Jessica:

oh, how strange. In the book, Borden sneaks backstage (a second time from the one you're describing) to try and find out the secret behind the tesla machine, and he sees all this energy being drawn and assumes it's going to burn the theatre down, so in a fit of panic he pulls the plug, literally, on the machine in the middle of the prestige-copy being created. The prison thing NEVER happened. They only orbited each other in vindictiveness, and never involved the police.

Now I really want my stupid ahem to finish because I need to know the differences between the book and the movie.

Dana! That's it!

I was sooo frustrated by the "I don't know" response and it made me really hate the Borden character. I knew there was a twin, but unlike SA's very helpful description of two bodies/one mind, I never thought of Fenton as the bad guy. More a hapless dupe. (no pun intended...then again...)

It makes so much sense that, at least in the movie version, the one NOT on the stage would not have known which knot what used. Then again, since they shared everything, including their women you'd think they'd have had a discussion about guilt, etc.

This movie is like an onion. Layers.
t /shrek

eta: SA, no kidding!? The prison aspect was a huge framing device. I can't imagine it NOT being a part of the story. Huh.

Okay, next question about the book v. movie structure: Did the men read each other's diaries? In the movie, the diary entries were 'cooked', so that, at the end, each got an 'up yours' message from the author. Angier basically tells Borden that he's stealing his daughter, etc.

Nope, no kidding. They must have made some interesting structural changes to the movie's script.

To begin with, there was nothing involving either men's children. They made a point to stay well out of the way of each other's personal lives, concentrating only on the public humilation of upstaging their rivals on the, well, stage. It was one of a handful of gentlemenly concessions. The exceptions are only a very difficult scene that was revealed far later in the book noting that Borden, when he had crashed the Angiers' seance, had caused a miscarriage for Angier's wife, which fueled the rivalry further; and then, when (Scarlett Johanssen's character) offered to be Angier's spy on Borden and then ended up leaving him for Borden (to be the mistress of Alfred), that served another way for Angier to hate Borden. Angier is a terribly despicable character--I would say even more so than Borden, by the end.

The framing device of the diary was used at the beginning as Alfred's memoirs, and there's a distinct, if subtle, POV change between the twin Bordens, when the other reads the initial memoirs as they are written. They make notations and queries and footnotes to the others' work. But it is clear that they only know about it. And the memoirs were written in earnest, not as a trick or misleading thing.

Now, I'm wondering--did the movie have anything about Borden and Angier's descendants? Because that is the beginning and ending of the novel, with their great-grandchildren, who are just as affected by the magicians' rivalry then and the evils of the tesla machine as their forbears were.

SA, no, the film only deals with the present generation. Basically, Angier sets Borden up to be arrested for his murder, and then arranges for Borden to be given a copy of his diary, which at the end has a "Ha ha I only wrote this for you to find so fuck you!" note. And in the middle of this, we're also flashing back to the events of the diary, in which Angier is reading a stolen copy of Borden's diary, which also contains a "Ha ha, sucker, you totally fell for my Stolen Diary trick!" note at the end. And it spirals around a few times until gradually we end up in the present day with more or less the whole story.

It sounds like a LOT was changed.

SA, no. Nothing about a seance, a miscarriage, or any descendants. In the movie, Angier has no children.

oh EW.

Now I don't know that I want to see it at all. That is so not the story. And the book's story was really, really good.

Sigh. Hollywood.

Well, I wouldn't call that the story, just the structure.

Sigh. Hollywood.

I'd say it's more a case of necessary compression and reimagining. A classic example for me is LA CONFIDENTIAL which is wildly different from the book in terms of plot, and even in terms of some of the who-did-what-to-whom, but retains the core characters and themes, and substitutes a pretty good plot of it's own.

SA, in the book did Angier blame Borden for his wife's death in a tank trick gone wrong ?

In the book, Angier's wife didn't die, until she was quite old. Angier retired from the magic world after the prestige accident, using one of his previous prestiges as a way to fake his own death. Then he became the rightful Earl of Whatever, and he and his wife lived there pleasantly until he developed a cancer; the prestige-copy came back upon his death and resided with his wife for some time, until she died, and then he never actually died. He ended it because of Borden and the prestige accident, but even then he didn't really blame Borden for that. Since he had the Earlship (or whatever) waiting for him, and his attentions had actually begun to turn towards the running of the estate (it was his wife, on condition of their reunion--as they separated for about four or five years, during which time Angier researched the tesla machine--who encouraged him to continue as a magician; she had no knowledge of his aristocratic status until he final broke it to her) he was more inclined to give it up once the opportunity presented itself, though it was sooner than he had intended. He'd always intended to fake his death with a prestige and retire to the country estate.

SA, that almost sounds like a happy ending for Angier, which the movie definitely doesn't have. One of the Bordens sort of has one by being reuinited with his daughter. However, even there, it's tinged by the dual tragedies of this Alfred being the one who loved the wife, and having lost an essential part of is being. Borden, while having moments of utter bastardom (bastardity?), comes off as much less monstrous than Angier. Among other things, there are several times when Angier attempts to end Borden's life, wheras Borden only went so far as to injure Angier (albeit, giving him a permanent limp), at least in terms of them being professionally competitive.