The Illusionist

When it came out, The Illusionist was overshadowed by Christopher Nolan's The Prestige because both were about magicians but the two movies couldn't be further from each other in terms of content. The Illusionist is a romance with a great twist. The story starts with the arrest of Eisenheim (Edward Norton) and goes back in time to tell the story up and through the beginning scene. I loved the story as it played with my expectations. You knew that Eisenheim would be reunited with his lost love but the story seemed to prevent the happy union when Sophia (Jessical Biel) died, only to finally unveil the fact that Sophia and Eisenheim had faked her death in order to be together.
The cast was phenomenal because they all really became their roles and it was hard to see them as themselves. The all took on slight Austrian accents that masked their true voice just enough that you wouldn't be able to recognize them from their voice. Rufus Sewell perhaps looked too much like Jude Law in this film that I often got distracted. He does play a good bad guy though, Rufus Sewell that is. I'm not a huge fan of Jessica Biel but I didn't recognize her in this film which made it fun to watch not that she had a major part anyways. The girl who played the younger version of herself was amazing in the fact that you could see her growing up into Biel, not so much for the young guy they had playing Norton's character. Which brings me to Edward Norton who was amazing. It might be one of my favorite roles of his, although there hasn't been one which I didn't like. I wouldn't think that Norton would be cast as the leading man, he doesn't have that look but for this film it really works. He didn't do much with his body in terms of conveying emotion but it was all done with his facial expression and especially his eyes. When he's bringing Sophia "back from the dead" the emotion in his eyes is just gut wrenching. And to top it off his line of why he did it, "just to be with her." Oh, how my heart flutters, helped along by the fact that you don't think Sophia has survived. Paul Giamatti had the role of a lifetime. It was his best role I've seen and so far removed from what he has done previously. He takes very well to the Austrian-Hungary look and looks completely different. I think he has the most dramatic transformation in look and voice. He still has his eyes which are great to watch and tell you so much but they work with his character instead of standing out apart from his character.
The film was perhaps a bit slow but I enjoyed it and it seemed very European, probably another reason why The Prestige won out. There wasn't much action to the story which could make it seem dry to others but there was plenty of emotion through the characters, well mainly Norton for gut wrenching and Sewell for anger. The most memorable scene for me was when Norton kisses Biel for the first time after they met. This is the first scene with a lot of raw emotion that picks the film up. You can feel Norton's passion through the screen.

Every part of the film works together to brings us this masterpiece. What I took particular note of was the cinematography and the mise-en-scene. The film is shot is almost a quirky way using a lot of irises at the beginning but it works I think because of the tone of the film and the fact that it is set in the past allowing for that time of editing to work. The first half of the film uses the irises and keeps the iris faded at the edge of the screen to make it easier to see it in use of editing. The iris is not abruptly used which is another reason why it works well and doesn't disrupt contentnioity. Eisenheim begin the film with a grandeous set, very over the top with an announcer and butterflies. But by the end of the film the irises have left and Eisenheim is left with a chair on the stage and nothing else. The most beautiful shot in the entire film is when the camera is behind the curtains as they open to see a chair on the stage as Eisenheim walks in. The shot is breathtaking. The film becomes very minimalist but in a subtle way that don't necessarily realize until the very end when the more fantasy element though the use of the irises returns as Giamatti and the audience realizes that they got away.
When we return to where we entered the story everything starts to fall into place but you never think from watching the film up till this point that it would proceed in this manner. The illusion now is that Eisenheim has made himself the illusion. Made himself and Sophia disappear. When it comes to fruition that Eisenheim is not really there, what a great twist, and everything builds on that. In the hunt to find Eisenheim, the chief inspector stumbles upon the clues to lead him to the crowned prince and arrest him for murder. The sad thing about the story which you don't really think about until later is that in order to have their happy ending, the crowned prince kills himself even though he was right all along. Eisenheim did manipulate the inspector and left him clues to lead him to the wrong man. From the beginning the crowned prince was set out as a bad man so the film justifies it in that way.
The one problem I had with the film was the very ending where we find out what really happened, how Sophia's death was faked but I'm not sure there were enough clues or the clues were too subtle to pick up on that this ending seems plausible. The same problems exist for heist films. You want the audience to be surprised but still follow along after having been tricked. Although I though when Sophia had first died that maybe they had just faked her death but my hopes were dashed as I saw no way for that to happen. Esienheim/Norton gave no hint about what had happened. The scene where he finds her body in the lake was another great emotional scene but seemed like real pain making it seem as if she had really died. Plus he was so adamant that the crowned prince had killed her.
This problem area can be overlooked by the love story which is sweet, minus the necessary suicide, by uniting two lovers from different sides of the tracks.