Foreshadowing and Payoff

This story-telling technique is all about Foreshadowing and Payoff aka the “Verbal Kint is Keyser Söze” technique (read on, you’ll understand).

For a full recap of the plot read the summary over at Wikipedia.

The movie starts out with Christian Bale’s character, Borden, meets and falls in love with the beautiful Sarah (played by Rebecca Hall). Later, when they are moving in together we have this little scene played out for us (to read the full scene go to page 25 in the script) :

Page 25 of the screenplay

And that line; “Nope. Not today”, or versions of it, is repeated throughout the movie. At first, it just seems like Borden is the kind of man who is only capable of loving one thing at a time. One day, it is his wife he loves and on other days, it is his work, the magic, that he loves. This makes perfect sense because of the way he is portrayed in the movie.

But the Nolan brothers up the ante later in the script with this scene (in the script it’s on page 38):

Page 38 of the screenplay

Again it seems perfectly normal because they live in a very unsanitary time in London. A cut or wound could very well keep bleeding or easily catch infection.

The next scene that uses the foreshadowing technique starts on page 57:

Page 57–58 of the screenplay

See? Again Borden is portrayed as a man with a temper: “I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”. This is about halfway through the movie and we’ve seen him numerous times loose his temper. Nothing out of the ordinary here — or so we are made to believe.

Later, the relationship between Borden and Sarah is, to say it mildly, not very good (see page 92 for the entire scene) :

Page 92 of the screenplay

That just a relationship gone sour. We have already seen that Borden is having an affair with the young Olivia (played by Scarlett Johansson), so it, again, makes perfect sense in the context of the story. The scene is even followed up by this right after (starts on page 94) :

Page 94 of the screenplay

Is he having second thoughts? We don’t know yet, but it would make sense since he just declared his true love for his wife. By now the Nolans start to hand out clues about the underlying plot of the whole movie, we just don’t know it yet.

The next thing that happens is that Sarah hangs herself in desperation.

Later Borden is sitting with Olivia at a restaurant and having this conversation (this scene starts on page 104, and also see the scene on page 99 were Sarah warns Borden that she will tell Olivia who Borden really is) :

Page 104 of the screenplay

Again, we think we’re witnessing the confessions of a man torn between his passion for his art and his love for his wife, but little do we really know.

And then, ladies and gentlemen, comes the Payoff, behold (starts on page 122) :

Page 122–124 of the screenplay

Et volá. The payoff; “We were both Fallon. And we were both Borden”. Borden even says it in his voice-over, the very first line in the movie:

He’s challenging us, as the viewer, but it isn’t until the very end of the movie we realize this. Even though Cutter’s voice-over at the start of the entire movie clearly states what is going to happen (here greatly condensed just to show the dialog) :

CUTTER (V.O.): Every 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, or a bird… …or a man. He shows you this object, and pledges to you its utter normality… Perhaps he asks you to inspect it… …to see that it is indeed real… …unaltered… …normal. But, of course, it probably isn’t… The second act is called the Turn… The magician takes the ordinary something… …and makes it 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 couldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough… you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act. The hardest part…, the part we call… …The Prestige.

That’s Foreshadowing and Payoff.

All the pieces fall into place. That little line of dialog (“We were both Fallon. And we were both Borden”) explains why he can’t remember what knot he tied. Why his fingers keep bleeding. Why his wife sometimes could see if his love for her was real or not. Why he changed his mind about buying the house. And how The Transported Man trick really worked (he used a double). Borden and Fallon were twin brothers.

It is a super simple but extremely powerful technique. And when used by story-telling experts like the Nolan brothers it sets up the entire movie to be seen numerous time.

The Nolan brothers have with this written a superbly structured screenplay and perfectly illustrates the Foreshadowing and Payoff trick in absolute clarity. They are truly masters of this technique.