Friday, October 13, 2006

Review: The Illusionist

Saw The Illusionist last night. Very disappointing. It was well-acted, well-shot, and created a nice mood, but the story was... well, let me illustrate.

I don't know if I should post a spoiler warning or not for this. What I'm about to do is give you a brief summary of the first half of the movie. Without describing the ending, I bet that after learning what happens in the first half, you -- like me last night -- will be able to accurately describe exactly what happens in the last. So, with that in mind:

Spoiler Warning (I guess.)

It's the story of two star-crossed lovers. The poor son of a carpenter (Edward Norton), and the rich daughter of aristocracy (Jessica Biel). Her family vows to keep them apart, so he leaves to go study the art of illusion. Years later, he's a famoust illusionist and he brings his show to Vienna where the girl is now engaged to be married to the violent, bullying Crown Prince of Austria (Rufus Sewell). They meet and fall in love all over again, but the illusionist soon gets on the Prince's bad side when he insults the Prince during a performance. The Prince has the illusionist investigated by Vienna's Chief Inspector (Paul Giamatti, in -- credit where it's due -- one of the best performances I've seen him give).

How will the lovers get together when the Prince is keeping such a close eye on them? Especially when it becomes clear that the Prince needs the girl as part of his plan to overthrow his father and usurp the kingdom? He'll never let her go!

And then, just when things can't get any worse, the girl tells the Prince that she's leaving him, and in a drunken stupor he follows her out of the palace and off camera; the ceremonial sword he always carries slung at his side. A scream! Eeeeeeee! Then a horse comes back on camera with the girl lying limp on it's back. Off the horse goes into the night.

Remembering the title of this movie and the occupation of it's main character, tell me what happened.

It wouldn't be so bad if the movie acknowledged that the audience was in on the joke, but it doesn't. It plays exactly as if it thinks it's fooled us, even up to the part at the end where -- Usual Suspects style -- Giamatti's eyes light up as he figures out what we've known for the last hour and the montage of all the key scenes and dialogue reveals the clues that we were supposed to have not caught on to.

If only the film-makers had been as clever in their misdirection as the illusionist was supposed to be.

Having the murder take place off-camera? Really?

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