The Nature of Truth and Identity

 In the film The Prestige, the very nature of truth and identity are playfully toyed with at the expense of the audience for the direct purpose of demonstrating the complicated nature which both of these concepts entail. Who both of the main characters are is a question that is constantly thrown into question until the very end. At the very beginning, however, the watcher is instructed indirectly by Cutter through his dialogue with Borden’s daughter when he tells her to “Watch closely”. As Descartes points out throughout his Mediations, the senses can deceive and are not completely reliable for the discovery of the true nature of the world.

            In his Disappearing Man illusion, Borden uses his twin brother to deceive the audience into believing that he has defied physics and been transported through space and time to another location on the other side of the stage. As Locke states in “Of Identity and Diversity”, two things cannot be in the same place at once and it follows then that one thing cannot be in two places at once. Throughout the film, Angier is obsessed with discovering the secret of this illusion and is convinced that it cannot be as simple as a double. These magicians exist as a sort of paradox, they are meant to, by definition, conceal the truth from the audience, but they are completely obsessed with knowing the truth themselves. What the truth is, however, is hidden to the point where the audience is forced to question whether or not these magicians even truly know the truth.

            A very cynical world view is expressed twice in the movie that the world is a horrible place. Angier’s double asserts that if everyone knew as much about the world as he did that they would be drunk all the time as well. At the end, while Angier is dying from a gunshot wound inflicted by Borden, he expresses a similar view that the world is a horrible place and that everyone knows it, but it is their job as a magician to attempt to fool them. It is not just that the audience is fooled however; it is that they want to be fooled. The truth is not what they want, because according to Angier they already know it and are constantly engaging in an illusion themselves.

Robert Angier, at the beginning of the movie, seems quite happy with his life until his wife’s untimely death. His very identity is thrown into question at this point. Borden’s identity, however, is kept a mystery throughout the entire film. But are these characters who they pretend to be? Are they who people think they are? Or are they something completely different altogether? Borden states that he and his brother lived only half a life and that this was enough for them, but not enough for their spouses. Although Angier states that the entirety of the world knows that the world is horrid and awful and wish to be deceived, Sarah Borden and Olivia Wenscombe as a case study show that constant deception leads to horrible consequences. Although Angier claims that everyone deceives themselves, when it is someone else doing the deceiving suddenly this does not lead to the result that Angier claims it does. Sarah knows that she is being lied to and is constantly led to question everything about her entire existence because nothing is as it seems on the surface level. Olivia calls Borden cold and it would require a high level of the inhuman quality which she asserts he has to do all of the things that he did.

One is left with the feeling that Borden has really been misunderstood throughout the entirety of the movie and is really the “good guy” but I am forced to question whether or not there is a “good guy” besides possibly Cutter. This one man seems to have knowledge on a par with both Borden and Angier, but keeps his humanity. Cutter, however, is an older man and, as he regularly states, obsession is for the young, implying that he has not always been so. This leads to another slightly deeper question into whether or not it is possible to live a moral life or if it is only possible to live the least immoral life possible. One of the Bordens, at least, is able to get through the obsession of his youth and discover what is important in his life—his daughter. But the questions are left hanging. What defines us? Is it what we do, who we think we are, what people think of us, or something else altogether? What is the truth? Is the truth good, bad, or neither?