House of R - ‘The Prestige’ Revisited | Hot Nolan Summer

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Mal and Jo wrap up Hot Nolan Summer by revisiting Christopher Nolan’s 2006 movie, ‘The Prestige’! They discuss all the twists and turns of the movie and give out some superlatives! (00:00) Intro (05:13) 'The Prestige' (01:12:00) Funniest Moment( 01:18:31) Sickest Set Piece (01:25:11) Who Is the Real Villain? (01:33:06) Most Exquisitely Gorgeous Shot (01:35:08) The Scene You Think About the Most (01:45:45) Where Would You Put the One F-Bomb? (01:47:40) Most Baffling Accent (01:48:58) Best Use of a Nolan-verse Regular (01:51:17) Best Stunt (01:54:31) Stealth MVP (01:59:06) Best Dead-Wife Moment (02:01:36) Clearest “Great Man” Moment (02:07:41) Regrettably Miscast and How to Replace Them (02:08:28) Most Satisfying Twist (02:09:24) The Horniest Moment (02:11:13) The Line That Hits Hardest (02:13:04) Most Devastating Moment (02:15:42) Most Unforgettable Sound Design (02:19:29) Should Have Returned to the Nolan-verse (02:20:26) Most Nolan Thing About This Movie (02:22:14) What About ‘The Odyssey’ Are You Most Hyped About? Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producers: Carlos Chiriboga and John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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This episode is brought to by Paramount Plus. and Rip are back in a new series. Dutton Ranch. Kelly Riley and Colehouser returned. And this time they're taking on Texas. As Beth and Rip build a future together, peace will have to wait as they face corruption, danger, and a ruthless rival ranch, willing to protect its secrets at all costs. Legacy is a beautiful thing, but only if it survives. Dutton Ranch starring Colehouser, Kelly Riley, Annette Benning and Ed Harris, now streaming on Paramount Plus. Well, welcome back to House of Art. I'm Joanna Robinson and joining me today. I missed her, but she, you know, it's not a, it's not a true magic trick unless you make someone reappear.

Here she is reappearing in House of Arts. Mallory Rubin. Joanna, my passion is equal to the task. And I cannot wait to talk about this movie with you today. I miss you earlier in the week. I'm glad to be back. And I am really glad to be resuming still technically according to the calendar in summer. Hot Nolan Summer, what a delight.

Hot Nolan Summer, here we are. It's the third promised hot Nolan summer installment. This is the prestige is what we're here to talk about today. If you haven't seen the prestige, what are you doing? Go watch it. Great movie. It is an incredible film. We just found out right as we were hitting record that it is our producer, Gina Ranga Powell's favorite movie ever.

Full stop. Not just favorite Nolan movie. This was a reveal. I didn't know this. A revelation. I should have known when he started dropping Reddit theories in the comments of our notes last night. It is my favorite Nolan movie, and it's up there in general for me as well.

So we're really, really excited to talk about the prestige. Elsewhere, just quickly, some programming reminders. We're going to continue our alien earth coverage. That is something that we are doing. The Midnight Boys Pew Poo are checking it on Gen V is something that they've got coming up. So something to look out for. Mallory Rubin had such a...

a robust and delightful chat with James Gunn about peacemaker that she went well over time. I heard. I heard it ran really long because he was having too much fun. He was having the best time of his life. It's the best interview that I heard. It's the best interview he's ever had in his entire life. And you can hear it yourself on House of Our next week for Peacemaker midseason. Check in, Mallory, we'll be talking to our pal Benjamin Lindbergh, a bit about Peacemaker.

and then you will get the full James Gunn interview about that show. So that is something that is coming up on this feed next week. Anything else of the program reminders front that we should talk about, Mallory? I can't wait to reunite with you and Rob for Alien for the final two episodes. Missed you guys this week. I had a terrible migraine. I apologize for missing the pod, though I did enjoy all of the bad babies who were like, is this because of the Ravens?

Yeah. It wasn't, but I felt seen and known by a... I'm glad they know you so well. Yes, and I apologize if I am squinting into the camera even more than usual today. My migraine has lingered on. Yeah, but she's here anyway. We tried to give her an out. And yet here I am.

This is her dedication to her art. It's a full-time commitment, Mallory's education. There's definitely nothing in this film about the perils. Exactly. Of being overly committed. work to your achievement no matter what. No, I just missed you terribly. This is as simple as that.

I love it. Mallory continues to watch Buffy Vampire Slayor so that's something we will check in again on the future, but I know that she has met Spike. I have. The episode of Bothy Vampire Slater Season 2, and that is the most important thing that's ever happened to me in my life time.

Okay. Spoiler warning, as we mentioned, for the prestige. Yes. There's a lot that happens with the prestige. There's a lot of twist and turns. If you have made it this far in your life without knowing the twist and turns of the prestige, please go watch it. Don't let us spoil it for you on a podcast for the love of God, okay? No.

And then also, though we have not planned out our entire sort of fall programming schedule, there is entirely a possibility that we will continue into crisp Nolan fall. It's something that is intriguing to both of us. So, you know, if the other content continues to sort of leave us with some spaces in our schedule, than perhaps another, what would be your preferred next Nolan movie for us to do? Oh, you know, I want to do all of them

ultimately before The Odyssey, and I think we have time, and I think that would be a joy. But despite the fact that I think both of us feel fairly muted on this particular film, I do think there's a case the tenant should be next

because it has an anniversary this year. It's five years. I always like to hit an anniversary, and then we can save Memento for the top of next year when we get an anniversary for that. Granted, did we say today we should save the prestige for next year when it turns 20? No, we said, fuck it.

We're doing it in 19. We're doing it out. So we can do whatever the hell we want. Sounds great. I love that for us. All right. I will need to really test the merits of our home sound system if we do tenant at any point. I'll be coming back to that a little later on in today's podcast.

Okay. Let's go now to our opening Snapchat. Let's do it. This film was directed by Christopher Nolan. screenplay by Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, his brother. It took them six or seven, according to various interviews, years to write, and it was adapted from the Christopher Priest novel of the same name that came out in the mid-90s. And this film came out 2006, October 20th, 2006.

So is it an anniversary of October 20th, 2006? No. Are we even in October? No. But here we are. It's the prestige. We're pretty close. Worth remembering, this is something that was like top of,

this top of mind to me when I was thinking about where I was in 2006 and this came out, that in a sort of like ants, a bug's life or like volcano, Dante's Peak, all of these references are very stale and old, dual movies coming out at the same time, Twist of Fate. The prestige came out just a few months after The Illusionist, which is another period piece about magicians with Edward Norton. I was watching a Jonathan Nolan interview this morning where he was talking about basically what happened is that they pitched the prestige around town.

And then Chris got pulled into making Batman, and so they had to press pause. And he said that Chris, he thought that Chris did such a good job convincing all these studios that a story about magicians would really play on the big screen. But that's how the illusionist sort of came about. And it came out just a few months before. Lost to time, nobody ever talks about the illusionist. but it was an Norton joint and I do remember it pretty well

from... Guess what? Not our Juno Ramga Powell's favorite movie. No. And so... So there you go. Lost in history. Okay. The budget for this movie is $40 million. Worldwide box office $109 million. It's quite muted, compared, of course,

to the Batman movies that surround it and some of Nolan's later sort of original concept movies that he does. Are you prepared to tell us exactly how much of that $40 million? and went two wigs. Beards. Beards, goatees.

Fecticles. Sideburns. Cheap padding. Yeah. What's your guess? What percentage? What percentage? Of the 40 million budget?

That is a multi-million dollar wig budget is what I would say. The glue alone. Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's in the scope of, and we talked about this and we talked about Inception, in the scope of Christian Nolan's career, I think it's really important that he did this movie between Batman. movies, that he took these breaks between Batman installments, so he didn't just become the

Batman guy for such a huge chunk of his career. He's like, I'm also interested in doing this period piece about magicians. I'm also interested in doing this sci-fi heist about dreams. You know, like I am I am a guy with broad tastes, and so I can hit the bullseye of pop culture, and I can also hit the niche of a literary adaptation of a book about dueling magicians. Which I love. It's important to have that very inscrust. creatively, like for, I think, I assume him as a creator, for us as consumers, certainly, for the industry at large, but also it's important to remember that there's a constant among the variance and that as Michael Kane being in all of those movies. Very true. What he said is, what Crystal

one has said is that when they wrote the screenplay, the character of Cutter, they did not have Michael Kane in mind, but I'm like, I feel like you're lying to. I feel like you're lying to me. I feel like there's no way that's true. There's just no way that's true. I think it's also like an underrated, a little bit of oddity that Bale's character's name is Alfred. And just one year after Michael Cain, of course, portrays Alfred. Bail is Alfred. So there's just like just all these little sprinkles that carry forward.

Great stuff. And there's a lot of similarities in terms of like the idea of dual identities. You've got someone like Angier, who is a lord who is masquerade. as something, you know, like there's this sort of Bruce Wayne aspect to Angier. There's, of course, the dual life. Can you have a full life with this double identity idea with Borden? Like all of that sort of stuff that's in the Batman DNA is, of course, in this story as well. I know that because Warner Brothers is like, hey, hey, man, you got another one of those Batman movies?

They made this movie sort of as quickly as possible and sort of as intimately as possible. Wally Fister, who's the DP on this movie who is worked with Nolan a ton, talked about how basically they did handheld camera for this movie because it's faster

to just do handheld. They were sort of sprinting through this movie, trying to make it as quickly as possible. They just dressed up ballet and sprinted through this movie, but he's like, it's exhausting holding that camera the whole time, but it gives the film this,

it's almost like, It's not an independent film, but it just gives it this really intimate quality that Christopher Nolan will never return to in any of the rest of his career thus far. I love the enormity of what Nolan has done with the rest of his career. We need these directors who can command massive budgets and think in large scale and give us these immersive huge experiences. but this is, you know, we're still running on the fumes of, you know, memento, Nolan, following Nolan. Like, this is still him reaching back to his more independent roots. And so I like this as sort of like the last installment of that time.

Yeah, and what a fitting story to apply that filmmaking tactic to? Like, even if it was born out of necessity, maybe as opposed to, like, creative intent. It works so well because so much of the story is about taking. making us inside of a certain perspective, or putting us in the position of somebody who does not have that knowledge and does not inhabit that level of awareness and is trying to glean something from just a degree away.

So I think, like, that, the sensibility of the visual filmmaking in that sense really feels, and this is like a film that is going to unlock meta commentary after meta commentary as we talk about it today. Yeah, there's just like so, so much to that layering, and this is just one example of it, but like, you know, obviously some of that is about what we understand about the trick or the illusion, the technique at any given point, what we can glimpse, can we see the trapdoor, can we see the sleight of hand, but also just like, can we understand something about a person, about their motivation, about what they do and why, about who they understand. Can we read what's on the page as they're trying to understand what's on the page, etc. So it feels, yeah, it feels quite fitting ultimately. And are we being told the truth as we're reading? what is on the page. And I think

we'll talk about, we talked about legibility a lot when we talked about inception and we'll talk about that a little bit more as we go forward in terms of how to make something so complex, legible. You know, when we cover, inevitably cover Tenin or Dunkirk, we will talk about that again and like what is successful and what is not.

But like, having handheld camera work throughout this film means that when we swing back and forth into recollection or you know, jump forward in time, so like that, we are seamlessly because the handheld nature sort of can match. So we're just sort of like, we're not from like a wide setup into like a close intimate.

We're just like constantly moving through time and point of view and perspective and all of that. And so I think it's just goes hand in hand. Nonetheless, despite the handheld nature or maybe probably because of it, this gets an Academy Award nomination for cinematography and for art direction. Mali Rubin, let's go to our general. discussion. Before we, we're going to have our usual sort of Nolan awards and categories to talk about, but we've got some general, yes, meta commentary, et cetera, to talk about. So general discussion wise, Malie Rubin,

where were you in 2006? And how did this film come to you at that time? Or later. Yeah, I was midway through college in 2006. And I think I saw the prestige for the first time in 2008. I don't, I can't recall exactly, but I believe I saw it like, I feel in my memory that I was living in New York City when I saw the movie, which would have been right after school. And I just love the movie so much right away, as we have discussed on our prior two pods. I love Christopher Nolan movies, and this is, you know, one of my two or three favorites. It's certainly in my top three.

And as I've mentioned, the prior couple pods, that order can sometimes, you know, vary a bit. but this is, it's never fallen lower than three for me, ever. And I just think it's fantastic. And it is like a movie that is so radically distinct on a rewatch than it is the first time around that I really enjoy having like both of those relationships to it. You know, there's the really unmatched experience of seeing it for the first time if you have the privilege of going in knowing nothing about it and not having had any of the twists spoiled for you, which I had not, despite not.

not seeing it during its initial theatrical run in 06. And it's just mesmerizing. It's awe-inspiring. It is, as you already like hinted at and alluded to, even on first watch, digestible, legible, it's requiring a level of focus and attention from you, but it is not insisting that you track every single detail

and fold the first time in order to find it like a satisfying experience. It is, of course, performing as a film, the three-part magic trick that we learned so much about from Cudor and over the course of watching Inger and Borden act. You know, we have the pledge, we have the turn, we have the prestige. And I just remember like pretty vividly, again, spoilers. We're getting into full spoilers from here. You've been warned.

Please go watch the movie and then come back to the podcast. Like the first time that all of the twists started to. on the spool and mount and build in real time. I remember in particular, the cut to the twins, like the finger, because you have that moment earlier in the movie where Sarah's like,

how can it be like as bad as when you first got the wound? And I remember that like sticking in my mind, right? And you're parsing. And it's just like this kind of unbelievable experience. When you watch it subsequently, you can never have that experience with it again, right? that's like just true.

