.....The Prestige ~residual followup

#imdb faq: How closely does the film follow the novel?
Those who have both seen the movie and read the book say that the two are quite different. There are some themes & ideas taken from the novel and many of the same character names are used, but the story is very different and even the characters themselves are different individuals.
In the book: Julia does not die. Sarah does not die. Borden is not hanged; he is not even convicted, tried, or accused of killing Angier. Borden & Angier are not colleagues as they are in the movie only briefly, working as plants in the audience for Milton; they barely know each other. Cutter is only a minor character.
Cutter convinces Angier relatively early in the novel that the Bordens are identical twins. Later Angier investigates the birth records and discovers that there is no record of a twin, only that Albert has a brother Freddy who is two years younger, and a photo shows that they look nothing alike. In the novel, these records are later revealed to have been doctored, showing that the twins Albert & Freddy had planned their trick from an early age.
Another major change involves the working of the Tesla machine. In the novel, the machine is clearly shown to be a teleportation device but not a duplicator: rather, when the item or person in the machine is teleported to a new location, some residue of what is transported is left behind. Angier in the book refers to these residues as "the prestige materials." ok right in the movie he uses this phrase to mean the dead duplicate men in the tanks. While each residue looks like Angier, it is not made up of human remains: it is not a dead Angier but some shadow or afterimage of him. The prestige materials do not decompose over time even after a century.
The only thing close to "duplication" in the novel is when an incomplete teleportation occurs because Borden turns off Angier's machine in mid-teleport. Most of Angier stays behind where the residue would be, but a small mass apparent as a ghostly image is teleported. The result is two distinct minds with similar memories but with very different bodies.
At the end of the novel, the ghostly transported Angier is in fact still alive a century after the novel's main Victorian events. what happened to the 'most of Angier' that stayed behind when the teleporation was interrupted? the prestige material that is still most of the person? I think I read swhere that this is the corporeal Angier who persists in his life, but sickly, and dies soon after. The novel suggests that there is a psychic link btw the teleported body & the residual prestige material, such that each of the residues created may think and feel to some extent. so the movie just made this much more overt by making it a full copy of the man. but the idea of the self that suffers when left behind was there in the book. It makes the ending of the novel more haunting as we imagine he may have lost a part of his "soul" with each teleportation.

#imdb faq: What does Tesla's machine do?
It seems clear in the movie that the Tesla machine, whatever it was designed to do simply transport, results in two identical copies (including memories, personalities) of an object or being; one in the machine, one a short distance away.
There are three main possibilities. The original stays in the machine and a duplicate is created at the destination, the original is teleported and a duplicate is created within the machine, or the original is destroyed and two copies are created, one in the machine and the other at the destination.



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.....may also want to look a bit more at imdb board looooong thread re alt ending. w spliff's answer wh I am happy to take as dfntv already included in 2nd top post. but am int ~rdg more re that last speech, re an alternate underst of th ending where indeed it is always & only illusion.
IMDb :: Boards :: The Prestige (2006) :: Alternative Ending Theory?
-Those interviews only state that there is a supernatural ~ superscientific element in the film. I don't think anyone denies this: it is claimed a teleportation device is invented. Whether this element is true within the story itself is debatable. huh? d n think this is a film vs book distinction so wh mean by 'within the story'?
Christian Bale http://www.media.christian-bale.org/view/15/good-morning-america-prest ige-october-18-2006 [video clip] puts forward an alternate view.


...............and look at other comments from directors (& maybe actors?) via the wkp footnote links, incl in first post.

+ imdb user cmmts = rvws.
+ az movie cust rvws.
+~ az book cust rvws. already a dlcs pgmrk (only Prestige dlcs mark thus far) for these: RLS: self. 2 contrasting estimatns of bk vs film. that may be sufficient for my int.

...& wkp re the film ~skim this - & note esp re reception:
Author Christopher Priest saw the film three times as of January 5, 2007, and his reaction was "'Well, holy shit.' I was thinking, 'God, I like that,' and 'Oh, I wish I'd thought of that.'" cool. ^[57]


.............and then I'll be done! oh and read the script. :) ok print it out tomorrow, pdf. I like the beginning, what Bale says, how they all speak. I like it. it really holds up to a second viewing. of course my first viewing was out of order (came in at middle of first airing in backtoback on FX) and disrupted as I switched channels. so this viewing on cmptr I saw several scenes for first time, all of wh seemed pivotal! or at lst v int., incl:
-Borden walking Sarah to door, saying goodbye, then being inside making tea.
-Cutter showing the machine to the judge.
-Angier walking off from Tesla's failed attempt to transport a cat, and finding outside a double (or two) of the cat (who better be okay!) among many many copies of his top-hat, which is what Tesla had previously repeatedly tried to transport. A shot of the many black hats on the mountainside was also the opening shot of the film, after title, in silence: really very good.


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and after The Prestige, other to do:

#Lost epsd Namaste rxns:
sepinwall 150+ cmmts. tunedin cmmts. completely lost recap plus last few posts back to recap of LeFleur.

#TheMorningNews tournament of books.
maybe will find a 2008 novel of int to me among these, of wh the ones I've encountered have not ~yet appealed.