Poor boy meets rich girl. Poor boy falls in love with rich girl. A *cruel world* conspires to keep them away. Bet you saw that coming, didnt you ? Parineeta, Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, a whole truckload of Bollywood movies, anyone ? Hey, I’ve been out of the Bollywood loop for some time here ... and those are the *good* ones. Admittedly, most of the fun in watching movies with this hackneyed theme is to watch the pair get together after countless efforts to keep them apart. Be warned, the **’Illusionist’** fails even in this regard.
*Plot*
Eisenheim (Edward Norton) and Countess Sophie (Jessica Biel) play the two hapless lovers who are separated in their youth. Eisenheim travels the world over, honing his skill as a magician until he takes Viennese society by storm performing illusions on stage that border on the supernatural. Meanwhile Sophie has become engaged to Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), a political manipulator and amateur magician who tries to carry out an expose on Eisenheim’s magic act, which results in Leopold being made a laughing stock in front of a large audience.
Alongside, the Chief Inspector of Police, Uhl (Paul Giamatti), a corrupt man all to ready to overlook criminal acts under the imperial throne’s name for the sake of ambition, has spied Sophie meeting illicitly with Eisenheim. Leopold’s jealously and rage at first being ousted and then jilted by the pair lead to some terrible repercussions, and the rest of the story follows Eisenheim using his magic in his single-minded quest for revenge.
*Random (G)rumblings*
While I’ve focussed upon the love story wrt this movie, it really occupies only a short period of time with the rest of the plot moving forward as a result of the romance. I’m finding it really hard to classify this one, since the love story is given so little time and the rest of the movie doesnt have much of a plot, screenplay or even interesting characters to give it impetus. Yes, the movie is called the ’Illusionist’ but much of what we see are camera illusions with no explanations as to how Eisenheim actually performs the magic and so I’m going to discount this angle entirely for the cheap trick it is.
Coming to the cast and characters, Paul Giamatti acts like he’s sleepwalked off the sets of any one of his recent movies. Edward Norton, while an accomplished actor and generally fun to watch, doesnt pull off brooding, intense and mysterious very well here. This almost guarantees that we’re not convinced any time his Eisenheim takes center stage - be it as a master illusionist, the clever manipulator or the intense/ grieving lover. Jessica Biel has a limited screen time (and not much screen presence), and their story has a decided lack of tension to it, they come together way too early in the movie so any empathy that might have built up with the audience is never given a chance to develop.
Additionally, most of the character development is done off-screen and seems extremely cliched, so we are told that the crown prince is abusive, and we are told that the chief of police is corrupt but we never see this happen and for the first time ever, I actually came out of the story feeling sorry for and indignant on behalf of the (supposed) villains. Do Leoplod and Uhl deserve what they ultimately get, all for the whim of two people who want to be together? Does the premise ’the whole world loves a lover’ mean we have to accept criminal acts just because two people are in love ? Scary thought!!
There were many reasons for me to enjoy this movie. First of all, I’m probably *the* target audience for this kind of a movie being predisposed to like any and every period flick (oh, except P&P which I last reviewed here :). Added to this we have a cast of Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti and I didnt think it was possible to go wrong with this one. However, go wrong it does. And ultimately, the end-result is a tepid, lack-lustre adaptation of a short story which need not have received as much screen time as it finally gets.