And again, on the metaphor, we have like fun moments and lines in the movie that are like preparing you for that. Constantly. Once you know, Sarah says, it's actually very obvious. And like there's also a lot of stuff about whether of course people want to be fooled. Right. Want to be fooled or want to see. So like anytime you see Fallon's face, even a fraction of it, a sliver of it, you can tell

that's Christian Bale. Like, are you actively focused on trying to see that the first time around? maybe, maybe not, but once you know, you can't unsee it. It's impossible. So then it becomes almost like you are like in the headspace of one of the magicians where you were trying to learn and understand how the trick was conceived and how it was crafted and how it was executed. And that is a very different but like also very rewarding and cool experience as a viewer. So it's a movie that I think is like always fun and interesting to return to. And it's just like, it's funny because I think whenever,

we talk about Nolan, you have a moment where it's like, you could make the case that this is the most Nolan movie. And like, I think, you know, we did that. I think it is. Yeah, I think we did that a lot with Inception. And I think this is like another one where you can do that a lot. It's just so Nolan in every beat, structurally, thematically, in terms of its intention and the ideas, all of it. So yeah, I just absolutely love this movie. And it's been one of the things I've been like most looking forward to since you threw out the idea of Hot Nolan Summer was talking about this together. Tell me about your journey of discovery with the film. When did you first fall in love with it?

What has it meant to you since? So I think the reason I would call this the most Nolan movie is because I would use Nolan as an umbrella term for the brothers and their collaboration, which is just like a part of the larger Christopher Nolan story is the Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan collaboration elements. And we'll get into that. We'll parse to that a little bit more. But that has to do with my relationship with this movie because I, I'm a lot of, I'm In 2006, I was working to bookstore in San Francisco.

Copies of Christopher Priest's novel started flying off the shelves, and I was like, what is going on here? And so I definitely saw the prestige when so many people came in wanting to buy the book, excitedly talking about the movie and wanting to then go read the book and all of this sort of stuff. So I was like, oh, what's all this? Yeah, yeah. And I saw it, I really loved it. But it was not until, and I've been talking about this a lot because there's a lot of thematic overlap with our coverage of alien Earth. But when I started covering Westworld, which I would say next to Game of Thrones and then lost, is the show that I've spent the most time studying, analyzing, thinking about.

I went really deep on that for several seasons, and then it got hard to do that because... But that's the Jonathan Nolan joint. And in studying, particularly that first season of Westworld, I went back and looked at the Jonathan Nolan films to just really sort of try to parse, in order to try to figure out the mystery of season one of Westworld, I was like, okay, what are the clues that exist inside of Jonathan Nolan's other works? I stopped short of watching every season of Person of Interest, but that's okay. Unlike Angier, you knew the limit. I was the twin who said, enough is enough.

We don't go back. Okay. And so looking at, particularly I would say Memento, Prestige, Editor-Seller, and looking at, you know, the Emmer. emotional, thematic resonance between those. I fell so deeply in love with prestige when I came back to it and really, really studied it. That's awesome. As like a blueprint for what is interesting to a creative mind that I find so endlessly fascinating.

I might be, it's possible than I am, slightly more of a Jonathan Nolan person than I am a Christopher Nolan person. He's a TV guy and you and I have talked about the idea of like long format, long form, storytelling and how that's something that we really resonate with. And even though I haven't watched person of interest. And I actually haven't even watched fallouts. This sounds like a fake thing to say. But I have watched more Jonathan Nolan interviews, read more Jonathan Nolan interviews, like spent more time inside of his mind and his collaboration with his wife, that I feel

sort of like closer than emotionally to his work, I think, to a certain degree. And there is an emotionality to his work. to his work that Christopher Nolan when we talked about when we talked about inception, Christopher Nolan gets accused of being

a little chilly, a little cold, a little sort of like analytical in his story structure, but not so emotional. But when you think about Matthew McConaughey

weeping in interstellar or when you think of Christian Bale talking to a little girl on the other side of some prison bars in this movie, or when you think about

everything that happens in memento, like these are, you know, or the dark night with Jonathan Nolan worked on, like, there is a beating heart at the center of their collaborations that is slightly absent from the other Nolan works that, to me, takes what Nolan does so well to the next level and then just like imprints on me in a deeper way than like my delight and fascination with Inception is different from my emotional preoccupation and the chaos that this story, which asks you to, you know, and this is something that Jonathan Nolan is interested in as well specifically, and, and

question for Nolan, too, there is no black and white right or wrong inside of this story. This story invites you to your point, the first time you watch it, one of the magic tricks it pulls off in addition to, genuinely, I did not know that that was Christian Bale. I'm sure that there are some people who did. If you're going in and you're like, yeah, you're right. Because like, it does, the whole time, there's just like, well, it can't be a double.

It's a double. So, yeah. So he's inviting you to, I'm sure there's some people like, like, at the beginning, you know, they're like, oh, yeah, Fallon, you're mysterious, you know, blah, blah, you never speaks, blah, blah.

So if someone's like, ooh, what's that about? And honestly, I'm being honest with you, and this sounds untrue. But if I were to watch this movie now on a vacuum, having spent, this was not who I was in 2006, but having spent so many years studying story and films and something like that, I think my mind would have been like,

why don't I recognize the actor playing Fallon? And would have tried to figure out who that actor was. And in doing so with the little glimpses of side cheek that we get and under the hat that we get, I would have been like, wait a fucking second. I really do think that now I don't know that this would have worked on me, but in 2006 it absolutely did. I was going to say something similar, actually.

I am trying to like remind myself that 19 years ago is not that long ago ultimately. And as we recently talked about on the Buffy pod, like from the late 90s, the early 2000s, both of us through different stories were falling into like message boards. There was plenty of like theory, theory corner stuff happening on the internet already. But inside of the two hours of watching the film in real time, I do think right now, given the sheer volume of, of theory culture online. The brain is just in a different place watching this stuff. It's the volume of twin clues is so substantial that like, yeah, I think probably there

are plenty of people who, but it's funny because my instinct is to say like call bullshit on anyone and it's like, I got it the first time. But I think you're right. There are probably plenty of people who, if they're like intention and part of how they're perceiving it is, I want to understand the trick. I don't want to be fooled. I want to track it from the word go. Borden sitting in the office, sitting in the audience, looking for the trapdoor immediately,

then it's... It's right there. It's right there. It is right there and undeniable. And then when it does work on you, you know... And again, this sounds like... It sounds arrogant to say, but one of the reasons why I love this movie so much is that it did get me and it is harder to get someone who watches as much television and film

that I do is you can still get me, but it is harder. And it's definitely harder than it was for 2006, Joanna. And like, so the joy of, you know, for me, it's the moment when we just get the first, like, full to camera, still in the prosthetics, but full to camera. And I just remember, like, is forever blazing on my mind. Holy shit, that's Christian fail. How did I not see it? And the delight in, like, how did I not see it is so good. And then there's, But then there's other revelations on top of that. Oh, yeah. So, like, even if you did spot that, did you figure out that it was just many, many tanks of dead Hugh Jackmans, like, in a warehouse somewhere? Probably not. So, like... The blind stage hands, Cutter's like, you know, you always had a knack for publicity. It's like, no, I need to make sure that my team can't see all of the corpses.

I want you front of house. You're front of house only. You're a great manager. Cutter. That's where I want you. So, like, there's plenty there, I think, even if you... you, even if you clock that it's also Christian Bail there. But then there's the pleasure of the rewatch, which is what you're talking about. The pleasure, not only you have the rewatch

of like, well, now I know. So then there becomes the extra layer of which Borden Brother, you know, in the book is Albert and Frederick. Am I watching Al, or am I watching Freddie? Like, which Bord and brother am I watching in any given scene? There are little line cues. There are also personality and performance cues that are really, really. really, really fun to parse in what Christian Bail is doing there. You know, knowing that the journals are written with the intention to, you know, deceive and befuddle the other, then you have that layer that you're looking at. So you get to continually peel back the layers of the tricks that they're playing on each other, the tricks that the movie is playing on you. And something that Chris Rennelon has said in interviews about the rewatchability of the prestige, because that's a question he's gotten a lot.

Yeah. Is he like, I think we made it with a hope that it would be rewatchable. and we made it in that sense, the reason why it's so satisfying, is they are completely honest. It's a completely honest, because I will say this, for my beloved Jonathan Nolan and Westworld,

in later season, this is true of season one in Westworld, completely honest, the clues were all there. You had all the information. It can become enticing that once you've had a taste of that to try to further befuddle people

and then you start to get dishonest in like you're hiding the ball, too well in a way that someone like, well, there's no way I could have figured that out. So it's not even satisfying that you fooled me because I didn't even have a chance to figure it out. But here when you rewatch and you're like, they showed me Fallon so many times.

How? That's just, yeah, it's a joy for me to rewatch every time. And then I think there's just like rich thematic. There's emotional content that comes with, you know, Rebecca Hall's character, Sarah, which works really well. And then there's the like,

obsession and jealousy and all of those things that are interesting to us as well. So I just, I think it's a satisfying, emotional, fun film, and also David Bowie is here. So like, what's not to love, you know? I really love Bowie in this movie. I mean, no, not really a hot take. But I mean, he's always a delight to get to spend time with. But he's just really great as Tesla. I love to that point of like, we have all the information we need.

The red rubber ball is not being hidden. It is being actively bounced from hand to hand. And there for us to track. I love that a number of the clues that we get, they, of course, work in terms of the mechanics of the trick and the twists and reveals of the plot. But they also work on a human level. Like one of the biggest recurring twin clues throughout is this like, today you love me, today you don't aspect of the twins relationship with Sarah.

And so you do have these lines right away the first time that are telling you that, but to your point about the performance in those scenes, the nature of the interaction. It is so apparent which twin is in love with that woman, which twin fathered that child. And if you don't know that the first time, it works completely because people have. have bad days. People's moods change. People are volatile. People sometimes mistreat the people closest to them in the world. So you don't, you're not like, wait, why would he be behaving this way, right? Well, it's similar to spoilers for the sixth sense. If you're anyone who like up until recently Craig Holbrook was not spoiled on six cents. Here comes to spoilers.

There's a similar scene in the six cents, right, where he like shows up to dinner with her, his wife and she ices him out and she doesn't talk to him. And it's you, when you rewatch it, you're like, well, that's because he's a ghost. But when you watch it the first time, you're like, oh, this is a tense moment inside of this marriage, right? So, yeah, the tensions that can exist inside of a marriage, but also specifically in reflection of Angier, who goes through something similar with Olivia, where there's like this affection with Olivia, but then he gets consumed by. The art, the magic, the competition, Borden himself, you know? And so it's like, sure, today I love you. And then today I'm obsessed with the job.

But then you get the heartbreaking revelation at the end of the movie that, like, he was, like, deeply in love with her the whole time and could only experience half a life, had to plead with his twin brother to, like, please be nice to my wife because she is druggling, you know, like all of these things. help convince her that I love her. Yeah, it's brutal. I think something that hides the ball even more satisfyingly is the fact that both of the twins love that little girl. Yes. You know, both biological father and uncle. Right. Like, they have different feelings about Sarah, but they both have this fatherly devotion

to the little girl. And so that also just sort of like muddies the waters a bit as you're trying to personal. Yeah. Another. very quickly, another twin clue that I think works on all of these levels is not, like the, how could you not know which not you tied? Right. Because you could just be like, I argue with myself in the journal, right? Like I'm both two minds about it essentially. It's like, because if you did something, just one person did something that led to that outcome,

wouldn't you have potentially that kind of response? Like, wait. Yeah. Did I do this thing? Am I responsible? Like, did I tell myself? that this would be fine and then it wasn't. So yeah, it's just, it's great.

It's great. So it's like intellectually satisfying. Like you just relish all the ways in which it's all there. It all fooled you. But it's all there not in like a clunky dumb way. It's all there in like a way that's just sort of smoothly, silkily integrated into this very human story of like obsession, tragic, devastation, all this sort of stuff like that.

It's a plot puzzle, but it's like a puzzle of the mind. It's a puzzle of the heart. It's a puzzle of human. behavior. It's a puzzle of deceiving other people and deceiving yourself. Like, it's just a joy. A joy to watch this thing. Taking notes on, you know, rewatching this a couple of times before we recorded. And like, taking notes on all the moments, all the lines, all the visual clues, it's just like, well, that's just the entire movie. Actually, you can't even parse it. Videos do exist on YouTube of like every single clue. And I was like, oh, you're just going to roll me the whole movie. Is it two hours and nine minutes or whatever the runtime is? Yeah. That's what the movie is. But I will say, you know, it is.

satisfying to call a few out, and I will say the opening shot of the top hats and the cats. Great. A great one. Then we go right to the birds. All of that is, that's Angier, the opening shot. The birds, that's bored in, right? Cutter is telling us sort of everything we need to understand to be the right mindset to understand everything. And then he's like, show you something ordinary, a man.

And then like the camera's just like right away, there's Christian bail. in a fake beard in the audience. You know what I mean? And it's just like, it's just delicious. One of my favorite examples of that is the nephew, Sarah's nephew, the little boy who can, you know, through more innocent eyes, spot the truth. It's like, what about his brother? What about his brother? It's like great.

