RED ENVELOPES: Oh, Ho, Ho, It's Magic

Every once in a while, the movie business has itself a great idea. Even more infrequently, they have the same idea twice. As a result, we get Capote AND Infamous. We get Mission to Mars AND Red Planet. We get Lambada AND The Forbidden Dance.

As you can see, it doesn't usually work out.

It happened again last fall, when we were treated to a double dose of stories about magicians set over a hundred years ago. The Illusionist and The Prestige battled it out for box office dollars, and what usually happens in these cases is that moviegoers decide to make a choice. They're not going to see the same movie twice. So they pick. That's what happened here. The Illusionist had the advantage of hitting theaters first, but The Prestige responded with the marquee matchup of Batman vs. Wolverine.

Here in the Wilson household, we naturally opted for neither. That's what Netflix is for. All hail the homemade double feature.


Truth be told, take away the magic element and the similar settings and these two movies aren't similar at all. The Prestige, for example, is purely a battle of wills. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are magicians who become deadly rivals because they are willing to throw love and decency aside in pursuit of the ultimate illusion. Not only that, but they go after each other with increasing venom, and as the film opens, one of them is in prison, accused of murdering the other.

You can tell how much the stars are enjoying themselves. Jackman gets to play nasty without just snarling for the whole movie. Bale gets to be a star without a mask or an accent. Michael Caine continues to reap the benefits of not taking every part he gets offered. And Scarlett Johanssen didn't even bore me.

I liked this movie, and I think the reason for that was that it didn't really feel like any movie I'd ever seen. The combination of setting and subject evoked a rich novel. It's based on a novel, so that may not seem surprising. But how often do movies get that right? It's hardly a perfect movie (my Whirled News colleague Matt points out that the numerous double-crosses are overly predictable, and the two magicians' disguises are laughable in a bad way), but it just felt kind of refreshing.

The Illusionist felt a little more traditional. Edward Norton is our title character, an unusually gifted magician who uses his skills first to win the love of his childhood sweetheart, and then to seek revenge against the crown prince who stands in the way of that romance. Shot in and around Prague, it's a prettier film. And because it's one man against powerful antagonists, the effect is sort of like a caper. A caper with magic.

Like The Prestige, this film benefits from a good cast that's playing way above its usual skill level. Edward Norton is... well, he's Edward Norton. But just watch the 10-second snippet of him in the behind-the-scenes featurette and you'll see what a complete transformation (from total dweeb to imposing man of mystery) he undertook. Paul Giamatti, for the first time that I can recall, took away the nervous tics and the nasal whine and was absolutely mesmerizing. I would like to formally request that he speak with a deep voice for the rest of his career. And round out the cast was, of all people, Jessica Biel. Turns out the girl can act, and good for her. That's always a pleasant surprise, and maybe means she won't have to make movies like Stealth anymore.

I should also take a moment to comment on the score, which is interesting but strangely overpowering at times, and I made several jokes to my wife about how the composer was ripping off Philip Glass. Of course, I went back and looked at the credits and saw that the composer was Philip Glass. Two lessons I take from this: (1) Evidently, I like Philip Glass more than I thought, although a little goes a long way, and (2) no one sounds like Philip Glass quite like Philip Glass.

Ultimately, there is one very important reason these movies are different from each other, and it has to do with what they have in common. These are each movies about magicians, and they each ask a very crucial question: "How does he do that?" But where The Illusionist wants you to believe that the answer is mystical, The Prestige is firmly rooted in the notion that everything you see can be adequately explained. Even if the solutions to Bale & Jackman's tricks is more outlandish, more outrageous, they remain rooted in the film's inner logic, unlike the tricks of Norton, which are never fully explained. The Illusionist ends in a montage that shamelessly rips off The Usual Suspects, and suggests that there are logical explanations for everything you've seen (although director Neil Burger's boneheaded commentary nearly torpedoes that, as well), but there's too much that is never accounted for. In the end, that's why I think The Prestige is a better film. It's premise is almost ludicrous, and certainly science fiction. But it plays fair. The Illusionist wants to have it both ways. It cheats.

Still, I'm glad I saw them both, and I'd say they were each among the better films of 2006 that I saw. And if all the magician movies were good, I wouldn't mind the glut. Heck, if it were good, I'd even sit through a lambada movie. Moviegoes: we're just that easy.