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Edward Norton as Eisenheim |
And now for some real cinema magic
THE ILLUSIONIST
Directed by Neil Burger
Certificate PG
NOW you see it, now you don’t. The ‘it’ being a spectral figure of the recently departed materialising on a bare stage with only the magician himself conjuring the ghostly vision out of thin air. A woman screams as she recognises her son. The awe-struck audience is stunned into silence.
This is Eisenheim (Ed Norton), the great illusionist in Vienna at the turn of the 19th century, enthralling crowds with his apparent power to raise the dead.
Head bowed, he sits alone on a wooden chair, no props visible, just a snap of the fingers – and presto! Behold an apparition that speaks and even answers questions from disbelieving relatives. Charlatan or master magician? How does he do it?
Writer-director Neil Burger takes us on a mesmerising journey into a world of deception, duplicity and double-dealing, where nothing is quite what it seems and every step is an adventure into the unknown.
Crown Prince Leopold (elegantly played by Rufus Sewell) is not amused when his bride-to-be (Jessica Biel) is brought up on stage to become the butt of another trick where she sees herself apparently being decapitated in a mirror. He is even less happy when he finds the pair were childhood sweethearts, and his jealousy turns the confrontation into a personal feud.
He orders his police chief (Paul Giamatti) to discredit the magician, using every underhand trick in the book to expose him.
Norton, sporting a goatee beard and a saturnine air, excels in the title role, proving no mean conjuror himself when he rolls a rubber ball or a card between his fingers.
Don’t miss out on this one. It’s sheer magic.
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