We actually just tweeted it out. This coin has two heads. Okay. Anyway, so something that Jonathan Nolan has talked about about the experience of watching this movie for the first time. And this is the difference between doing this over the course of a film versus over the course of a season of television is what he calls the sort of like when you go to see David Copperfield perform a magic trick, you know also that that is a magic trick of some kind. But there is this limit what he calls it the pleasure of the liminal space, a hiccup of the human mind where you want to believe. right, and this is a quote from the film, but if you could fool them even for a second,

you could make them wonder, right? So you want to just sort of like, you're watching this over the course of two hours, your brain is plenty occupied trying to track what is happening when, right, because we're bouncing all over time. And then you get to the revelation at the end. If, however, this were like episode one

of a season of television, you know, the Redditors would have freeze-framed a side profile of Fallon on like Reddit before, like, the night is over and they'd be like, that's also Christian Bail. The end. You know? You can't do that over a season of television. So it's anyway.

Okay. Our beloved producer, Arjuna, introduced this theory. I had never heard this theory, but introduced this theory in our notes last night. Speaking of sort of like twists and turns and that sort of stuff. The Ali Tesla theory. So Andy Circus plays a character named Ali. Mr. Allie, who is the assistant to,

and the assistants are very important in this movie, assistance to Nicola Tesla is played by David Frickin Bowie. And so this Reddit theory lays out this whole idea that Ali is actually the real Nikola Tesla and that like, you know, David Bowie is playing sort of an actor hired to portray Tesla when the real scientist is Ali. How convincing do you find this? Do you want to go into any particulars of this?

Is this thematically interesting to you? What do you think about this theory? I don't subscribe to it. I was not aware of it until last night. And in the mere hours I've had to think about it since Arjuna brought it to my attention, I'm not inclined to believe it mostly because, but I like it. I think it's very interesting. I agree.

I like it. I don't believe it, but I do like it. That's where I am too. I think this is really fun and really interesting. and just in general, like, I love that 19 years after the movie came out,

we can still have this experience. It's like, here's a new theory that maybe you hadn't heard of before. I think where I ultimately landed, why I don't personally land on team, Ali is actually Tesla, is because as the characters in the film

and the script of the film actually tell us in plain language, and indisputable fact, everything we need to know is revealed. Like, actually, and I think that's kind of an interesting thing about the movie. Like, we talked a lot about this during our inception pod where there's such a robust debate raging still

about the conclusion of the movie. That's actually not the case here. Like, I mean, there's some stuff that is left open to interpretation, but, like, the movie shows its work, right? I agree. I agree with you. I will say, having gone on a sideways journey through the Reddit theory boards after Ardina posted this.

The main theory that people like to debate is whether or not the Tesla machine actually works. But there's a scene where we see Hugh Jackman shoot his own clone. So like that, I think that, but they were like, similar to Inception. There's just like pouring over granular detail. Like all the hats are slightly different. And I'm like, I don't think they are. Like all this or something like that. Also like Allie's wearing a hat.

So I'm kind of like they're using Allie's hat to test it too. I mean, it's just like, it's a lot of questions. But people are still constantly debating. It's not the way that inception is intentionally. Yeah, right, exactly. And so that, that I think that is the crucial distinction. There will always be room in a story like this to speculate and to wonder and to introduce new possibilities, just kind of inherently because of the nature of what is unfolding in the film.

But I think, and I should say, I have not read this book. So I have no idea if this or any other aspect of what we talk about today is like clarified in further detail at some point I have no clue, which is not usually my relationship to the stuff we cover. But I actually don't mind that that's my relationship to this. There's some massive differences. And so like it's not it's not one of the, it's an adaptation that is in many ways so loose that I don't know how much it like really, really enhances your experience.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The information is mostly in the differences in terms of like what they're interesting. So, but I guess to put a bow on it, I think that it feels to me, I can't say this with 100% certainty, but it feels to me like if Allie were in fact Tesla, the movie would tell us that at some point. And it wouldn't be like, oh, we're stitched together the theory through, we're putting a slice of bread together through the crumbs. It would be like, here's a loaf. and then we're going to show you how we cut it, and then we're going to show you how we crumbled it. That's my sense of it.

Great. Great analogy. I agree with you. I do think that could be fun, the way in which he's the one to answer at the gate, the way in which he goes down to the hotel. Like there's ways in which if he were the real Tesla, that's kind of fun and interesting.

Absolutely. Like the role of a showman, the role of the engineer, like the idea of partnership, even in general. And what is a risk to reveal or not reveal? what you need to keep secret, especially for so like a character, a character, a historical figure in this film as the character, like Tesla, who, you know, is, and there are many, I think,

wonderful scenes. The Tesla scenes are like among my favorite in the movies. Spoiler for some of my picks for categories today, where this is just active text for what he's saying in the kind of counsel, the unheeded harbinger's that he's dispensing, these warnings that he's dispensing to Angier about like what, society is ready for or not and the way that it pushes you away. And of course, obviously, also the Edison Tesla parallel for the Angier-Borden relationship and just this idea of like the shape that rivalry takes and where it can lead you. It makes more sense to me if like Tesla is actually Tesla, but I can, I do agree that there's a way that it actually also fits into the like,

well, how do you use a guy like root? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like this idea, of the partnership in terms of like, not, there's one of the conversations that Alfred is having with Fallon where they're talking about Angiers' trick and he's like, you will figure it out, right? This idea that like one of the twins, one of the twins is better at something and the other twin is better at something else. There's this idea perhaps that one of the twins, obviously when Olivia joins the team, she helps them, zhage up the showman. But there's this idea that one of the twins might be better at showmanship and the other twin is better at putting together the puzzles of a of a trick and stuff like that. And so that idea of like what are you better, what role are you better suited for inside of a partnership like this?

I will say this. And it's not the last time Ali's cat is going to come up. If Ali were the real Tesla, I don't think he would let this charlatan pretending to be him put his cat inside of that contraption. So that's all thing. I don't know it's on using the cat regardless. I will say, with the inclusion of Tesla, you know, again, to sort of parse Jonathan Nolan's work, his fascination with science, sometimes for better for worse, there is a real tough period in my Jonathan Nolan fandom where he and Lisa Joy were, like, really good friends with Elon Musk.

But, like, you know, he is, like, tech obsessed, went to Colorado Springs for several months in writing this script. really, really wanted to dig into like everything Tesla. That's where the lightning lives, Joe. That is a great line. Fucking great line. Absolute banger. It made me think of like some of our Buffy Vampire Slayer lines that we cared about. But like the idea that technology is magic.

At this time in our history, technology is the real magic. There's no scientific explanation for the transportation machine. And the film does not even stop to try to like really explain it to you. But at that time, light bulbs were magic, you know? And so that's just sort of like inside all of this. And I think also something worth knowing in the book is that Christopher Priest uses the Edison Tesla rivalry as a much more consistent parallel to the board manager. And I like the way that it is sort of downplayed inside of this. I shall say, the way that the machine works.

works in the book is quite different. It just splits the man into sort of two parts, and one of them is sort of spectral, and the other is, like, physically sickly. And it's just, it's very different than this, like, cloning idea. But I do want to really briefly talk about this, like, Ship Athesius conundrum about the cloning idea, because this idea that Angier, you know, having explored throughout the movie, nobody cares about the band inside the box. Like, I don't want to take my bows down, you know, under the, under the floor, I want to take my bows on the stage. When he's like greedily asking board in which one of you took the bows and he's like, we trade it off actually. Like we both got to do it. But all of that lead up to every night I didn't know if I would be, you know, the man inside the box in the tank or, you know, the man in the balcony.

And this idea, this idea of the thing, quote unquote, that survives Angier's trick is the clone. Every night it's the clone that survives. Yep. And Tesla, in selling his machine to Angier, says, all of them are your hat. There is no measurable difference. We've got the calipers out. All of the circumferences are the same. They're all your hat.

But we don't know what difference. over and over and over again process has on a man. And there are reads that you can have of this movie that in the process of doing this, he laid his trap no matter what. This was his idea from the start. But the nastiness that is late, like to take his daughter, like the nastiness that is the Angier late in the movie, warped by plenty of other things.

says, I don't care about my wife before he goes, you know, through the copy machine several times. So this is already something that has disturbed and warped him. But like, what might the cloning process have done to him? We don't, he has no way of knowing if that clone in the balcony is just like, just like a tiny bit different every time. And the ship of Theseus idea of like, how many times do you replace a board on a ship before it becomes a different ship? How do we relate that to what Agerr is going through? What, you know, what minor cellular mutation, what minor personality difference then makes him not the same man as the man who, for the first time, went into that tank of water, you know?

What I love about this so much is that all of that is there. And I think it is equally true and interesting to think about the other side of that, which is that if he's not like a Xerox where the toner is like a little less sharp every time. And it is actually, and this is like this is, there's a version of this film where like this question, you know, is that you, they're all your hats, are they all your hats? Is like the entire focus of the film? And that's obviously not the case. But if it is, if they are all your hats and it is him. And the interpretation is. And the interpretation is. is that the ship is the same after the boards are replaced, no matter how many of the boards are replaced, then the question, which I think is just as interesting,

is like, what does it mean that you would do that to yourself? That, because if, right, or like, every time that he's from firing that gun to every single night, a hundred shows he signs up for every single night for as long as it ran, he dropped into that tank knowing what, the outcome would be and that harrowing reveal of the line of liquid coffins. And I really, in particular, love the payoff of Cutter, calling back to Julia's drowning. The eulogy. Yeah, the eulogy. And this, like, what, you know, you told me it was, it was, it was going home. I was lying. Actually, it was agony. And so, like, what if that was what

you inflicted upon yourself because you thought it was worth it. Because that cost was worth paying to you. And what I love about that, because that is, of all the things that happens in the movie, the idea that Angier would be like, oh, going that tank will just be like going home and fine is painly ridiculous. But not inside of a story which hits again and again and again, you want to be fooled. Right. Let me watch onto this thing that Cutter said at the eulogy.

Oh, it'll just be like going home. I will just justify this thing that I'm about to do to myself every single night to be the greatest, not just to be the greatest, but to entrap and torment this person who I have made my shadow, my enemy, all of these sorts of things. Yeah, there's like the idea that the fiction is why you go to the theater, that it's the thing you crave. Like I love, I also love the moment where in Jers, like, in one of the conversations with Tesla, like, if they, yeah, like, I'm going to present it as illusion. If they thought it was real, they'd scream. They thought I was sawing a woman and half on stage. That's just so great. It's so interesting.

There's a, I'm going to try to make this comp without spoiling the specifics of this story, the story in question, because it is one that we both consider a sacred text and much like this film would want people to discover it on their own. But it's like, very never let me go coded to me, you know? So yeah, I just said this is like also fascinating. Okay. What are the influences on this film? I'll just run through some of them really quickly.

It's a little less chock-a-blockful as some of the Inception and Batman analogies we were talking about. But we should mention that there was a real magician who went by the stage name Chingling Fu. There's Chingling Sue inside of this movie. But this is a real man who existed, who pretended to be elderly, and did this trick and for years pulled this off. and that was the inspiration for Christopher Priest to write this book in the first place. And the rivalry, the real-life rivalry of Edison and Tesla, which you can see in the absolutely subpar film, The Current War. What is it due to, you know, you mentioned Tesla's a real world figure. What does it do to you that there is someone real like Tesla inside of the story and that the real person, Tesla, is connected to the sci-fi part of this?

particular tale? I think that there's probably a version of this story where these are fictional people instead of real life figures and it works equally well, honestly. But because like if you're watching this movie and you don't know that Tesla and Edison are real people, which is I think possible, I don't know that you have a lesser experience, honestly. But I think a lot of people, especially now in the Tesla era, are familiar with the fact that this is a real person. And as you noted, this is like spawned other.

examinations in pop culture as well. I think, you know, we've been talking about many times over the years, but including recently because of Vali and Earth, you know, Arthur C. Clark's three laws and, you know, the way that we always are interested in this idea of science, technology, magic, when do they become indistinguishable from each other? So I think that's like really fascinating given that part of the story hinges on the fact that the machine is presented as a thing that actually works, that it clothes this person. And it's like, so that's not a trick. Okay, you know, there's that aspect of it. But I think more broadly, and I'll return to this in some of my categories,

so I won't go too much into depth in it here. But I just think the way that Tesla speaks about, and the magicians as well, you know, from Qatar to board into A&G, or like talk about what people want and how they perceive what they receive. It's really interesting, I think, to me to think about what is consistent and what differs if that is like a real thing and advancement that could improve something about your community or your life versus how you pass the time for one night out at the stage, you know? And like that that's in the mix and in the brew for everything.

And then I think like the area where it's most interesting to me and this doesn't ultimately like have anything to do with the fact that they're real people. But I think the fact that they are adds like a little bit of an extra jolt to this. The rivalry, which obviously we'll talk about more in our categories, one of the things that I love best about, like, this showmanship versus scholarship, you know, the theater star versus kind of the true artist. I love that that is, like, not where it ends. And that it's entwined then with this examination of the different forms that resentment can take.

Like, there's a, this guy's a hack version of the resentment. Why do people like the hack? And then there's a, this guy's better than me version of it. That's the greatest magic trick I've ever seen. This sort of like. Yes, exactly. Like, right. Like having to acknowledge that that person is your rival superior and that you will never

be able to do that and like how that drives you mad. But that it's equally crazy making to say like, why do people praise this buffoon? And so that's obviously applicable then in the other relationship, which like I really like. I think it's also really interesting to think about. inside of that notion, the why they do it, as it is reflected back in Edison and Tesla, because something that the film doesn't go too deep into, there is one like sort of lying about it. But this idea that like Tesla wanted to give away his power for free and Edison wanted to monetize it. And the thing that gets Tesla got is this idea that like, well, the point.

powerful people who see the opportunity to make money are going to try to squash the person who's trying to give away this life-giving thing for free. And what's so interesting inside of the Tesla legacy is the idea that he could create a cloning box that could, I don't know, feed everyone forever and any idea of world hunger, whatever, and this fucking magician, like rich-ass tourist is just sort of like, I'm going to use it for magic, for showmanship, to entrap my rival, all this sort of stuff like that.

