*** (out of ****)
Starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, and Rufus Sewell.
Directed & written by Neil Burger, from the short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” by Steven Millhauser
2006
110 min PG13
One of those surprising late-summer gems, simply constructed and gorgeously produced. In 1900s Vienna, the crown prince (Rufus Sewell) and his chief inspector (Paul Giamatti of “Sideways”) become obsessed with a magician (Edward Norton) who is brilliant, enigmatic, and subversive. It doesn’t help that the prince’s fiancée (Jessica Biel) was the magician’s childhood sweetheart.
The photography is amazing: although “The Illusionist” is in color, everything has an orange-brown-sepia tint to it, like an old movie. There are irises aplenty and the corners of the frame fade, unfocused and smeared, into blackness. The otherwise uninspired childhood flashback sequence is best of all—it’s the most sepia, and it flickers!
All this matters because the movie is a parable for the early days of cinema. It can’t be an accident that Norton’s magician is named Eisenheim (awfully close to Eisenstein) and that so many of his illusions are the same as early camera tricks. He “controls time” (fast- and slow-motion) and makes “the dead come to life” (no art form besides the movies does that so well). His mirror trick recalls the phony mirror gag used by the Marx Brothers in “Duck Soup” and butterflies appear out of thin air, not through special effects, but by masking their appearance with a camera movement. Like Eisenstein, Eisenheim is interested in performance as a vehicle for political upheaval and democratization. Like artists everywhere, he seeks shelter from the authorities by claiming that everything he does is a lie, solely for entertainment. (But as Giamatti’s inspector intones, “there might be truth in this lie.”)
Director Burger does well with the stage sequences, making them hushed and hypnotic and letting them speak for themselves. The acting is strong all around, with Norton being more delicate and effeminate than most movie heroes, and Sewell giving energy to a stock role. But the stand-out is Giamatti; if his Oscar mugging in “Cinderella Man” was too much for you, you’ll delight over how wonderful he is at doing almost nothing in “The Illusionist.” As a commoner trapped among the nobility, he expresses with nothing besides his eyes.
** (out of ****)
Starring Paul Giamatti, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jeffrey Wright, Cindy Cheung, Jared Harris, and Bob Balaban.
Directed by M. Night Shymalan
2006
110 min PG13
I like what this movie wants to be and I like M. Night Shymalan (“Signs,” “The Sixth Sense”) more for having made it. Like “Signs” and “Unbreakable,” it continues to fit into his “everyone has a purpose” philosophy. But “Lady in the Water” doesn’t really work, except the last act, when it turns into a monster movie in which a grassy dog monster stalks people about the apartment complex. Shymalan is a born filmmaker and every individual scene works well—he knows how to pace and position figures so that everything is simultaneously ominous and nervously funny—but these scenes don’t build to anything. The result is like a sketchbook of pictures that don’t add up, or a series of passages written by a great author from a notebook of unrelated ideas.
Thin-skinned boo-hoo critics have been cry-babies about Shymalan’s negative portrayal of a film critic (the great Bob Balaban) and about how Shymalan himself plays an aspiring writer destined for greatness. This isn’t so much egotism as honesty, an open admission that every writer would like to change the world somehow.
Anyway, the movie is about a magical muse (Bryce Dallas Howard of “The Village”) that plops into the swimming pool at an apartment complex run by Paul Giamatti. As Giamatti roams around the complex trying to find whoever the muse is looking for before the grass dog gets her, the movie turns into a very unsubtle meditation on the purpose and uses of fiction. As actors, Giamatti and Balaban have reached a level of near-infallibility, and they are joined by the great Jeffrey Wright (“Syriana,” “Broken Flowers”) as a crossword enthusiast and Jared Harris (“Smoke”) as the leader of a group of stoner beatniks. But in the end we wish Shymalan would try something new, maybe steer clear of the supernatural and so much expository dialogue.
Finished Wednesday, September 6th, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Friday & Saturday Night
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