile and shit. In the end, it would seem that he was completely hollow. At first, I handwaved that away with the ptsd excuse after losing his wife. But he let his wife go into that tank every night! And even with the hubris of a magician knowing how the trick is supposed to work, that just seemed another brick in the wall of his self-serving nature.

Hmm, that brings up some interesting class issues in that Borden is a blatant Cockney (or at least lower-class - he SOUNDED Cockney to me, but I'm no expert), while Angier was a wealthy man "slumming" because he's addicted to the thrill of the audience.

On a lesser note, that was a disconcerting makeup job on Bowie - as one of the friend's I saw it with said, he looked surprisingly like Tom Skerritt. Good to see Bowie having fun with a role again, though. I always thought he was a great presence in movies, if not necessarily a great actor.

Frank, I spotted another resemblance in the movie. If they do end up doing a Star Trek: The Early Years movie, Andy Serkis is beginning to look eerily like DeForest Kelly. I did a double take before realizing who he really was.

The real revelation, to me, was the final understanding that Angier was a worthless turd of a man, even aside from his crazy revenge plot, and deserved anything and everything Alfred -- or fate, or Wayne Brady -- could think of to do to him.

I was pretty much assuming that from the moment that he said that maiming Alred's hand and nearly destroying his livelihood wasn't enough, given that Julia's death wasn't a malicious or intentional one even if Alfred had been lying about remembering which knot he tied. It was clear from that moment on that he wouldn't be satisfied if Alfred were able to build any kind of life for himself .

So, speaking of the knot, are we to assume that the reason Alfred couldn't answer the question was because Angier was asking the twin who wasn't on stage that night?

The whole thing is interesting, because Angier and the audience can never really be sure which twin did what. We know that the one who died is the one who loved Olivia, but other than that, I don't think it's clear which was which. Angier really only had a vendetta against one twin, in a way -- was it the same twin who pursued the rivalry, or were they both as committed? It didn't sound like it, at the end.

It may be a question answered by the book, I don't know.