The Illusionist
(Fox Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(2006)
review by Died with Boots On

I love plot twists, no matter how predictable or improbable or convenient (all hail deus ex machina), I love plot twists.  In the case of “The Illusionist,” it really puts the movie into perspective.  Had the tail end of the film been sliced off, it still would have been a very clever melodrama peppered with beautiful cinematography.  The storytelling relies on magic realism from an era when the dark arts still held swing, and magic acts were not merely watched, but savored and discussed and feared.  The movie opens with the destination, and then backtracks through the journey.  Even though the demonstrations in the movie rely on parlor tricks and special effects, I cannot help but love Eisenheim the Illusionist for his sleight of hand.

In fact, Edward Norton describes a trick in the film, revealing to Paul Giamatti’s character the secret, and if you take nothing else away from this review, at least now you can cheat your friend out of some pocket change.  Norton tells Giamatti to hold a plum to his forehead and clench it in his palm, Norton’s back turned.  Norton then guesses which hand he is holding it with.  He explains that because of the way his fingers are curled around the plum and the way that his arm is elevated, the blood has drained from his fist, leaving the concealing hand paler.  At this point in the review, I urge everyone to go out to their favorite pub and have a couple shots on me (providing you can weasel some money out of those pitiful lowlifes trying to drown their sorrows in a big pitcher of whatever’s on draft, picking at the nuts and pretzels while thinking about their wife’s affair or their nightmarish day at work).  Anyway…

Based loosely on Steven Millhauser’s short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” which I wound up reading just this morning, the film takes many creative liberties, almost always for the better.  Beginning in medias res, Chief Inspector Uhl (Giamatti) orders the arrest of Eisenheim (Norton) after he conjures the ghost of a woman on stage.  Because of Eisenheim’s loyal following, all hell breaks loose between the townspeople and the police.  The Chief Inspector appears in Crown Prince Leopold’s (Rufus Sewell) chambers, recounting the events leading up to Eisenheim’s arrest.  Starting at the beginning, he describes a teenage Eisenheim, the son of a cabinet-maker, who had a run-in with a traveling magician who made himself and the tree that he was sitting under vanish.  Soon Eisenheim begin practicing magic.  While walking down the street balancing an egg on a stick, he run into a beautiful equestrian girl named Sophie who empathized with him when her friends make jabs, and, pardon the pun, egg him on.  Unfortunately for him, the girl is the Juliet to his Romeo.  She was a duchess.  Her family catches on to her secret meetings with Eisenheim, and as they follow hounds into the woods to track their scent, she begs him to make her disappear.  After they are forced apart, Eisenheim leaves Vienna to travel the world, perfecting his magic.  After a decade or so, he returns a well-versed magician and master illusionist.  He puts on a show at the local theater where his ability to grow an orange tree out of a seed in a matter of seconds stuns the audience.  The Crown Prince, hearing through the grapevine of the magician’s great feats, announces that he will be attending the next show.  At this performance, Leopold volunteers his fiancé, who is coincidentally Duchess Sophie, to take part in one of Eisenheim’s demonstrations.  Recognizing each other without hesitation, the two star-crossed lovers plan a rendezvous in a cab where Sophie describes the hell she is facing at the side of a madman.

Eager to dominate anything that he does not understand, the Crown Prince invites Eisenheim to put on a private show for him and his close friends at his chateau, where he plans to dissect his magic tricks and put an end to the rumors that he possesses supernatural powers.  Embarrassing the prince in front of his company, Leopold shuts down Eisenheim’s magic act.  The Chief Inspector becomes friendly with Eisenheim, but because Leopold has a death wish for him, Uhl does his dirty work like the mistreated lapdog that he is.  Sophie is sympathetic and visits Eisenheim, at which point they consummate their love and arrange to elope.  The Crown Prince learns of these plans through the Chief Inspector who had his men follow the duchess, and murders her in a drunken rage at her towering palace.  Her dead body is slung over the back of one of her horses, the horse galloping off in fright.  Eisenheim plunges into despair when a search party finds her dead body floating in a river, and the citizens begin to suspect their Crown Prince, a man who is untouchable and above the law, of the cold-blooded slaughter.

Wracked with grief, Eisenheim buys a rundown theater with the money he’s put together from his shows and prepares a new kind of act, hiring Asian stagehands and making use of mysterious equipment.  Practicing the dark art of necromancy, he begins summoning spirits into the theater, allowing the audience to communicate with them.  Within a day or two, Leopold has Uhl gathering the greatest minds to try to crack Eisenheim’s secret.  The accepted theory involves a primitive looking video projector and smoke, creating a noisy, albeit ghostly illusion.  His health deteriorating, Eisenheim conjures the spirit of Sophie.  The Crown Prince had come to this show in disguise as a commoner.  This apparition stirs the audience, spurring on their accusations against Leopold.  Uhl had Eisenheim escorted away and demanded that he stop inciting such unrest.  He threatens to arrest him for fraud if he continues his charade.  Because of the Chief Inspector’s friendship with Eisenheim, Uhl wants him to promise that he will discontinue his act.  All Eisenheim can promise is that he will enjoy his next show.

“The Illusionist” is living in the shadow of “The Prestige,” which is quite unfortunate.  This Sundance Film Festival winner that was originally given a limited release lacks that gung ho electricity that the upcoming Christopher Nolan film seems to muzzle.  While this seems true enough, “The Illusionist” still manages incredible visuals and top-notch performances by Giamatti and Norton.  The plot is well paced and gives way to a mind-bending twist that really makes the film.  This movie may or may not pale in comparison to “The Prestige,” but my advice is to go see it.  Sure Neil Burger took few chances with his film, sure his script needs some reworking, but the fact of the matter is that he did a more than decent job with an incredible story.  This movie’s got a lot of heart and the magic realism fashions an odd world for an odd cast of personalities to frolic in.  I went in with mediocre expectations and had more fun than I imagined, laughing and shrieking and gasping at all the right parts.  “The Illusionist” is a suspense thriller wrapped in a romance wrapped in a drama.  There was a well-executed immersion into the time period and you cannot tear your eyes from the screen.  This is the first time that the “what you see is what you get” style is more effective than not. 

The DVD from FOX offers a feature-length commentary track with director Neil Burger, a short featurette, and the film's theatrical trailer.