But the why they do it is so interesting, because you think about Angier as this, you know, absolutely stinking rich lord. And he talks about, you know, he talks about in his, as he's dying very quite slowly from a gunshot, talks to Borden about why he does it, right?

And he's like, we'll come back to this. I'd probably. in our categories. But like, if you can fool them in a second, you can make them wonder, then you get to see something very special. You really don't know it was a look on their faces, right? So that is why Angier does it.

Borden does it, and he explains this to Angier, when they're looking at this fake elderly Chinese magician, and he says, total devotion to his art, utter self-sacrifice. It's the only way to escape this, and then he slaps the brick wall next to him. Borden, and the Borden twins came from nothing. They come up from the bottom. And so the idea of magic and the idea of transportation is the idea of like, how do we escape the like poverty, the real, the genuine real discomforts and horrors of this world that we are brought up into?

You know what I mean? And like, as you're talking about in his explanation, the world is simple and all of that sort of stuff. And so like for him, it's about adoration, recognition, something like that. and for Borden, it's more interior driven. And I just, I think they're differing motivations, never mind their differing skills, never mind their similarities, is something really interesting to think about,

especially as it reflects back on that Edison, Tesla, rivalry specifically. Yeah, and I think the idea that like in theory, you know, when we hear this voice multiple times in some fashion, everybody could have just gone about their day, their career, their lives, and decided not to care about the other person, but that's not what happens. And these like sort of mounting cycles of reprisals because it represents to each of them, not only like the potential superiority of another person or of another pursuit,

but like something existential about what you put into the world and what is valued in the world is, I think, is I think quite interesting. And then the way that that becomes something that defines your entire life, that you can't be considered without the other person being invoked. And so the person you thought was insignificant or you thought was inferior is not only not a footnote

but is in the opening line of your obituary. Like, fascinating. Horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Other influences, Barry Lyndon, have you ever seen Barry Lyndon?

No. Okay. I really recommend of all the movies that go into rep screenings in Los Angeles or elsewhere, I recommend to people Barry Lyndon above all else because it is just, you have a huge TV, but it's a different experience seeing it on like a massive screen because this is a film that was like, you know,

notoriously or famously lit naturally. There are so many scenes that are lit by candlelight alone. And it is just, if you hear about Barry Lyndon, you're like, I'm not going to like that movie. And I have talked to so many people who then went and saw it on the big screen. and we're like, oh my God, there's just something. So anyway, so the natural lighting of Barry Lyndon is used here again and again, once again, as part of expediency.

It's easier to do setups if you're just using natural light. You don't have to re-rig any lighting or anything like that. And so you have setups of like Michael Kane in front of like a ton of windows. The bird cages are in front of the windows. So Sarah hanging herself or cut her, you know, explaining the trick to Jess. or all these various things in front of this bank of windows. Borden walking past all what you beautifully called the liquid coffins, lit by the fire around him, but his face is completely in shadow.

Like these sort of lucky things that happen inside of this world of natural lighting. And, you know, they didn't use natural lighting in every scene, but they used it a lot in this movie as a sort of inspired by Barry Lyndon. which I love. The How to the Baskervilles, a specific edition of the How to the Baskerville's, a Cynic Classics edition that has a oil painting on the front

of sort of the gas lamp lit London. This Wally Fister has talked about seeing on his son's desk and being like, yeah, that's it. That's my London. And then the thin red line, which is one of my favorite movies, Christopher Nolan talks about the way in which

that film just slings. slides in and out of memory. You know, you could use a tree of life is sort of a similar situation, a much more confounding but similar situation where you're just sort of like, you're not doing the with love and respect to the TV show lost, the like whoosh of an airplane sound in order to bring you into the past. There is no like hard and fast cut. Sound is bleeding through as we're just sort of like taken back inside of various memories

or time periods. and that just sort of freedom of fluidity and that idea that like the audience will come with you in this so much of this movie is in the editing and and that's just something we can partially think Terrence Malick forth.

Thanks, Terence Malik for. Thanks, Terence. I've already talked a lot about the the Jonathan Nolan-Christ Nolan partnership and how I feel about it, but I'm just curious for you when you think about memento, the prestige and interstellar and the last, the two

of the three Batman movies. Is there an identifying feature that you see? Anything that stands out to you in terms of Jonathan Nolan's influence on Christopher Nolan or vice versa that you think is worth talking about? I don't think I have anything to add beyond what you beautifully summed up. I think it's interesting that there's like a heartbeat and an emotional core to the films that stem from their partnership. I think like if that were the entire filmography and how they both spent their lives,

we would be fortunate for it. And I think it's really cool that that's also not. the case and like they do their distinct things without each other. Like I I like the idea of, of the way that that partnership is always something that they can return to, but actually like not like the twins in this film, something that they simply can. They're not each living half a life. Right. Right. Yeah. So I think that's, that's really interesting. But yeah, I'm just, I'm such a, I'm such a enthusiast of the bulk of Nolan's filmography that, I have such affection for the films that they've crafted together

and also the films that Chris has made without his brother. I'm excited for you to watch Fallout, given that it's not only a Jay Nolan joint, but crucially a Gagins. So many of your main dudes just waiting. I know. Great stuff. It's the world's biggest mystery why I haven't watched. Also, Snackie is there.

So we've got some yellow jackets ties. I know, I know. I know, I know. Great stuff. I've heard nothing but good things. I will watch it, I promise. I think it's interesting to think about, I think this movie and Memento, in terms of like a puzzle we have to unravel,

are much more successful than something like tenant. Like in terms of that legibility, it's there in inception, but it's absent in tenant. And so I can't really say Chris Nolan isn't capable of it because he does it in inception. But I think in Tenet, this attempt to be like, follow me, here I go on this like unusual time journey. It works in Dunkirk, but it doesn't work in Tenet. So I think that's interesting.

And I think it matters. And there are plenty of tenant defenders. And we've gotten emails from them, Hobbitson Dragons, to Email.com, if you're a tenant defender. But like, I think it matters that it didn't work one time. Do you know what I mean? For sure. Even better highlights the time that it does work. I want to.

talk about dead wife of Paloza is what I'm calling it. Okay. We're going to talk about this in the categories.

It's something we've been building up for. But I don't want to mention this is our richest text when it comes to the theme of the dead wife

as key plot point of a Nolan joint. Tough to report that neither of these dead wives exist in the book. These are Nolan confections.

that is just to me remarkable and perfect in the book anter leaves julia for olivia right so she doesn't die in the tank the inciting incident is a is a disrupted seance and a miscarriage it's not julia dies in a tank um and then sarah does not hang herself in the book and so that's just something that they thought was really important to put in here interesting um incredible I do think it's worth noting that both Chris and Jonah Nolan, their closest creative collaborators when they're not working with each other, are their wives, Emma Thomas for Chris Nolan and Lisa Joey Nolan for Jonah Nolan. So, you know, it's like they love their wives.

They respect wives and it's not fictional lives. It's fine. We've already talked a little bit about this idea of identity, duality, doubles. Is there anything sort of remaining here that you think is quite interesting to drill down on? I think we can save it for the categories. Okay. And last but not least, the meta text. Rich one.

We talked about this as Inception, the idea that you can sort of map the characters of Inception onto various members of the crew of film production. I actually think this is even more so than Inception, a story. I would have to sort of restudy Oppenheimer, which perhaps we would. will as we continue on our Nolan journey in terms of like what feels like the most a story about people creating things and the burden of the cost, the responsibility. But like the this is what it's like to devote yourself to your art. This is what it's like to work with your brother slash wife. This is what it's like to captivate an audience. This is the danger of adding special effects to your movies. I think all of this is in the mix here. And I think

especially there are just shots of, you know, and Chris Nolan has talked about. this overtly. Like, for him, the idea of the magic show is the idea of cinema. Like, he's not hiding it. He knows that this is what he's doing. There are shots of both Angier and Borden in the audience, sort of like face tipped up to the lights that look so much like someone watching a film to me, just like entirely captivated. That moment that we referenced earlier of Angear having seen Borden do, the transported man, and he's Olivia, is asking him about it. And he said, you know, what happened, Robert? He had a new trick. Was it good. It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen. So thinking about Christopher and Jonathan,

if you prefer going to see a movie that one of their contemporaries or one of their rivals made and just sitting there and thinking, how did they do that? Yeah. How did Terence Malick slide in and out of memory like that? How in Barry Lyndon did they light their scenes with just candles? And can I do it? Can I do it better? Can I plus it? What can I do? I enjoyed that. I loved that movie. I just loved that trick. But I want to do it better. How can I? I think that's such a rich thing to bone to chew on

while you're thinking about. What's going on beneath that stage? Yeah, I love it. And it's interesting to think about not only maybe across the competitive set, but even just inside of their creative partnership. Yeah, you have like the bat meal.

You have like, you know, we were two young men at the start of a great career. Two young men devoted to an illusion. Two young men who never met to hurt anyone. I don't know if the Nolan brothers have ever heard anyone. But it's interesting to think, like to think about how they might be thinking about their part in that as well for the other people who like watch their films and have that response. Like is, is almost equally interesting to me. So yeah, this is like, I agree. I think the films are often quite meta in that respect.

But given that this is that the movie itself matches onto the three acts of the trick and is, you know, is thus presenting itself presenting these two hours, this experience as a magic trick, which is like a bold declaration to make and I think completely earned, you know? So you have to be able to actually then back that up and it has to work. It has to wow the crowd. Like to make a movie, I feel like I'm stepping on a lot of my categories today. But I'll come back to this briefly.

But I think that it reminds me a little bit of like a movie or a show about a musician or a movie or a show about a comedian and how completely undone those can be. If the singing is bad or the jokes aren't funny, you know? So if you're going to make a movie about the brilliant magician, whether it's the showman or the scholar and the crafter and the forger or where those things meet and how at the end of the day, they both borrow from each other, even though one of them is going to say that he didn't, right?

They didn't need to. They're both going to find themselves completely mystified at some point by what the other person did. and the trick has to put the audience in that state simultaneously of you want to be fooled and I wanted to track it all, I wanted to know, I actually need you to tell me. Maybe there's a part of me that wishes you hadn't,

but I need you to. You gotta fucking nail it. So they are the magicians in the crafting of this film, and there's a way that that goes, like, badly wrong to the point where it almost reaches the level of, like, cutter saying to Angier, you've kind of like achieved too much to now suffer this level of professional embarrassment. Like there's a version of it where if you do this and it's like this sucked.

It's such an own goal. You're dunking on yourself by centering these creators who can port people to like a different plane of existence. But when you nail it, it's the prestige. Everybody turns to the back, looks up in the balcony and says, how did you do it? Everyone's Ackerman. Like, it's rare to see real magic. Something that we talked about, that I was thinking about a lot when I was watching this,

something we talked about this, or I brought up with Inception, is this idea of Christopher Nolan specifically, more than Jonathan Nolan, as like having a persona that goes with him being the great director. You know, and this is not unique to him. I would say that, like, you know, Alfred Hitchhawk has it. You know, like, plenty of these, like, sort of great creators are just sort of like cultivate something. But, like, the fact that, like, you can close your eyes and you're like, I'm pretty sure

I know what Christopher Nolan is going to wear to this, right? It's going to be a crisp collared shirt. He'll probably have his black long trench coat on, you know, a belted pair of jeans. I'm like, you know, like, he's got a costume. That, that coat that he always wears. There is a persona to him. And I'm not saying it's inauthentic, but it is cultivated. You don't do that by accident.

And so this idea of the great Dan Ton or the professor, this sort of like, what is your public persona? And what are the things that come along with your dedication to your craft? I'm Christopher Nolan and I don't own a cell phone. I'm Christopher Nolan and people aren't allowed to sit on my set. I'm Christopher Nolan and I'm going to crash a plane for tenant. I'm Christopher Nolan. I'm going to set off a bomb. for Oppenheimer.

Like, these are all things that you can just map on to these magicians in terms of, like, the escalation of commitment to your work. The cultivation of mystique and persona and showmanship.

I think especially the, like, you can't sit down on my set is just, like, really, really feels like it could fit right in. And then the brother thing, of course. And, like, I talked about this recently, but inside Lewin Davis, which is my sneaky favorite Coen Brothers film

and the way in which that film explores what it would be like for you to be without your creative partner, right? Because Oscar Isaac's character in that movie, his creative partner has killed himself. And so it's like all about him, how do I go from a duo to a solo act? And so that idea of like the Coen Brothers,

then not immediately after, but pretty short after, start doing movies apart from each other. And then you peel away the Joel from the Ethan Cohen, and then you can identify what is Joel and what is Ethan. And then we're all just like really waiting for them to come back together because that's where the magic is. But like an idea of Jonathan Nolan has talked about this in plenty of interviews of like, I'm the little brother. Christopher Nolan's a middle brother, but I'm the little brother. And he got he was in a film first.

And he, you know, like what all of that sort of anxiety worms its way into the script naturally. So, okay. I think we did all the things that we could do. Should we go to our prestige top 20? Let's do it. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigued, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terse appetite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine

for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults, with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used with other terseptide containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines.

It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone in your family have, medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop zep bound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems.

Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vise. which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99-9 or visit zeppbound.lily.com. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite.

The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zetbound contains terseptitide and should not be used with other terseptite-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles.

Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in. your family had medullary thyroid cancer or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop, Zepound, and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonelioria or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diet, diet,

diarrhea and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit zepbound.lily.com. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce and some very tasty limited-time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu,

chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. All right. This is our combination of superlatives and other sundries that we've been doing for our hot Nolan summer. Yeah. Last hot Nolan summer installment of it. each category has an associated Nolan film quote with it. That I will read every single one because I did this to myself. Why so serious?

Funniest line or moment from this actually, frankly, not very hilarious movie. Not a ton of laughs. This is the tough one. In the prestige. Weirdly, that made this category easier for me than it sometimes is because I did not have a lot of contenders for this. I went with my guy Root here specifically. I genuinely find this scene hysterical. Root's speech after Cutter cleans him up

and trots him out to present him to the skeptical Angieras, as his double, and he's like, you know, he's still drunk, he's stumbling, but then as soon, you know, he's a performer. So as soon as it's ready to be the showman, he can be. And that's all fine, but would not have made the cut, if not for the reason that I picked this,

which is that he then makes a speech that I just love. Root says to Angier, yes, you would drink too if you knew the world as well as I do. You think you are unique, Mr. Angier. I have been seized.

How difficult can it possibly be to play the great done? I just think the scene is absolutely hysterical. The specific comedy of root, obviously, in general, and like his worldview and his feelings on the craft. The broader comedy, though, of an actual double being deployed in a story where the supposed doubles are in fact actually either twin brothers or copies or clones.

And then even though this is an actual double, kind of ends up not being so different in a way that in some ways, like, delights Angier because then the trick is possible to perform, also is kind of like harrowing to him, right? Because it ends up and all we've already talked about this, I'll return to it in other categories. Being the man in the box, being the one below the stage, who can't soak up all of the, um, adulation of the,

of the crowd. So the idea that root is like, actually like, I can be a showman too. The thing you do, I can do when Angier's entire existence is defined by saying the thing boarding can do, I don't know how, um, is delicious. And then the icing on the comedy cake here is that, walks off the stage quoting Henry the Lord. My liege, I did deny no prisoners. I think this movie is basically perfect,

so there's very little I would recommend changing about it. I wouldn't have minded like one more root scene. No one other root scene. They're just all good. I think so when we talked about showmanship versus scholarship, this is something that Christian Bale talked about in interviews about this movie where he was like, you know, Hugh Jackman was cast first. Right.

And then Bail actually had to like, come and like petition for the part. And basically, Jackson was given the option to play Borden or Angier, right? And he's like, I think I've better suited for Angier. And Christian Bill has talked about this where he was like, well, Hugh has been on, he's like, I'm actually not really good at that sort of like flashy stuff. He's like, but Hugh has been in like tons of stage musicals. So this is like perfect for him to be the more showy Angier and like, I'm the more awkward board and like he's like, that all works really, really well for our personalities. But I think also that idea of like we get to watch Christian Bale do a double performance in this movie and we get to watch Hugh Jackman do a double performance.

And the Hugh Jackman double performance is so entertaining and so obvious, you know, not just the prosthetic teeth, but just sort of like, you know, night and day, blah, blah. And then with Bail, you have to watch like, are you watching closely? The degrees of warmth of expression of their eyes and like, you know, all this other stuff. So I just think that that, like, all of that of those layers are really, really fun. That's great. I love that you picked Root. I think him saying I played Faust is one of the funniest things. It's so great.

It kills me. Wait, this occurs me in real time. I'm not prepared to defend this thesis. Let me say that. Is this the origin for the greatest gentleman? Well, that actually seems clear. But like, how responsible is Christian Bale who, now, like, you pair this with the, we think bullshit, but trotted outlying about like we weren't thinking about Michael Cain.

How responsible is Christian? and Bail basically going to Nolan and saying, it doesn't matter that I'm your Bruce and that we just did this. Put me in this one too for the fact that then everybody's in this. Nolan uses the same gas for like all of this movie's moving forward. It's true that it only really starts after like Batman. Interesting. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. What is your pick for this category? I don't think you're going to agree with me. Okay. Tell me. But I would like you to hang with me. Tell me. We obviously have notes for using. cats and experiments.

I definitely have notes because this cat looks just like my cat. Really down to the green eyes, just like my cat. However, Andy Circus's alley, his body language, when it's clear that Tesla has has his cat in a very beautiful and fancy carrier, and he's like, what? And then, you know, and he says, like, you know, if anything happens, you're responsible. you're responsible. But, like, I think, um,

I think just his performance of like, oh, my cat is, is really funny and good. I think Allie saying, it's perfectly safe as Angier walks for it's, like, this most insane, like,

squid-like, lightning situations. And then, this is broad, but the stuff with the prison, Borden and the prison guard, right? I'm going to know all of the professor's secrets. It's only if I teach you how to read. only my teacher

does make me laugh every time. That's a great one. Yeah, I can't support the cat pick, obviously. I do support you. And I co-sign the other two nominations. His anxiety is funny. It is. The image of the cat being jolted by the lightning.

Horrible. Obviously, distressing. I'm just like, don't let him use the cat. Don't let him use the cat. I will say on the cat front, I really like the filmmaking touch of removing the collar so that then when that cat runs out

and the other cat has the collar, we're just like, hey, they clone the cat. Yeah. And the way those cats hate each other, which is interesting. Okay. You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling. Sickest set piece. This is a little difficult because this isn't as showy as Batman and Inception.

Yeah. So, weirdly, the last two categories I filled out were set piece and stunt. I had a hard time with it for this one. I don't know. I might even have something for a stunt, actually, at the end of the way. I came up with something, but I'm not sure, frankly, that it counts. I don't know if it's actually technically a stunt. We'll see when we got there.

But, yeah, there's the nature of the, okay, what do we think of when we think of a set piece and do these kind of, like, hit that scale. But actually, the reason I ended up finding this so hard was, like, a little less that and a little bit more a product of a very positive thing that we've already, like, touted, which is the editing. The editing in the film means that, like, very few, and this will come up in other categories, very few of these things like kind of exist in isolation.

You know, we return to them. They're strewn across the film. And so I ended up going with, maybe this is a little bit of a cheat, but I ended up going with Angiers the real transported man in a couple different ways, though. Ackerman's initial response to seeing it,

which we've already mentioned, like, it's a part of me. It's very rare to see. Real magic. his advice to dress it up a little disguised and give them enough reason to doubt it which I really love. Then Angie are debuting the trick for the audience, Borden in the seats.

He invokes Julia's drowning which just part I guess ultimately part of my I pick this is because it's obviously so central to the reveal but also like to their character journeys and their shared entwined fucked up downward spiral with each other reveals the machine in my travels I have seen the future

and it is a strange future need. He doesn't talk that way. I don't know why I'm using Bethless. Activates the machine, stands in the bolts, that crackle of those forks of electricity. We've seen it in these more confined test scenarios and spaces, but to watch the crowd see that for the first time is like, I think, an incredible experience. Then he disappears. We see through Borden's eyes, the trapdoor, and then the reappearance. Man's reach exceeds his imagination. So we're calling upon the lessons from Tesla. Then this reminds me of how we talk about Star Wars Dules

sometimes, our favorite Star Wars Dules, and it's like the action has to connect to a character moment. So this is something we've already discussed today on the pod, but it's basically why I picked this here. Watching Borden be truly stumped by Angier for the first time, this role reversal, him being the one who's like, he's a no talent magician and they're calling him the bloody best, but for the first time he's actually like,

I don't understand what he did. I think bail is like fantastic in this role. It's one of my favorite. I think obviously it's not, Christian Bale is a great actor, but this is one of my, maybe is my favorite Christian Bail performance. I'd have to think about that.

He's been great in a lot of movies. This is one of my favorite scenes of his in the entire film. So it's- 50 yards in a second. In a second. And all that we know is he uses a trap door. what is going on under that stage. This is what you mentioned earlier.

Why can't you out think him? I love that. Why can't you out think him? And then the way that it leads Borden to go back, even after basically making a pledge not to, and falling into a trapdoor of a different sort that Angier said for him, we have the initial glimpse of that moment earlier in the film

and then the understanding builds over time, like with this reveal that he didn't actually kill him, that he was a mouse led to the cheese and that he ultimately was, like, as driven by his desperation as Angier. The entire movie is just fantastic. So it's more than just a set piece ultimately, but that's what I want with.

Who has the upper hand in any given moment and how that changes as we rewatch and rewatch and rewatch is so interesting to me? Yeah. But I love that moment of, like, we see Borden talking, quote unquote, Borden talking to quote unquote Fallon, right? And he's like, that's it. We'll leave him alone. We won't go back. It's fine. We'll do, you know, well, and then we know that he goes back.

Right. There's a reading of this where you can be like, well, he said it, but he couldn't help himself. That's just human nature. But actually what's true is that the other twin is the one who like couldn't help himself, right? And so we're just like watching, you know, and later says, you were right. Yes. We should have left him alone. We shouldn't have gone back. I think watching him bluster backstage and say, I'm part of the act you, you know, like, you idiot, like all this or stuff like that. And then to rewatch that scene and watch to see if Angier is, like, clocking him out of the corner of his eye do it, you know, is all very interesting. Especially given, you know, twice we see them storm each other's stage in disguise and get the upper hand on each other.

So I just, I think that that is all. Yeah. One, two, three. Incredible. That's great. That was a massive cheat. I will meet it with a massive cheat. Tell me.

all of the magical electricity stuff with Tesla. So I will say the light bulbs, the current transferring between Tesla to Angier, Tesla walking out like a wizard. You hear cutters say like your magician's not wizards, right? But Tesla walks out with this lightning, crackling, connecting all across his body. And it's like, that's a wizard. Like that is a wizard right there. Or, you know, when we flash back to the Expo and the lightning sort of crackling back and forth.

So all of that, which is science. Yep. But is the most magical thing about this movie until you get to boxes of clones is, I think in terms of, like, visuals, which feels like a cheat because we do have a different visual category coming. So, like, in theory, I could have saved this for that. But, like, that's the closest I could come to sort of, like, set pieces, just, like, Colorado Springs or the Tesla workshop, sort of, all of that. Our picks are connected because that crackles there and the real transported man. And then, you know, the backside of a hill that no one ever noticed that a tons of, ton of hats were sitting on. Must be nice.

Okay. It's very spacious, up on the beak in Colorado Springs. Hard to climb if you've got a bum leg, but we do our best. You either die here or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Who is the real villain of this movie? I would like to hop on the back of what you were talking about, where you were talking about, like, this person you either dismissed or were frustrated by, it becomes forever linked with you is the first line in your obituary, all that sort of stuff.

I would follow that to its logical conclusion, which is imposter syndrome, which is something that like, just on a personal level I've been really like struggling with recently. I think because like I was out for a little while and coming back and that's just like a thing that's hard for people when they like leave and come back and they're like, oh, everything was fine without me. What do you mean?

And so this is something that like all of us struggle with all the time and something that I've definitely struggled with throughout my career. But like watching these two men who are so good at what they do but the sickness of it's not I need to be best out of arrogance though it is it's I need to be best

so that no one can tell me I don't belong here right I need to be unimpeachable that I belong here and for Borden part of that comes from class anxiety and from Eger's part of that comes from like I'm just a guest inside of this world of the theater and I've just like you know the way in which he, like, sort of is hiding his identity so as not to shame his, his, a rich family,

has, like, you know, found a wife inside of this world, you know, but like, do I belong here? And you've got Cutter, who is responsible for some bad dadding in this film in terms of, like, the way in which he talks to these men about their work. And so, like, to your point of, like, can you just leave it all? Can you just be happy with how incredibly. good you are at this thing. And then there is a sickness inside these men where they're like, no, because I need to be the best at this because otherwise I'm worried that I'm the worst at this. Otherwise, I'm worried that everyone thinks I don't belong here at all. And I think that is

for a little brother, Jonathan Nolan, to like write this screenplay for his brother, Christopher Nolan, who has made a Batman movie. I mean, they worked on this before Batman, but like, that is just sort of like faked into the process. So yeah, that, that urgency inside of these men, we're just sort of like, there's a couple things that would make it so this movie doesn't exist. One is if they had CPR because Julia was just seconds away from being fine. And the other is therapy. If we just had some therapy, I'd like to think, instead of just like talking to our wives and girlfriends and disguised twin brothers about it, I think we would be doing better.

So I'd say about that. All right. Who do you think is a real villain of this movie? My pick is kind of related. I'm going with obsession. As, because I was considering going with ambition, but I don't think it's that. I think it's when ambition tips, right? It's when, and it's interesting to me to think about this, because,

like as you and listeners of this pod and many people at the ringer know we I we like talk a lot about obsession as kind of the holy touchstone of what we do here right it's like a thing to celebrate and I think to center it's like we talk all the time about like the ringers built on passion expertise and obsession and I love that about what we get to do and I think that's very much how like I relate it's I'm not surprised that we both had very like personal answers to this this is like part of why this is such a good prompts so I I I think that obsession can be a gift, but I think it's really smart to examine

when the dark underbelly of that can rear and what leads maybe to that outcome. You know, when... Because even like we're... This is another thing that we share. We talk about often. Like, I don't think competition's a bad thing. I don't think rivalries are a bad thing, right?

We're competitive people. I think that can really drive people. I think it drives us. when envy and need turn into that destructive, all-consuming force, when you can't exist or find contentment without thinking you won, that's a bad place to be. And I really, really love, I think it's an important thing to think about, I try to think about it, and, like, I love the way that the movie explores that.

