The illusionist

I saw this last night on DvD.

Set in Germany or Austria, can't be arsed to look it up, let's call it Ausmany, it's about a carpenter's son (Aaron Johnson) and amateur magician who falls for a local barroness or somesuch (Elanour Thomlinson) and impresses her by pulling balls magically out of her whotsit, or something.

He's judged (and rightly so) to be not nearly good enough for such high class crumpet by the local fuzz and leaves town at the beginning of the film. End of prologue.

Now the film starts....

Returning as an adult, our male lead is now Ed Norton and our bit of stuff has grown up into that lovely Scarlet Johanssen lookalike Jessica Beil. Jess is, by now, shacked up with Rufus Sewell (who?) playing teh crown prince of Ausmany, who does a good impression of being a Jude Law stand in and general all round arrogant royal Danny Baker type.

Illusion based shennanigans ensue

OK. I've failed to mention the most important person in this film, but I'll come to him in a minute, however I need to set something straight first.

Jessica Beil is a bit of alright and her "young version" is aswell. Most importantly, one is believably the younger version of the other. Noe the young version is currently in production of a movie titled "Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging" which I shall be pre-ordering on DvD, but only for the thongs.

Ed and Aaron, OTOH are a different kettle of fish entirely. If one was, in fact, a fish the other would be a dog or a horse or something else with LEGS BUT NOT FINS. They look about as alike as when those characters used to leave neighbours to "go to uni" and returned 6 months later looking so different that the only thing they had in common with their previous selves was that they were the same sex (probably) which always left me wondering why all the other residents of the lane didn't stand up, point and scream "STRANGER" as soon as the resident shape-shifter walked in the room

I digress....

The prize in this movie is not, in fact, Ed Norton. As great an actor as his Edness is, you're really not getting value for nortonage out of this one. Further, the chance at good full-on frontal Jessica Beilage was sadly wasted (although I did manage to crack one out anyway). No, the prize in this film is Paul Giamatti. This dude is god, a humiliatingly unglamorous, possibly even ugly man (at least by Hollywood perfection standards) Paul Giamatti is one of my favorite actors on screen today. we really don't see enough of this guy. For a real view on what he's capable of, watch American Splendour (probably spelt differently by our Western cousins). He is superb in this film as the police chief, beholden to the Crown prince but from background similar to our hero's and so somewhat sympathetic to his plight.

****small spoiler****
For me, the thrust of this movie is that it is a love story and mystery told through the eyes of the Police chief charged with following our Jess about the place (for her "security") and later investigating Ed Norton when a connection between the two becomes apparant.
****end of small spoiler****

Thus, the "main characters", Ed and Jess, are infact secondary to the story teller ... or they should be. I would have preferred to see much more focus on the deliberations of the police chief (Paul Giamatti). The movie splits personalities between telling the story from Ed's perspective and from Paul's. This gets confusing, as the crux of the issue is the use of illusion and more to the point, the suspicion that it is more than illusion, in the prosecution of the plot so we can't be given too close a view on Ed's machinations or we'd work out what was going on. The difficulty, I suspect, is that Ed is just too big a star to "ignore" in favor of Paul Giamatti. My solution is simple. Don't fucking cast Ed bastid Norton in a role you really don't want a very strong actor in. The movie poster tells all. Ed is front and centre, Paul Giamatti is back left.

Slight schitzophrenia aside, the movie does manage to suspend disbelief and plays with the audience's (and the characters') willingness to believe in magic rather well. Paul Giamatti deserves more respect though.

for more illusion based shennanigans and a superb turn by another 2 faves of mine, Christian Bale and Micheal Caine, try The Prestige