Drop Frame

A Lady May Vanish, but a Man Like Uhl Disappears:

The Illusionist (Neil Burger, 2006)

25 September 2006

Eisenheim comes to Vienna, makes orange trees grow, butterflies carry handkerchiefs, and mirror reflections disappear. He bumps into an old flame. He threatens to subvert the Austrian empire. He is arrested more than once, only to return for more. You wonder how he has time to keep his beard so neatly trimmed. But trimmed Eisenheim is, and so too Neil Burger’s movie telling his story, “The Illusionist.” Passed over by every major studio after its debut at Sundance and released in a cloud of words over who should retain producing credits (producer Bob Yari apparently steamed over the Oscar he was not allowed to share with partner Cathy Schulman for last year’s “Crash”), “The Illusionist” is surprising and entertaining faire. For one reason, Burger and company fully understand the touchy metaphor they approach with their subject matter, that film and magic are intertwined no matter how cynical or technologically savvy a viewer becomes. Like a magician rolling up his sleeves, “The Illusionist” openly respects its audience’s intelligence, and thus delves into the mysterious and fantastic without stretching for visual contrivance. This does not mean that the film is visually underwhelming. Burger, directing only his second film, benefits from the work of experienced and greatly underappreciated craftsmen: editor Naomi Geraghty, costume designer Ngila Dickson, cinematographer/Mike Leigh collaborator Dick Pope, and legendary composer Philip Glass. The imagery and sound of the film – in period, grainy, and tinged in yellows like a crisp Autumn day – simply does not boast; it is enough to make you believe. And equally impressive in their understatement are Ed Norton as Eisenheim and Paul Giamatti as the somewhat starry-eyed Chief Inspector Uhl. Moving us miles through a single glance, Norton brings alluring coldness to his heroic figure. Giamatti is simply the most pleasing actor to watch onscreen.

Burger’s script ultimately lets these controlled performances down, “ultimately” in the sense that what is wrong with the film was wrong from its beginning. Adapted from a Steven Millhauser short story and adopting the literary example of Mary Shelley, Melville, and Fitzgerald – to have an innocent bystander (Uhl, in this case) relay to even greater innocents (the audience) the astonishing feats and depths of a man about whom we should all be in awe - Uhl should control the story. He is, after all, there. We see only what he sees, and the story advances through his narration. But Uhl is no Nick Carraway. In fact, Uhl is nobody. Apart from a hobbyists’ interest in magic and working-class ties, he is painfully underdeveloped, and those minute details that bring life to the best first person narrators are absent: where he sleeps, his personal life, his motivations to admire the great man. Why does Uhl become so obsessed with Eisenheim? He is a hobbyist, but is it because Eisenheim is capable of constructing mysteries in controlled settings that he, as a professional, cannot even deduce? Or, is he, like Carraway and Ishmael, falling into an awe struck love? To put it redundantly, the story told to us in “The Illusionist” -- told to us by Uhl’s voice over and flashback -- is NOT the story Uhl would tell. It is the story Eisenheim would tell, if Eisenheim were still around to tell it. The well-crafted film suffers from this literary inconsquence. “The Illusionist” is not therefore great; for Burger’s second try, it comes marvelously close.

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The Illusionist (2006) ~ written and directed by Neil Burger, from the Steven Millhauser short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist"; produced by David Levien, Michael London, Cathy Schulman, and Bob Yari; cinematography by Dick Pope; edited by Naomi Gehraghty; original music by Philip Glass; costume design by Ngila Dickson; with Ed Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Biel ~ in theaters now.

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