You know, you have this kind of like, like a, a declaration of intense, right? My passion is equal to the task, which I fucking love, was what I said to you at the greeting of this podcast. And then you just have warning after warning, after warning, much like the clues and glimpses of how the trick itself is performed, that point us road signs clear as day, illuminated by all the bulbs in the field to where we're heading, right?

Like there's only one place that this story is going. I really love the way that Tesla is used in the film in this respect in particular, like when he says, have you considered the cost of such a machine? Price is not an object. Yeah, price is no object. Have you considered the cost? Perhaps not, but have you consider the cost? Like, that gives me a chill.

I can recognize an obsession. No good will come of it. Hasn't good come of your obsession at first, but I follow them too long. I'm their slave. And one day, they will choose to destroy me. Like, even in this moment for Tesla of self-awareness and recognition of the parents, and the plight and the folly, it's still, they will destroy me.

Not I will destroy myself, right? I let's such a, like, perfect little touch. And the way that Inger's response to this is, like, if you understand an obsession, then you know, you can't change my mind. And Tesla is, of course, right. This is going to be this one of many unheeded warnings and a harbinger of what awaits.

But I love the way that that builds over the film. When Robert is, maybe the first time in the pot, I've called him Robert. It didn't feel right. Angier is so fun to say. Roberts, it's not going to work. Sorry, Rob. His name in the book is Rupert. Rupert I might have been able to hang with a little bit more, actually.

In your Giles era. Exactly. Exactly. When Inger says to Olivia, this has come up already, I don't care about my wife. I care about his secret. And there's that moment of just enough shame to pull himself back in, but also like kind of we clock, he clocks,

Olivia clocks, everyone clocks. he's already lost, like, losing the clarity of either what actually drove you in the first place or perhaps more accurately what you told yourself drove you from the start. The truth that unlocked the fiction that you were going to continue to spin. The Walter White, I did it for my family. Exactly. Exactly. I did it because I liked it. Yes. The way that Cutter will ultimately say, obsession is a young man's game. Like, I just, I can't follow it. you any further. And then, of course, Tesla's letter, which is just sensational. I add only one suggestion on using the machine. Destroy it. Drop it to the bottom of the deepest ocean. Such a thing

will bring you only misery. Like, this is a literal one ring. My precious stuff is sealed. Like that's what this is. Cudder wants to destroy it. Like everyone's after destroying this cursed object. Yeah. Love it. Okay. Are you watching closely from this movie? Most exquisitely gorgeous shot. Mine's the field of light bulbs, the snow field. I think that is fucking beautiful. And I love the way just the light fills the screen.

I love the literalization of this thematic aspect of illumination given form in that visual. I really love when Allie picks up the bulb and it goes dark. and then it's placed in Inger's hand and him then twisting it back into the earth. Where are the wires exactly? The look on Angier's face and the sequence, the magician witnessing something magical is like a very powerful thing

to be able to show us in the story and it's also just beautiful. So that's my pick. I think for me it's, I already mentioned it, but Borden walking away as the fire rages around him and on the...

all the tanks are around him and his face is completely in shadow. And the way in which the light is reflecting off the tanks basically gives you like a smoke and mirror, like literal smoke and mirrors moment inside of this magic movie, which I think is just absolutely incredible. I love that. I also do think a lot about as you're taking that bow below the stage. Yes. Yeah. It's a beautiful shot and like, you know, emotionally resonant for this character and for

you know, all the people who work behind the scenes and don't feel like they get to take the bow. Yeah. And then also just like, just to usher usher us into the grisly Gothic final chapter of this story, the first introduction to the blind stage hands. Oh, yeah. That's a great one. It's so gruesome. And like, not that like, you know, being blind is, but just the way in which they're just sort of like sightlessly there.

Yeah. is just incredible stuff. Okay. I can't remember to forget you, the scene you think about the most. Yeah. I also thought this was incredibly hard. I think in some ways,

because a lot of the things I would have wanted to pick could have gone in multiple categories, but also because the editing and the way we return to scenes. So I'm not going to go with the scene, but I'm going to go with an idea. The idea that I think about the most, which is explored over a few scenes,

in which we've mentioned a few times to have already, which is just like the commitment that the twins make to live their entire life in secret. Like, I think about this all the time, and I love the way that it is presented to us over the course of the film. When Borden and Angierwin-R-Water sends them to see the goldfish trick,

you've already mentioned this, this moment where Borden is, like, observing, and says, this is the trick. This is the performance right here. This is why no one can detect us method, total devotion to his art, a lot of self-sacrifice, you know, it's the only way to escape all this, you know. The glimmer in his eye, the smile on his face, realizing that the choice he's already made at that point can bear the fruit that he's hoping it will bear. And then the

way that Angier, who couldn't recognize it, has to acknowledge that Borden could, right? Before he is aware of what the true significance is, he's saying to Julia, Borden saw it at once. I couldn't fathom it. living my whole life pretending to be someone else. Now, he will, he has already changed something about his life, you know, as it's discussed actually in that scene. And of course, we'll end up as Lord Caldlo at the end, or not the end throughout, revealed to us or at the end.

But it's a completely different relationship to that choice when he makes it. And Jare insisting to Olivia, this is one of my favorite ways that this is engaged with in the film that Borden is deceiving her. that he wants her to think that the glasses and the wigs and the glue that she's spotted lying around the workshop are there for a secret double.

All the time, Olivia, that's who he is. That's what it takes. He lives his act, don't you see? Like, he has come to understand something fundamental about this man and yet still doesn't understand. The extent of it. The prestige.

You know, there's moments where, you know, where Borden is reading, Angiear's journal, right? And as you're like, you know, he doesn't understand, like, the kind of commitment it takes. And Borden's like, motherfucker, I should chop my own fingers off. Like, what the fucker you're talking about. If only you knew. And they will obviously actively discuss the idea of sacrifice and kind of both pitch the other

on the fact that they made the truest one at the end. But, you know, obviously, the way this manifests in their other relationships in their life is also like, I think this is part of why I picked it for this category. Think about the most because, you know, everything was saying. Sarah. Like, we get the... That's mine, is like Sarah, like, all of the not today. Yeah. All of those moments for Sarah is just so...

You know, you already mentioned that there is like plausible explanation for it. Yeah. But just sort of like her rapid decline, I think it's also, like, Sarah is so important in terms of like our shifting loyalties inside of this movie, right? Like, we watch... Definitely. Lose his wife and Hugh Jackman

sob and like rent his clothing on the ground, you know what I mean? How are you not like? But it's so interesting because I was looking at like various analyses of the screenplay like sort of what people thought

about like how you break it down into the three part and stuff like that. And some people call Angier the protagonist of this movie. And I, you know, I think it's fine to say it's dual protagonist in this movie or triple if you want to count Borten twice.

which you should. But actually it's like shifting protagonists in this movie. And it shifts where your sympathies are. And it is so important for Borden, someone we watched tie a knot on poor Piper Parabo, which meant with her consent, which meant that she cannot get out of that tank and then show up at the funeral and say, I'm not really sure which one. It is so important that like right there after we see him meet Sarah. And it is so important that we then are like with him inside of that relationship.

and inside of that warmth and connection. And so his sort of arrogance and standoffishness is quickly thawed. And so then we are sort of like, we're with him through this. Oh, but then like this one maimed this one. Well, then this one maimed this one's back. And who's the bigger villain inside of this? And I think at the end of the day, it's Angier. Like at the end of the day, the person who goes the furthest is obviously Angier.

And so then when you rewatch, you kind of rewatch that in mind. But like, it's just a careful magic trick, the way in which they use, again, they're Nolan, so they use them both Julia and Sarah, you know, in these intimate moments to, and Olivia to like a less successful degree, I would say, to give us the interior lives of these people. I think it is so interesting to your pick about the dedication to living a half life. Yeah. to the secret. It's a real like, Ned, you could tell cat about John Snow moment for me where I'm like, you can tell Sarah.

It bought her a really nice house. You can tell Sarah and she won't tell anyone. But they're so committed to this that they won't. Whereas Julia knows who Angier is, really. Like, he's told Julia, right? But like,

Borden won't let himself tell Sarah. And then the one more layer deep on that, though, is that Borden and Julia have this secret, right? They have this moment over the knot that like... The luck, yeah. That Angier is not involved in, which I think is so interesting inside of all of that. I, you know, the fact that Angier is willing to reveal this in Borden is not tracks completely to me because he is revealing something about the nature of theatricality and presentation. And Borden is like, this is a fundamental aspect. of creation. I can't share it. And so I really love that when in the first meeting with Sarah,

which like this is shared ultimately because of the sad scared little boy, but still it's like the opening note for their union, never show anyone. This is what he says. They'll beg you and flatter you for the secret. But as soon as you give it up, you'll be nothing to them. You understand nothing. The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything. Now, to your point, would Sarah respond that way, of course not. We even have the bullet catch reveal scene there to give us a counterweight to like this insistence that nothing could be revealed. But it is just kind of like a sacred aspect of how the twins have chosen to live.

And so then the way that that deception, the toll, the cost mounts for two people and four people who these characters, the twins do love, the fact. the fact that she could always tell whether the I love you is sincere or not I agree is just like, boy, that's a, that's a painful one. And the way that it eventually does shatter, that is an illusion that doesn't hold, right? It's like the idea that the relationship can withstand that level of withholding. So when Sarah's like, I can't live like this, his response is, oh, you think I can? You think I bloody enjoy this? But it's still the choice that he believes has to trump all other choices that he could possibly make.

And also that's the wrong twin inside of that. Yes. Right. And then like I think the way that we get that just absolutely like crushing. We each had half of a full life really, which was enough for us just, but not for them line. When he's talking to Angier at the end is just really fucking devastating. And as is the way that he responds to the simple easy. declaration with no, like simple maybe, but not easy. There's nothing easy about two men sharing one life. And so that is the thing I think about the most is just what was required to do this and why he thought this was right.

Yeah. And if I will say the benefit of reading the book is the benefit of understanding how these two men came up, like how their background, how they started, how this decision was made in the first place, like all of that sort of stuff, which is not something we are privy to because it's part of this. You can't, like, he cannot press pause and monologue about the moment in their life when they made the decision to do this and what their life was like and all that sort of stuff. But you can do it inside of a book. I think also the shifting, the matter of perspective, this goes back to sort of the imposter syndrome, the obsession, the envy sort of thing.

As you're following Borden and seeing him greet Sarah and the baby and being like, he took everything for me and he has that. he's perfectly happy he's so happy he has that and then later reading the journals and like sometimes he says he's happy and then sometimes he sounds like a man trapped and it's because one one one twin does kind of get to win for a big part of their a part of their life there where it's just sort of like I dated first so my girlfriend becomes our wife yeah so you know like you know my kid becomes our kid like all this you know in theory who's to say I don't know how often the other twin was also having sex with Sarah or was every night a headache night when it was the other twin's turn. I don't know. But like, I think that like, you know, and then to,

to hear then the other twin talking to Olivia and, you know, and while he's sort of, um, magician, like, sort of twirls his wedding ring along his fingers, right? Because he's just sort of like stuck inside of this reality. But like, and then when he says to her later, like, the one who does love Olivia, Yeah. Like, no, I don't want to talk about it. I don't need to talk about that because to him, she is the one. And her response is it's inhuman. Yeah.

To be that cold, like neither of them can fully, there's not a way for either of them to fully enjoy that life because it is definitionally fractured. Swear to me. This movie is rated PG-13, which means it could have exactly one F-bomb. Where would you put it? For me, there are so many places I could put, I don't care about my wife. I care about his secret.

When that happened in the movie theater that I was watching the movie in, I and many other people gasped. I don't care about my wife. Would it have been stronger with I don't care about my wife? I care about his fucking secret? Maybe.

I don't know. I think about fucking paradox bitch all the time. But like, that's a place that I would consider. It's such a, to like slice through you moment. And to maybe watch this character who does not swear elsewhere to swear to me, swear here would maybe even drive that further home. Yeah, the crumbling of the sophisticated facade even further.

The debonair sort of. Yeah, I like that. That's a great one. Yeah, this was not nearly as clear to me as the fucking paradox, bitch, because frankly, I just think actually there's a version of this movie where these characters are cursing all the time that feels true. how they would speak, I think particularly Borden. So I had three nominations, all of which we've quoted elsewhere today or any.

I think all the fucking time, Olivia, for the same reason you said, just the slipping in that moment into like a completely unvarnished. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think the Borden with the like abusive prison guard moment, only if I teach you out of fucking read, it would have been great. And the alley cat moment, you're fucking responsible for whatever happens to this animal doctor. You're fucking responsible. He doesn't speak English. If he does, it's with an accent thicker than sauerkraut sauce, most baffling accent.

I've been waiting three months for your pick here. I can't wait, because there are some choices. I can't wait to see what you go with here. I think it's Garjo O'clock. Honestly, I think it's time to talk about it. You can make the case, I think, for Andy Circus, master of blending. I buy him as King Kong. I buy him as Ghalm.

I'm not sure I buy him as someone from the Bronx. I'm not quite sure that that fully works for me. And then, you know, Bowie's really doing something inside of his movie too. I love it. I love it. Yeah. But let's go back to Scarjo. When you're with me?

You're with me That's my pick How can it not be? Like what? Okay It's It's stunning It's genuinely stunning

I didn't see much about her casting It's interesting She's like so dead center On the poster I don't know If you're gonna watch a Hugh Jackman Scarjo join I would recommend scoop over this

Okay so No one cared who I was until I put on the masked best use of a Nolan versus regular. I'm sorry, it's just Michael Cain again. I think it's Christian Bale. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, we, we, they're both incredible. They're both great. I just think that the way that like Michael Cain inside of so many of these stories becomes this like narrator. Mm-hmm. And they all narrate inside this movie. But like, this movie opens with, you know, him explaining the three parts of a magic trick, which we then find.

out is part of his testimony at a trial. Like when you drill down to it, he's not saying it to Jess during the trick. He's just doing the trick for it. He's saying it as part of his testimony. And then he's like, and then there's the prestige. And then the lawyer's like, so, would you say? And you're like, wow, what a testimony to give? But you buy it because it's Michael Kane.

