The Illusionist
cosette_valjean and I saw "The Illusionist" on Sunday. I enjoyed that movie. It was about the question of whether a 19th-century stage magician could truly perform supernatural magic. His childhood sweetheart was a Baroness and the fiance of the Crown Prince for political reasons. They knew he would hunt them down and kill them if they tried to run away together; they could never be safe. When they tried to escape anyway, the Crown Prince murdered her. That began a murder mystery about the supernatural. Or... is it all a con-man trick story? Director and co-screenwriter Neil Burger worked very hard to keep both theories plausible, and the audience couldn't be sure until the very end. The tension was kept alive by the fact that I knew he could satisfyingly resolve the plot either way. From one point of view, a love that can be conjured from beyond the grave is a more emotionally powerful story. But the trick version of events is a smarter story. I believe those two facts, and the characters' awareness of them, were what the movie was ultimately about. These are two different things that audiences go to movies to see, and this technique permitted us to enjoy both of them.