Saturday, January 11, 2014

The Illusionist - Movie Review

Young man (Edward Norton) becomes master magician and returns to Vienna, a place where he had loved a girl of high birth when he was young. Now, as a famous magician, Eisenheim, he draws large crowds and one day even the crown prince comes to see his show with his fiancée. While performing a trick, Eisenheim realizes that the fiancée was his old love (Jessica Biel) though she does not recognize him. The crown prince invites Eisenheim to the palace where the magician does something stupid to upset the prince. Meanwhile the Duchess (the prince's fiancée) has renewed her liaison with the magician which comes to the notice of the police chief and the crown prince.

It appears then that the short tempered prince murders his fiancée and the matter is hushed up. The magic show is banned. Eisenheim now starts another show where spirits are brought forth and in one such show the spirit of the Duchess appears claiming that her murderer was alive. The police inspector now believing that the prince murdered his fiancée based on certain evidence informs his father, the Emperor, but before he is apprehended the prince shoots himself to death. At the very end the police inspector gets a folio of one of the magician's tricks from a little boy, one of the spirits on Eisenheim's show, and the inspector guesses that he has been made a fool of. Eisenheim and his lady love have probably pulled off the biggest illusion after all.

Was okay. Too many holes for me. Apparently based on the Meyerling incident in Austria where the crown prince was found dead with his young lover, a seventeen year old girl.

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