And you're just swept up in the romanticism of it. You put it in all the trailers. You're just sort of like, there's so much juice to just putting Michael Kane in that role. in a role that, like, is a little tough because of the way that Cutters, loyalties go around because of the way that Cutter is, like, really hard on Borden, like, weirdly at the beginning. Like, all of this sort of stuff is just, um, works so much better because it is a vuncular. Yeah.

Thinking about Alfred, Michael Kane, uh, in a role, you know. We're also just treated to some of the most amazing line deliveries from him in this movie. saves me cutting you an arrow. I can't do the accent, but it's just a great one. I absolutely love it. You know, I've picked Michael Kane for this category before.

I think it's an appropriate pick, basically every pod. I can't challenge the pick, certainly. Wouldn't dream of it. I think the reason I picked bail is like, you know, as we've already talked about,

I just love the performance, but I think specifically like the degree of difficulty of this performance, given the subtle distinction in each scene based on which twin he is, like it's it's kind of amazing so good yeah so that's i think this is my favorite bail performance yeah that's true yeah i i i don't know what i would pick instead actually i mean i think he's fantastic in a lot of films but yes this is this my pick here's one i just completely failed

to deliver on which is the stunt category why do we falsers so that we can pick our we can learn to pick ourselves up i got one for you tell me here's what i'm going with the leg crush yeah i was going to say that was my only option is like falling through the stage into the leg crunch. The two, I was also considering the bullet catch because that is like an interesting, an interestingly choreographed scene. Though frankly, it is one of the few true like notes I have on the movie where I'm just like, how do you get picked? Yeah.

They don't see that that's him. Like, as you know, it did, we have time infiltration after infiltration and they will both get away with this. but when it's like a huge crowd and they're further in the audience. Then I can kind of accept it more. And then there's also like more of a, oh, we should have clocked them aspect to it later. But here I'm just like, I don't know that he should have been able to put a bulletin that gun.

Anyway, the leg crush, you've got a lot of stuff that helps heighten the impact of the actual stunt that's involved. So like Olivia has betrayed Angierre has led Borden to root. Borden has incepted root, right? Telling him this like, oh, it went bad. He had complete power over me. Be careful giving someone that much power over you. Cut to Cut her saying to Angier, don't do the, don't do the trick tonight.

Yeah. Don't do the trick. We don't do any tricks we can't control. And then injure does it anyway. Borden has infiltrated. The mat is removed. So we've had these like charming, light moments also in the film

where he drops and the trapdoor. Olivia falls. She's like, oh, you could have gotten something softer. They like entangle, very romantic, very sweet, great. Everyone's happy. Life is going great. Not so fast. Falls down, crushes his leg, which then is like this ultimately like really crucial,

not only moment for further resentment, but kind of becomes one of the key like we can track where we are in time aspects of the film. When does he have the limp? When does he have the brace? When does he have the cane? et cetera, looks over after sustaining this injury and sees Borden, where Root should be. Borden going up, stealing this stage. Professor guys.

In his professor guys, because Olivia has said, you know what, you actually could learn something from him. Or razzle dazzle, dazzle, razzle, let's just jizzle up a little. And makes a complete mockery of Angier's act lowers Root. from the rafters to dangle him. And so this moment before of like, I'm caught beneath the stage, I'm bowing when no one's there to see me

because I don't get to be up there soaking it in. Yeah. The other side of that also hobbled and trapped beneath the stage. While my reputation just goes through the paper shredder. Woo! Really good. Man. Okay.

It's a great excuse to talk about a great moment, but I don't think there's actually really, any good, like, stunts in this movie, but... He falls. We do our best. Stealth MVP of this movie that not enough people talk about. Amateur Seek the Sun, Gideon, Power Stays in the Shadow. I'm going to say

it's Rebecca Hall as Sarah, which we already talked about how crucial Sarah is to this movie. And I would add that. I already mentioned this, but the way in which Christian Bale calibrates how he

looks at her scene to scene depending on which twin he's playing is really incredible. There are some shortcuts that have I would say

all three of these women are fairly thinly thinly drawn Piper Parabo actually perhaps has the most dimensionality because she is

like a thing that she wants to do but like but like the way in which and the way in which Sarah Fultz apart is like right off a cliff, right?

I think I could have seen like a few little nips of Sherry before, but we got like full blown what happens. But I just think that like Rebecca Hall is, this is an incredible year for Rebecca Hall. She just started for 10, a movie that I love and this. And then she does Vicki Christina Barcelona. I actually thought Rebecca Hall was going to be like one of the biggest actresses in the world. And then she's, you know, she's directing.

Like she's doing interesting things. But like she did not become the thing that I thought she was. going to become. And like, I find her really arresting in this, in this movie. And I think people talk about Jackman and Kane and Bail, but I think, and they gracefully don't talk about Scarjo that much. But I think

we should be talking about Rebecca Holla bit more. Co-signed completely, I'll just say now that she's my pick for a later category, which is like, why didn't this person not come back? Not come back? She's so sensational. Because she's so sensational. I mean, always, but she's, she is so sensational working with his material. So I agree. I would, I really would like to see that work together again. Like, I think this is, she's just dynamite in this movie. I agree. Not relevant to the current discussion, but she is

married to Morgan Spector, who plays George Russell in the Gilded Age, and they are, that is just that, that is a 10 out of 10 couple right there. What is Rebecca Hall doing? Morgan's Beck. That is a 10 out of 10 couple right there. My pick here, that's a great one. My pick here, that's a great one. My pick is what I already mentioned earlier, which is just like the movies, engenres, I'm trying to adopt a Michael Cain cutter accent. I just simply am not capable of it. I love the way he says that. The trick designs actually like, not only not fucking this up so that we're like, wait,

can this person sing or is that joke funny, but nailing it to wow the audience the way that we would feel wowed if we were just in the seat at the theater, but also then allow us to better understand it to take us deeper inside of the space. of the people who were like inhabiting this world and crafting these illusions. I keep my... I don't know if you're having this experience of like every third line about to quote

Arrested Development. Like, you don't have time for my illusions, Michael. Illusions, Michael. Every time I say tricks, I want to quote that. But like, whether it's the transported man or the new transported man or the original transported man or the real transported man, whether it's the bullet catcher,

the original bird trick, or the, the updated dove trick or the tank not escape or anything like the goldfish bowl. The fact that we are seeing it through the audience's eyes, then seeing it through the eyes of the scholar, the eyes of the engineer, the intention, the care, the study, and then that is given meta form in the film itself. I just really love.

And I think, I guess my runner-up is like, though I'm on the fence about whether this is like a one-to-a-ward or one-to-note, actually, but I think I land ultimately on one-to-a-wort. is like the makeup, the prosthetics, the costume design. Because, again, the fact that on rewatch, you're like, if you see just an inch of Fallon's face, you're like, that's Christian Bail, doesn't change the fact that the first time you watch it. That's not necessarily the experience.

Really good. It's really good. And it's like also in addition to the Fallon and the root, like the kind of core areas where that needs to work and convince us, there's the just all of the other disguises that they used to kind of go about their day where you have to accept that that would work, you know? that they could maybe infiltrate that room or get on that stage even for a second. So, yeah.

How many fake beers in this movie. Quite a few. You're waiting on a train, a train that will take you far away. Best Dead Wife Moment. A lot of picks. Is it Piper Parabo's dead body flopping onto the stage? It is. It is.

I regret to tell you it is. Or is it Sarah's hands twitching and then stilling it. front of the in the bird cages. It is Julia. It is Julia drowning. It is the, it reminds me a little bit of what they do with Carrie Russell's eyes in the third mission impossible film. It's like the moment when the eyes

just like shift. Horrifying always. Drowning work from Piper Parabo. Better than, Jackman's good, she's better. It's really good in terms of that moment. Yeah, when like Julia's just gone. Yeah, exactly. It's unmistakable. And then I think the reason that this is the pick, even though I think I, like you,

and more kind of emotionally connected to everything happening with Sarah. It's just like, this is like the inciting incident for everything. The not as that great early twin clue, the how could we not know of it, the cycle of vengeance and violence that this sparks, the need to, you know,

constantly try to one up each other, the bullet catch, the crunching of the bird cage on and on and on it goes, all the stuff we've already talked about. The way that Angier then uses the tank, like both to issue this message to Borden in the presentation and the speech, but then also the fact that, like, he is, that is the tank. The tank that his wife drowned

in is the tank that he is drowning versions of himself in every night. It's like, to me, the ultimate manifestation of that self-delusion, right? Like, I can tell myself that this pledge is intact. That tank is a way to remind myself that I'm doing it for her, even though that's not what this is anymore and it hasn't been in a long time. Yeah. Really, really, really good. Also worth noting that like Angier, the parallels of like Angier

drowning and Julia drowning and Borden hanging and Sarah hanging is a nice grisly little mirror moment inside of this movie. Okay. I was lying. He said it was agony. Tough. Once again, just want to note for the record

that the Nolans added two dead wives to a story that had no dead wives. in it. Okay. Unbelievable. Like, just copies belief. And yet, it doesn't. And yet, here we are.

Okay. They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used it. Clearest great man moment. I'm going to give it to this. You're familiar with a phrase, man's reach exceeds his grasp. It's a lie.

Man's grasp exceeds his nerve. The only limits on scientific progress are those imposed by society. The first time I changed the world. I was hailed as a visionary. The second time I was asked politely to retire. The world only tolerates one change at a time. And so here I am enjoying, quote, retirement.

I think it's impossible, Mr. Angier, what you want is simply expensive. And then we get the price and then the cost that follows. But the exceeds the, you know, man's reach exceeds his grasp, which is then, of course, reiterated, as you mentioned, in the transmorted man trick. But that's just like their fascination, you know,

We talked about this with Thomas Wayne. We talk about this inside of inception. I think this, you know, I put it in here in the first place because I was just thinking so much about Oppenheimer, but it really is an interesting thing for these brothers and Chris Renola specifically to sort of revisit again and again, which is just sort of like, what can the one man, the one great man, the one great brain, the one great thinker, the one great innovator do. And so to like put that inside of a movie where Tesla is here, Tesla, the great innovator Tesla is here. And for engineer to then like steal that valor a bit inside of like a trick. Yep. Is particularly juicy. But I just, the use of Tesla in general, the casting of Bowie as Tesla, I think is so interesting because.

Inspired. You know, there is just this. He's not in the movie. that often. He's not even given like a, he's not giving a big like, Jared the Goblin King, showy, bowie performance. He's doing something quite subtle here. But like, there's just a star quality. And you're just like, oh my God, Bowie's here. Oh, my God, Tesla's here. And this is before Tesla was a household name with the car company, etc. And so, you know, plenty of people knew who Tesla was, but not everyone knew what a Tesla coil was.

And so I think that casting choice is so interesting. The speech is so interesting. And the preoccupation inside of filmmaking, which is such a collaborative process, this idea of, you know, I find it an endearing sort of Achilles heel for Christian. This preoccupation of this idea. Yeah, I think this is my pick as well, the quote the quote that you picked. I mean, how could it not be in like, I think. You know, Tesla just in general in the movie for the reasons you said. Like, I think that the fact that Nolan is preoccupied, but like through that preoccupation,

very aware and constantly assessing, like, where this leads people is important. I think the other Tesla quote that feels very like headline, great man, bold font to me. is in the and I like that because like the quote you read is when they're you know we've had the little handshake moment in the bringing of the light bowl but then that's like in our basically first proper conversation you know on the deck and then the other quote that I think is very reflective of this idea is in the farewell note so it's kind of like the bookends of their experience with each other I apologize for leaving without saying goodbye but I seem to have outstayed my welcome in Colorado Colorado truly extraordinary is not

permitted in science and industry. Perhaps you'll find more luck in your field where people are happy to be mystified. I love that line. And that feels like one of the more meta quotes in the film from the Nolan's. Like, people are happy to be mystified when they go to a movie. They're looking and hoping to be transported. And sort of pair that appreciation and recognition that Angier-esque, we do it for the look on their faces with the interrogation of.

well, we're doing it also for like kind of the holy, like the sanctity of the craft of forging this and being able to, like being the rare few who can, you know, the Borden, and then the Tesla ability to like see it in full and take stock of in a way that neither Angira Borden is able to because it is there in the, in the midst of it. And like ultimately if you look at Tesla in the actual timeline of like where the film is said and where he is in his life, like he's in the midst of it too, but he's experienced a lot of it to that point. And I think that idea of like what this kind of competition and need drives people to, but then also like the way the world responds to advancement, whatever form advancement takes.

And like the idea that the wonder can be mixed with the fear. Resentment. Yeah. And the awe can give way to something that can be as active as like banishment. Like, we will not accept that you're here. We are afraid of what you're doing to this place and to the world and we're not ready for it. Like, it's just all— But, like, all that's wrapped inside of, like, it's not Colorado that's rejecting him.

It's Edison's goons that have been sent to persecute him. And so it's like, Edison's goons, the same ones who showed up at the expo and are sort of fearmongering in the audience of like, oh, it looks dangerous to me, you know, like, I don't look safe at all. Yeah, that people are susceptible to like so stimuli in all sorts of forms. Like either what you present to them or what other people do is really interesting. Yeah. Like a great man does not fully control his own fate. That's what Tesla would say in the film and certainly what a lot of these films have to say. All right, we have a few categories get through and I want to make sure that we have time for everything.

