Why does borden and angier to tesla

Borden tried to mislead Angier by giving his diary, which Olivia acted as she had stolen from Borden, on request of Borden, to make fun out of him proving he Angier was no match for Borden. Borden also succeeded by making Angier leave the town for a long time. Considering Angier was the only tough competitor in magic, it bought Borden some time to expand his business in an empty field!

The diary which Borden had given was encrypted and Borden knew, misled by the story of stealing, that Angier would take a serious step in order to get the key from Borden to decrypt the diary. Angier had been to Tesla's show of Telas's discovery in a science fair. But considering the risk attached with the show, no spectator stayed there to see it, including Angier. I believe Borden encrypted the diary with a key "TESLA" for no specific reason casually , and also the word might be catchy for Angier as Angier knew Tesla had discovered something really special and he did not know what it was!

So Borden might have thought when Angier would see the word Tesla, he would surely think this was the discovery Tesla had made and Borden was using it. Borden's diary read as: "And yes, Tesla is merely the key to my diary, not to my trick. You really think I would part with my tricks so easily after so much. Borden did not have any idea that Angier would take the name so seriously.

Angier thought Tesla knew the way of Transported Man and made Borden one for his show. So he went to Tesla and requested him to make a similar machine he had made for Borden and surprisingly, Tesla could make such a machine for Angier! Borden had no idea what Tesla was capable of. If he knew, he did not take the risk to push Borden to such a famous scientist and would have made the key different.

Borden both the brothers did not have any clue what Angier had come up with from Tesla. That is why one brother went to check the trick. Like I said if he had knew, he would not have pushed him towards Tesla. Borden did not know Tesla could build the machine but, it turns out, he could! Borden sent Angier off to waste time and money — and yet against all probabilities Tesla managed to build this exact machine!

I mean, what are the chances? Somehow Borden happens to send Angier to the exact guy who just happens to figure out within a fairly short period of time how to build the greatest invention in history — a cloning machine. Borden must have been the unluckiest person on the planet to send his rival to the one person who could come up with a technology that does the exact trick you do not want him to do.

The technology behind this machine is remarkable — the cloning is based on electricity. Not biology, not chemistry — which is what all cloning is based on then and today — just some flashes and sparks and boom — a clone.

In a movie that goes through truly detailed scenes and drawings of the mechanics of each trick it is remarkable how quickly we simply buy this explanation.

For every other trick there is a detailed explanation of how the trick works — but not for this one. And the one we get — electricity-based cloning — is way, way outside of established science. Tesla has invented a cloning machine for christ sakes! Why on Earth would he not clone a bunch of gold to keep himself solvent? Maybe he did not want to become the richest person on the planet, fine, — but at least being solvent?

It would have kept creditors and possibly Edison off his back. In fact, Tesla has managed to do something stunning — a towering scientific achievement — but he wants nothing to do with it. He leaves the machine, unsupervised, for a random British magician at an inn. What was his motivation?

The movie asks us to believe in an electric cloning machine and that the inventor of this machine in a very public battle with Edison just has no interest in it — or that he does not go on to create another. You could create entire armies with this machine, but there is no exploration of those ideas whatsoever. Hold on, you might say — we do!

There is that scene in the end when Angier shares with Borden his sacrifice — having to kill himself after each cloning. And in that scene, he emerges out of thin air. But that is a retelling — it is not presented as an objective fact in the storyline. Instead, when we see Angier do the trick from an objective point of view, we never actually see him emerge out of thin air.

We never actually see the Prestige. The fact is — we never see anyone or anything cloned in the entire movie! We never see Angier, a hat or a cat appear out of thin air. If the soul-less copy is the one killed every time, it's effectively no different than killing the birds. If the one that was shot had the soul, and all the following copies lacked it, that's a little more interesting. But, IMO, it's far more illustrative of his obsession if it's an exact copy.

That demonstrates the progession or reverse. Both kill the birds. Borden has a twin; cuts his fingers off. Then kills him again. He wins! But then he doesn't Borden had a twin. Borden exemplified that by sharing a single life with his twin for the sake of their magic. It was only at the end where Angier also displayed the personal sacrifice necessary to be a great magician that he succeeded, as he was willing to kill himself each night for the art of magic.

The Tesla cipher, as mentioned above, was merely to throw Angier off the truth. Borden was quite surprised to discover the reality of Angiers trick. Also, the reason Borden couldn't remember what knot he tied when confronted throughout the film was because the twin being asked was never the twin who liked to tie fancy knots.

That means there was more than one Borden back when they were broke assistants, therefore it must've been a twin. Just a little note. If you liked this movie, you'll love The Illusionist. A CLUE! Remember the hats? There is no transportation at all. It's the clone that is created across the room. The original is being killed every night as the Clone is created across the room. Rinse and repeat. Basically he is committing suicide every night in the hope that the machine will keep working.

