Cutter didn't know how the trick works. He didn't construct the machine. He was explicitly forbidden by Angier to go offstage for the Transported Man trick ("I don't want you backstage on this one."). He never saw the trick from the position different from a regular viewer's one. So he has no knowledge whatsoever, he only has assumptions.
Cutter knows that Angier had always believed that Borden had a means to really perform teleportation, and that Angier believed Tesla was the key to it. So when an elated Angier returns from America with a machine built by Tesla that does "something", and performs a teleportation in front of him and Ackermann, and Angier doesn't deny that it's "real magic", it's of course natural for Cutter to believe that the machine is a working teleporter. Which is actually true. So Cutter doesn't really have a reason to believe that he doesn't know how Angier's trick worked.
Cutter had also no reason to suspect that some Angier duplicate was playing a trick on him and everybody else.
The act of perjury occurs when Cutter starts passing his assumptions for facts. He never clearly stated that he has no first-hand experience with the machine, nor had he seen it in action up close. He omitted an important fact that for this specific trick he was never allowed into the "restricted area", which might be the only reason why he's not aware of the role of the watertank.
No, that's not perjury.
Moreover, you're reasoning from the luxury of having full knowledge of exactly what had been going on during the whole movie. Cutter, the court and the defending party didn't have that luxury at that time. They had to decide for themselves which aspects were relevant and which were not. Again, Cutter had no reason
to suspect that some Angier duplicate was playing a trick on him and everybody else. As far as Cutter knew, the watertank was used for the Watertank Escape that Angier performed earlier that night, and the real lock was not supposed to be on the watertank. Those are what Cutter considered the important
facts, and he told the judge about it.
Should Cutter also have voluntarily divulged to the court that he suspected that Borden has a twin brother who possibly helped killing Angier? Or would you only have said so if the end of the movie had shown that Tesla had fixed the shortcomings of his teleporter machine, that Angier was really dead, that Caldlow was just some unrelated lordship, and that the non-jailed Borden brother had placed the watertank underneath the trapdoor?
Still, he claims to possess the trick's secret, to the point that he knows how to sell it on.
No, he says he holds the rights to sell it on. Which is probably true (it may have been stated in Angier's will/testament).
Do the current right-owners of, say, Jimi Hendrix' music recordings know how to play guitar the way Jimi did? No, they probably don't.
I guess it could have been made clearer if Borden wasn't all silent during the trial.
Yes. Borden could have done more to defend his position. That's why I already wrote that Borden probably had a lousy lawyer.
We are let to believe that even Borden from his seat could see that Angier goes down under the stage during the trick.
No, as far as we are shown, Borden merely noticed a trapdoor shutting. He didn't really see that Angier went down. Your post is assuming things that weren't explicitly shown in the movie; if this thread were a legal proceeding in a crime trial, I'd guess that would make your post eligible for a perjury charge too (according to your logic).
Could Cutter explain why it was a part of the trick's mechanics if the machine was indeed real as he claimed to the judge?
Nobody asked that question, hence Cutter wasn't required to explain. As far as we can be certain, only Borden knew that the trapdoor was in use at every performed show. And Borden said nothing at his trial. Moreover, who knows, maybe Angier employed a trapdoor as merely a red herring, in order to "give them enough reason to doubt it!"
And where's the props under the stage to break Angier's fall if the trapdoor is used?
Those props may be lying around in the theatre's basement, since probably every theatre that has a stage with a trapdoor will have those props and equipment lying around. Borden has shown earlier, when he sabotaged the Angier-&-Root performance, that he knows how to make the props to break Angier's fall vanish from their spot.
Too many questions which the witness who claims to bear the full knowledge of the trick simply can't answer.
Cutter is only required to answer the questions that the court-members are asking.
Anyway, i'm highly surprised that Cutter was allowed to testify at all. He has a history of violent behavior against Borden and Fallon, when Angier and he basically buried Fallon alive. So now we could assume that Cutter has a clear motif to see Borden dead as well, so his testimony might have been intentionally false and could not be the only ground for conviction.
And the court was aware of this... how?
If Fallon was called to testify, he would have to lie. First he would have to lie while taking the oath that his name is Bernard Fallon. Secondly, the Fallon who was buried was not the Borden who survived at the end of the movie. Now
that would be perjury.
Seriously, there's no plausible reason for Borden to have been convicted. I'm not a lawyer myself, but even with my layman's approach to this case i'd have beaten the prosecution side to dust.
You're missing one of the central themes of the movie, which is how far the Bordens were willing to go to protect their secret. Because, "as soon as you give it up, you'll be
nothing to them."
Borden did almost nothing to help his case and get himself exonerated. It seemed that, although he didn't cause Angier's death, he was struggling with himself and felt guilty for all the misery that he and his brother and family were enduring, and maybe he also felt guilty for the rivalry with Angier. He felt he should have left Angier alone, and that he's now paying the price (now that Angier is dead). It seems that to Borden in jail, overcoming his obsessive rivalry with Angier was the most important thing now, and the way to achieve that was to seek redemption rather than winning the trial. So in a sense, he chooses to die. That way, at least one of them (his brother) could start living a full life now.
______
Joe Satriani - "Always With Me, Always With You"
http://youtu.be/VI57QHL6ge0
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