So let's zip a little bit and say, I'm going to say, regrettably, Miss Cass. I would say Ms. Scarlett Johansson. I would put someone else in that, Olivia role. Yeah, I think terrible, but like, it just doesn't pick someone, you know. Yeah, it doesn't really feel like a, it's not a Scarjo performance that we remember. I think that's a good one. I think the other candidate here is Andy Circus, even though I think he's good in the movie. I'm kind of like, I don't know that Allie is particular enough to necessarily have needed to be played by Andy Circus.

Yeah, so I do really like some of his scenes and moments. And like, you know, you have a circle of trust with someone who's dying. Are you still? Very fun. Very charming. Very good. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.

Most satisfying twist. I mean, we've talked about them all already. Second bail in plain size. Second bail on plain sight. Just stoning. Stoning. Storn in. That's just sensational.

It's unbelievable. It's really like kind of like Pantheon stuff. That's the pick obviously. I think this, I guess the like, quieter pick that we've talked about, but I want to note quickly again. It's just I do love the. double diary deception.

Yeah. I love the big post to it. The double diary deception, which then makes you question everything that you heard leading up to it. I mean, I don't think that Borden sat down and faked every entry in that diary, encoded every entry in that diary, especially given the way that it's like the dual perspective and stuff like that. I don't think the whole thing is fake, but it's certainly in latter entries, it's possible that he was just sort of like, let's see how I can taunt.

Anjure. It's not who I am underneath. phrasing, but what I do that defines me. Nolan is not known for a sexual content, but let's go ahead and try and excavate the horniest moment of this film. I'm going to say, it's giving your wife a cheeky little kiss on the thigh. And Michael Kane's like,

they can see you in Road 3 or 4 when you do that. It's this, you know, they later like have sex in this movie, but it is the secrecy, the thrill of the secrecy of like every night I get to go up on stage and smooch my wife on the thigh in plain view of everyone, but also they're not supposed to see that I'm doing it. Yeah.

The bloke's at the ends of Rose for. That's one of my contenders as well. And then it's kind of like sad because he always been scolded so he doesn't do it. He kind of has just like a slight little like rub of the thigh instead. And that's it. That's the missed the last thigh kiss. I would also like to nominate in a similar approximate part of the film,

the discussion of the wet knot. I'd like to throw that out there. for horny consideration, a wet knot. Julia is quite good with knots. Quite, Julia is ready for the wet knot. Knows how to work a wet knot. So that, and then I think when, because in the scene that you just mentioned

where it is an intimate scene, because this is when Angier was trying to figure out the goldfish bowl trick, and he's like wrapped in a sheet and he opens it and he's already shirtless and then they're about to fuck. Why not just like have your dick in the bowl? Well, it's a little surprise for your wife. In the bowl?

Yeah. Part of the trick. It's like, look what I revealed. You want the convex glass to really just sort of like showcase it for you? Yeah. It's my dick and a bowl, dear. And then you're going to get a wet knot. Okay.

And ideas like a virus, resilient, highly contagious. The line that hits hardest 20 years later. Free clean power? Grim. That's fine. Free clean. power. Oh, my God.

Jesus. Boy, yeah. Harrowing pick. I like it. I am going to go with no one cares about the man who disappears, which feels very upsetting.

More upsetting somehow every time you watch it. I like the way really structurally that that kind of builds over the film and is explored over the film. The initial after the first performance

and he's under the stage and can't enjoy the celebration. No one cares about the man who disappeared. when everyone else is drinking his champagne and celebrating, and he's just like swept up in what he doesn't have, that it's not enough, it's not satisfying enough. When he's in his cold low era

and lauding his victory over Borden, he's doing it by invoking that idea again, and I win because no one cares about the man in the box, the man who disappears, and the way that then he's like haunted by this and all of the different things that it means as he's looking at his own water coffins and like touching them.

and saying it again, no one cares about the fan in the box and has to really confront that. And then, you know, we've discussed this already, but I think the way that Borden gets to celebrate by saying, like, Andrew's down to his final breath, and that's the thing he needs to know, right?

It's like, which of you was it? Like, did you get to do it? Was it him? Yeah, we train. And the smile on his face when he gets to say, we took turns. Because, like, while it was a half-life, it was a life that they got to share.

Yeah, yeah. I love that. Okay. You think darkness is your ally, but you merely adopted the duck. I was born in it, molded by it. Most devastating moment.

There's actually a few candidates for this for me. Yeah, it's a sad movie. I'll go quickly because mine's related to what I was just talking about, which is just that I think my pick is ultimately when Borden has to sit, when the twins have to take a bye, like they're parting. One of my. We go alone now. You go live your life in full an hour, right?

You live for both of us and bounce us him the ball. Like the idea of the transported man taking shape truly, like for the first time. Fallen saying goodbye in a way that like, you know, we've barely heard him talk all the whole movie. Yeah. I think also, I mean, not today, no, is really, really tough. Pain. Gordon saying goodbye to his niece, promising that he'll return. But, like, again, it's just, like, so clear that he loves her.

And this is so painful for him to say goodbye to her and say goodbye to his brother. I think also just like this is, this is minor pain, this is rewatch pain. Sarah telling the wrong brother that she's pregnant. We should have told her knowledge. We should have told her. Incredible moment. You really should have told Valin. That's a great one.

I love that. But I think Christian Bail is bored in on the other side of the bars. Yeah. To his brother and to his niece, who is also his daughter, you know. Yeah, because I think so much of the film is about the sacrifice and what is required to devote your life to something in full, which we've obviously discussed a lot today. But I think then really seeing the like tenderness and celebration and joy of the other side of it, right?

Like they did get to share life and they always had each other no matter what. Like no one else could know and that secret was harmful. But it was a secret that they shared. They shared everything too much more than two people should share. Some might say. But they did ultimately get to share it all. And then like that's over. So you're not just losing your brother, which would be horrible.

enough, you're not just losing your twin, which would be horrible enough, if you're not just losing your creative partner, which would be horrible enough, you were losing actually a part of you, a half of your entire existence to that point. Like, how would you even think about who you were moving forward? So that's, yeah, that's my, that's my pick. And I think he apologizes too, because there's like guilt

entwined with the sorrow. Sorry about Sarah. Sorry about Sarah, man. All right, can you hear the music, Robert? This is usually where we talk about a Zimmerism, a Han Zimmerism. Really, I'm just saying, saving this for Dunkirk on the score. But you wanted to keep this for sound design.

So what did you want to say about the sound design? So this is like a class. I suggest that we keep it for sound design. I was going to talk about the sound of the electricity, the crackles of the current on the machine. Because it is to me like there is an element. You know, this movie is a mystery. It's a thriller.

There's like a horror aspect to it. And I think that heightens it. I'm going with something else. I ended up actually going with the score. moment after all, because this is a scene that you've discussed a couple times. The greatest, it was the greatest magic trick I've

ever seen. The way that the score is used in that scene is, I think, like, breathtaking. Because we are watching, so Angier is watching. Borden performed a transported man for the first time. And he's gone, once again, in full disguise to seek out the revenge. You know, Olivia has kind of said, like,

let me help. Actually, I'm not going to stop you. I'm going to help you, right? they've had this really like intense my wife for a couple of his fingers like were never the score's never even I'm never stopping preamble to this and then the professors performing in the crowd is basically like unmoved nearly silent there's no theatricality right and then the way that this scene is edited where we cut between the the ret the transported man being revealed to the crowd and angier peeling off the disguise as he's recounting to Olivia what he witnessed the bouncing of the red ball he had a new trick. And the score activates and it surges

and then it just remains at this consistent, like, home. I don't know how to talk about music, but like a sustained pitch. Like a resonation. Yes, that's the perfect word. Like the way that they talk throughout the movie about, well, you've got to get the audience to that place, right? Like it can't be rude.

You've got to sell them the mounting tension, that moment of anticipation, the way that the score reflects that. and then the door, the bounce into door one, closed door one, and the score stops. It's just the sound is sucked out of the scene just like Borden disappeared. Was it good?

It was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen. And we don't actually see in that sequence the return. Right. But the way that the sound plays in the scene, the absence of it, tells us what is happening. And it's just like, I think great, really reinforces what transpired and the fact that Angier, who went there to inflict harm, was too awed by what he saw.

Too delighted. I was reading through the screenplay, and I'm not sure to you, you know, there's differences in the screenplay in the movie that's fine. That's fine. Stage directions that, you know, the actors decide to follow or not in a discussion they have with the director. Jackman doesn't quite play it this way. But the way that it's written in screenplay is, like still with a smile on his face, sort of basking in the joy of that moment of getting to

witness that. Jackman's playing it with more like frustration and resentment inside of it. Aw. Aw. For sure. Aw. Yeah. But not like delight the way that like it was originally conceived.

But that idea that like, yeah, you're just so transported. Yeah. There's like a begrudging appreciation before you shift back into like, Terminator mode. So the music really enhances that there. I love it. What about you? I didn't do this one.

Okay. For me, I think this is the thing you wanted to keep it. I thought we just give it. For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship. Actor who never returned to the Nolan verse, but should have. You mentioned Rebecca Hall. I'm going to give it to Roger Reese, who is one of my favorite. I first saw him in Cheers.

He showed up in later seasons of Cheers. West Wing fans obviously know him. from West Wing, but like, I know him from a lot of stage stuff that he did in the Shakespeare realm. And he's just, he passed away, so this will not come to be. But, like, he's just, he's got one of the most delicious voices that has ever existed. And if you want, like, if you want like a straight shot to upper crust, you can hire Roger Reese to do that. But there's just like this rye quality to him that always delights and draws you in. and I think he could have been a really fun,

like, sort of fringy player inside of the Nolanverse. That's a great one. Yeah, Owens is really good in the movie. I love that. Great pick. Some men just want to watch the world burn the most Nolan thing about this movie.

This is a coin flip to me between the non-linear plotting and the sheer tonnage of dead wives. I don't know how you pick between them, honestly. Co-champions? I think the like the monomania, the like, why do we do it? Why do we do? Why do we torture ourselves?

Why do we do this? Especially making this having coming off of Batman. I think this is summed up in this line. I don't want to kill doves, then stay off the stage. Right? This is just sort of like, this is what we do. Yeah. We murder doves.

We sacrifice all, you know, for the art? Do we do it for the look on their faces in the crowd? Do we do it to transport ourselves away from a world that we don't want to be in? I don't know. It's all very interesting. You know what I think about a lot? What?

I never have to mention earlier. Tell me. The Jonathan Nolan and Chris Nolan were raised together. And Jonathan Nolan decided to have an American accent. And Chris Nolan has a British accent. They spent summers in Chicago, their mom's American. So like, you know, it could have gone either way. but Chris Nolan, who went to college in London and Jonathan Nolan, who went to school at Georgetown,

like, he just decided I'm going to be an American. Like, maybe to differentiate from his brother, or I don't know what it was, but it's interesting to me. Could be the deepest insight into that partnership yet. Could just be that when you spend a few years in the Mid-Atlantic, it leaves a mark. Love that for you. Okay. Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us. What aspect of Nolan's upcoming The Odyssey?

Are you thinking about slash most hype for this month? A lot. After rewatching this movie, I mean, there's a lot, like, a rivalry born out in war. What happens in the moments when a man is presumed dead? That's an interesting one. Just the idea of, like, the journey that you must go on and the tests and trials that you face, the omens that are dispensed, concealed identity, not to spoil the honesty, but that'll play a role. I'm sure it'll shock.

Everyone to hear who has ever seen any Christopher Nolan movie. I'm going to spoil Homer here on the pod. But yeah, there's a lot. You know, Christopher Nolan has his areas of interest. That's just true. Thinking about the way in which they did handheld cameras for this, I was looking into the cameras that they're using for The Odyssey, because, of course, like, Nolan is so fascinated with the world of IMAX now

that, like, he doesn't really do handheld anymore. We want big, big, big, whatever. good news though new iMacx film cameras that are 30% lighter and 30% quieter thanks to carbon fiber construction these lighter cameras will enable

cinematographer hoit van hoitma and nolan to capture more shots that would have been possible with older heavier models it will also help them deal with the fact that older iMacs cameras make certain scenes more difficult to hear which was especially an issue for nolan considering he doesn't like to use is ADR, a traditional technique for filling in dialogue later for a scene that's a little too loud

or sonically chaotic on set. Damn it! Our tenant wounds shall be healed. I can't hear it. I still, I don't know what anyone said in tenant. Same. It's not just Kenneth Brana's accent. If only we had used ADR and tenant, perhaps we would have understood what was going on, but we

did it. Oh, man. But apparently that will matter less for the crashing waves of the Aonian Sea in the Odyssey. see. This is great news. Isn't it? Tremendous news. Anybody who has ever watched a date on The Bachelor that was set near a water feature? And you're like, what? I couldn't hear a fucking word. It's really hyped right now.

That is the prestige. The end of Hot Nolan summer, the bridge to Chris Nolan fall. Do we have a working title yet for whatever spring will be? No. Hobbiton drag is at gmail.com. Get on it. some good ideas. Thank you so much to the number one prestige fan, Arjuna Rangipal, for his work on this episode. Thank you to John Richter.

Thank you to Carlos Jeroboga. Thank you to Jomey at dinner on social. You want to clip that Wet Not sequence from Mallorub, and everyone loves a little horny Mal on the Instagram. And we will see you soon for more Alien Earth. Bye. All pay off your home. Travel for life.

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