20 Things You Somehow Missed In The Prestige

5. Prefiguring A Hanging

Hanging is a recurring motif in The Prestige.

Angier's wife, Julia is dangled from a rope before being plunged into the water tank that costs her her life; Sarah hangs herself when she cannot live with her matrimonial difficulties nay longer, and Borden himself is seemingly hanged for Angier's perceived murder.

However, in quite a telling nod to Borden's fate, the abandoned theatre that Angier is using to store Tesla's machine has a structure that may or may not be a scaffold for hanging people.

Of course, in a film incorporating magic acts, the structure may purely be another illusion, but it bears a striking resemblance to the infamous means of dispensing capital punishment in Britain at the time.