Review

Review Date: 29-August-06
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

The Illusionist (2006)

So what are the chances of an amateur critic seeing two new movies in which diverse characters decide their next move by studying a person's knuckles? Bizarre things happen every day, I guess (like this, which happened last weekend), and "The Illusionist" would have us believe that they sometimes occur by design. In the case of Neil Burger's new film, the design is both elegant and satisfying.

Burger spun his screenplay from a short story by Steven Millhauser titled "Eisenheim the Illusionist." In it, a mysterious cabinetmaker (here played by Edward Norton) becomes the talk of Vienna by presenting a series of mesmerizing magic shows around the turn of the 20th century. The story speaks to the passage from the enchanted old world to the scientific new one and portrays its hero as an intense, impenetrable instrument of mystery. The movie is a fairy tale more than a meditative fantasy. Norton's Eisenheim isn't especially rooted to his epoch and is an enigma to everyone except his childhood sweetheart, Countess Sophie (Jessica Biel), and a pragmatic police inspector named Uhl (Paul Giamatti). These two come to see him for what he really is, not the distant character of Millhauser's story but a man willing to use his craft to obtain a happy ending.

Always keeping its title in mind, the film weaves a clever but comprehensible tale out of Eisenheim's art and a love triangle involving himself, Sophie, and the corrupt prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), from whom Inspector Uhl takes his cues. (The four main actors are all fine, with Biel transitioning from eye candy to actress with aplomb.) By adding the romantic angle, Burger allows the outcome to pack an anticipated punch. The movie grows increasingly bewitching as the drama builds and the audience, like the inspector, tries to predict what Eisenheim will do next. What he does is pull off his greatest feat ever, so that "The Illusionist" offers something worth seeing.

Copyright © 2006 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.