Look what happened to him the first time he had to rely on a 'double' to make him look good. There are four main possibilities: 1 The original stays in the machine and a duplicate is created at the destination like a fax machine ; 2 the original is teleported and a duplicate is created within the machine Angier having gone to Tesla for a teleporting machine after all ; 3 the original is destroyed and two copies are created, one in the machine and the other at the destination a variant of 1, 2 and 3 being that instead of the machine creating the copy, the machine pulls the copy from a similar "quantum reality" ; and 4 the machine may randomly switch between the first two options each time it's used as Tesla says, "exact science is not an exact science" , for example, one time the duplicate might be left in the machine and the next time the trick is performed, the duplicate might be the one to show up elsewhere.

What is important is that Angier doesn't know. He says as much when he talks about not knowing if he'd be the man in the box or the prestige. This is intended to indicate just how identical each version of Angier is, including all his memories, character etc.

The novel explains that it is possible for the teleported man to indicate where he will show up. In the film, however, the cats and hats all appear at one spot during Tesla's experiments. Angier never appears at multiple sites, or as far from the machine as the hats and cats.

Some viewers have concluded that the mass of the object may be related to the distance of the projection. In one scene, however, Tesla's assistant Alley Andy Serkis mentions "calibration," suggesting that it is possible to adjust the "destination.

Presumably he's testing the calibration and making sure the teleported Angier appears at the location he's tried to set. It's also notable that Angier's first double appeared significantly closer to the machine than the subsequent ones who appeared behind the audience during the shows.

The question is not answered or even alluded to within the film. Some theories that have been suggested are that the new matter could be created from the machine by converting electricity that powers the machine into mass. It is even possible that the machine transmutes some of the mass from the destination or the machine into new material.

Some viewers have suggested that Angier could be split into two identical beings, each with half the matter of the original Angier.

Others have suggested that the machine may just be a prop in an illusion done by Angier, and that the scene with the double being shot is merely Angier thinking of lying to Borden about the machine as the scene is shown in flashback. In the end, there is no provable physics that would account for this duplication, but this is not really the gist of the whole film. The idea is that people will see "magic" where they want to; as Cutter tells Jess, "You want to be surprised.

This is why the science not that there is any is skirted when it comes to transportation. People don't care. The main point is fooling them. It may also be an allegory for the way in which Tesla's very real science about alternating current as superior was hamstrung by Edison and Westinghouse, in their greed, thus reducing a very real physics application which we now use universally, by the way , to a parlor trick.

Just so, Cutter by sympathising with Borden? This is never answered in the movie, nor is it even a part of the film. Just because the real Tesla died poor, however, does not mean that the fictional Tesla did.

In the fantasy world of the movie, perhaps Tesla did use a Tesla machine to live in the lap of luxury or provide funds for research for the rest of his life.

He had the perfect source; all he had to claim was that he had a gold mine. In addition, for all we know, in the context of the fiction, the Tesla that would die alone and destitute is a duplicate of a man who died well. The movie indicates that people had come to this area at this time for gold prospecting. Duplicating banknotes would have been not only been illegal but unethical since banknotes have no intrinsic value.

Duplicating gold, jewels, or other items with intrinsic value would be neither illegal nor unethical. Another possibility is that this is a clue that this machine did not duplicate at all, but was just a prop that Tesla sold as a con. One other explanation is that the process of creating such a machine was so unpredictable that he would be simply unsure whether he could create another.

The duplication aspect was a glitch rather than being part of the design. The one duplication machine that he had ultimately did not belong to him. Borden, as he explains at the end of the film, is a natural-born twin. Other than his word, there are several bits of evidence for this.

First, Borden is seen to bilocate when he is a struggling magician working in basements. At that point, he never could have paid for the duplication machine. Secondly, when Tesla creates the machine, he has no idea how it works exactly, something which he would not be if he had created one previously. Furthermore, when confronted by Angier, Alley confirms that Tesla never made the machine for another magician before. Most importantly, when the Bordens see Angier's final show they have no clue how he does his trick and are completely shocked when he shows up alive after he drowned.

If they had been duplicates then they would have immediately known, or at least suspected, that Angier was using a duplication machine, especially since they were the ones who sent Angier to Tesla.

Another way to tell that the Bordens are natural twins is that they have distinctive personalities. One of them, the Borden hanged by the end of the film, is very rash and hot-headed. The one who lives and is reunited with his daughter is much more reserved, honest, and is willing to accept defeat to end the feud. One alternative theory is that Borden at some point learns about the existence of Tesla's machine and creates a duplicate of his own, which he then uses to do "The Transported Man" trick and with whom he shares the "Bernard Fallon" persona.

The surprising answer is yes. Many of the things presented within the film can be viewed as ambiguous, even though most do not see it as the intent of the filmmakers.

In interviews, it has been suggested that the movie is meant to be ambiguous. There is an article here which supports the premise of the idea of alternate interpretations: As he wrote, Jonathan Nolan never shied away from letting the audience draw their own conclusions about all that is going on in the raging battle between Angier and Borden.

I love contentious stuff, he admits. Chris and I still argue about aspects of Memento and we've had arguments about The Prestige as well. I think if you get to the point where people are sitting around a table arguing about what your movie means, then you've done your job as a writer. Some of the more popular theories involve whether or not the machine actually duplicates since there is nothing within the film that requires a working duplicator; everything can be explained presuming the machine is simply a prop.

Thus there are some who believe that Nolan intended the twist to be that the machine is a prop.