... The Prestige

IMDb :: Boards :: The Prestige (2006) :: Am I the only one to have noticed this ...:
[why do people at the prison not recognize Lord Caldlow as Angier, the famous Great Danton?]
-Famous then and famous now are two completely different things! Unless you'd actually seen his show you'd probably have no idea who he was.
Spliff_The_Cimmerian Sat Jan 31 2009 06:39:43:
There's also the fact that, for obvious reasons, the movie exercises a bit of poetic license about disguises.
When Angier and the Bordens put on disguises, they have to look 'disguised' enough that we know the other characters aren't supposed to recognize them, but the movie audience also has to be able to tell who they are. They're deliberately 'disguised' in a way that leaves them recognizable to us. In the world of the movie, Lord Caldlow probably doesn't 'really' look quite so much like Angier.
The movie also performs a similar, but much more difficult, feat in the other direction when Hugh Jackman plays Root disguised as Angier. In those scenes, we in the movie audience have to be able to tell that Root is not Angier and yet be able to accept that the people attending Angier's show won't be able to spot the differences. (And incidentally, the fact that we see this happen supports both Orlando_Gardner's and Mentrilo's points: the movie establishes that Angier's audiences don't know the precise details of his appearance well enough to spot when he's using a double.) The fact that some viewers aren't certain it's really Jackman playing Root is a testimony to its success.
At that point in the movie, Jackman is pretending to be a man (Root) pretending to be a man (Lord Caldlow) pretending to be another man (Angier). Not only do he and the filmmakers pull it off amazingly well, that has to be some kind of record for "disguise depth."

-mad weather: Root pretends to be Angier, while "Angier" himself is a fictional persona of Caldlow's making.
yes Root is imitating the mannerisms & voice of Robert Angier, which we know is affectation assumed by Caldlow, inasmuch as at least the American accent is.
and, as a flourish to the observed disguise complexity: Root is pretending to be Angier (the false identity of Caldlow) in his stage persona of The Great Danton. but that, I suppose, is just a name, and not further depth.
but yes Spliff_The_Cimmerian goes on to note this as well in further post:
So Jackman the actor is playing a man Root who is serving as a double for a man Caldlow who is himself using a false identity Angier the Great Danton. Angier is also using his stage name at the time, so Jackman is playing Root posing as (Lord Caldlow pretending to be "Angier" performing under the name "The Great Danton").


IMDb :: Boards :: The Prestige (2006) :: Who's side were you on?
Which one did you support throughout the movie? 11 page thread, w sympathies divided btw Angiers & Borden ~ fr skim of first & last page comments, no clear majority answer. good testament to the movie's & characters' compexity.
p7 -We start out thinking that Borden is the obsessive one and even a murderer, when in fact Angier is the most murderous. Borden tries to save Angier when he sees him drowning yes "Where's the key? where's the key?!", and has a lifelong dedication to the sacrifice that his art and act requires.
-I soon despised Angier, simply because of my personal taste: he the glamorous American stage performer, and Borden the hard working underdog, the wonderful magician and awful showman. he really was not an awful showman. he was quite good as the professor eg his interruption of Angier's show where he strung Root up & came out in his place, advertising his own show across the street. but ok this was after Olivia joined him, saying she could help him with showmanship, so I suppose we are to think this is to her credit. Until now I could see nothing but utter madness, cruelty, coldness, and obsession in him drowning a version of himself again and again, but what you write about him hating himself, too, for his obsession, and punishing himself by drowning the same way his wife did -- heck, this is so obvious, but I totally missed it. Magic.
p10 -Most of the time I was on Angier's side, bcs Borden killed his wife: intentional or not, it happened, so I understand Angier becoming consumed .
-By the end, I was definitely on Borden's (the one who loved Sarah) side. Albert (in the book, I take it), where the one who loved Olivia & died in the end was Freddy, and they lived in turns as Alfred.
-Did you ppl see how Borden (& his brother) treated his wife?? she killed herself bcs of it. How could you be on that guy's side?
p11 -The Borden brothers in the end each redeemed themselves. For the Bordens, magic takes sacrifice but Angier never sacrificed and always took the easy way out. In the end, Angier lost body and soul.
-Definitely Tesla. Because Edison was a badass thug.