Fools and outsmarts the audience

Rating: 10/10 (19 September 2011)

The truly amazing thing about this movie is that it has managed to fool nearly its entire audience into misinterpreting it, even though the clues it leaves behind are so numerous and apparent as to make the solution to the movie absolutely obvious. It makes a fool out of its own audience.
The movie succeeds in tricking the audience into believing the machine is a cloning device, while actually being something else entirely. The true secrets are never revealed to the audience yet it believes it has an adequate solution. That is part of the brilliance of the movie. It tries to make a fool of the audience in general and succeeds.
Im sure there are a few keen minds that truly understand what the machine does and are skeptical that Fallon is really Borden's twin, but the audience in general is duped into accepting faithfully what it's told. The movie never reveals its secret but the audience still feels the plot is resolved.
It manages to paradoxically resolve the plot for the audience while not resolving it at the same time. It successfully sells them an alternate solution that isn't accurate and leaves them completely oblivious to the real solution. But they don't mind, because like the closing line says, the people watching "want to be fooled."