Are You Watching Closely?

The Prestige is a movie about rival magicians, which is based on the novel by the same title. A truly wonderful movie, but can confuse the viewer if not attentive. I did not appreciate the movie until I saw the ending, which was scintillating.
The movie presented a clever demonstration of the three acts of magic: The Pledge, The Turn, and The Prestige.
I present the following quote from the Anatomy of an illusion

Every great magic trick consists of three parts, or acts.
The first part is called "The Pledge";
The magician shows you something ordinary - a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object-perhaps he asks you to inspect it, to see that it is indeed real-normal. But of course it probably isn't.

The second act is called "The Turn";
The magician makes his ordinary something and makes it to do something extraordinary. Now, you 're looking for the secret, but you won't find it because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back.

That's why every magic act has a third act. The hardest part. The part we call "The Prestige".
This is the part with the twists and turns, where lives hang in the balance, and you see something shocking you've never seen before.

Some more memorable quotes from the movie:

Things don't always go as planned. That's the beauty of science.

Simple maybe, but not easy.