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When I was growing up, there was a movie theater in
downtown Washington D.C. called the Pix (no match for the Capitol, the
Palace, the Columbia, the Warner), and I noted once that it was showing
“Burlesque in Harlem.” I would ask my mother what burlesque was. Later
films there would have titles like “Um Boy.”
So we have burlesque here encapsulated in bigger
issues, one of them presented by the widow heroine Mrs. Henderson, whose
son died in World War I with a “French postcard” but never got to see a
nude member of the opposite sex. A deprivation for a heterosexual. So,
when her husband’s death (in 1937) leaves her with the ability to do
anything she wants (like “give to charity” and “shop”) she buys a London
stage and sets up shop as the Windmill Theater, which offers Variety,
and that includes nudity. You see it all, with verbal comments
(unshaved), and at one point the men have to undress, when Mrs.
Henderson tells Mr. Van Damm, “I see that you are Jewish!” (Is that
because he is hairy, or because he is circumcised?) The movie is filled
with adult jokes like this, the kind that wind up on email chain
letters, and they are funny.
It gets dead serious, though, during the Blitz and
the Battle of Britain in 1940. Since the Windmill is largely
underground, they can keep the show going, it is by and large a
physically safe refuge from the bombs. (The movie shows some pretty
effective black and white news footage of Hitler’s invasion, to contrast
with the garish colors of the stage sets. Aquamarine blue is especially
prevalent.) But finally it takes a direct hit, and the British
government tries to close the establishment. This gets a bit heavy,
about the sacrifices that civilians have to make – there have already
been scenes of the blackouts. But the show goes on and the place never
closes.
The
Illusionist (2006, Yari Film Group/Bob Yari, dir. Neil
Burger, story Steven Millhauser "Eisenheim the Illusionist," PG-13,
Czech/UK, 110 min). Why does this fantasy with big stars have a new
entrepreneurial distributor, when something like the Fox Searchlight
sounds right? Well, if you want to make a movie, you don't need the
studios any more. You can go to the hedge funds, or overseas, To places
like Spain or, her, the Czech Republic. That is, if you have clout. That
is what Tom Cruise intends to do, and he'll probably make his own films
on this level at least. (He doesn't need Paramount now.) The film, with
plenty of ambitious big stars with a moral message, cost about $16 M,
which is not pocket change for a college student. And it translates a
philosophy lesson into an entertaining period piece, Vienna around 1900,
but actually filmed in the Czech Republic apparently with local money.
The "three act screenplay structure" here is mostly within one long
flashback told by inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti), and the film
creates the mood of a Shyamalan film (I would expect that director to go
this route next). The flashback itself birfurcates, as we first
see the young magician as a teen (Aaron Johnson), meeting an old man on
a trail, getting powers, and then trying to save his beloved. The adult
relationship between a thirtyish Eisenheim (Ed Norton) and Sophie
(Jessica Biel) is the centerpiece, with one very passionate scene,
around which Eisenheim drapes his theatrical career of magic shows.
Now, he has all kinds of tricks -- growing orange
trees and the like, but the best seems to be resurrecting people from
the dead as holograms. The story intentionally lets us decide if his
apparitions are "real." (At one place, Uhl demonstrates a kaledioscopic
like device that might have produced them.) The police are after him
because he is stirring things up, actually threatening the
Austria-Hungarian monarchy. Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell) is also after
Sophie, and may have killed her when she refuses him. Then, OK, no
problem, Eisenheim can resurrect her from the dead. Not only does this
become Hitchcockian, it is still political. Eisenheim is perturbing the
status quo with images and shows whose meaning is in the eye of the
beholder, and that is the problem. Truth is not objective. Eisenheim
draws great attention to himself, to the consternation of the monarchy;
his act is something like 1900's anticipation of an Internet con search
engines a century later. He even tells a crowd gathered at the police
station that his act is an illusion. Bue even Eisenheim doesn't know
what the truth is, because there isn't any.
I've even had a situation like this concerning one
of my own online scripts, when found by an employer. What did it say
about me? I don't know. It's what you want to believe. That is the
problem.
The Prestige (2006, Touchstone/Warner
Bros./Newmarket, dir. Christopher Nolan, novel by Christopher Priest,
USA/UK, 128 min, PG-13). First, note the unusual distribution setup. The
theatrical prints show Disney's Buena Vista as the official distributor,
but Newmarket is usually a distributor of small indie films, including
auteur Nolan's own "Memento". The film required $40 million and two major
studios, even though it is aimed to be perceived as an "art" film, a
combo of murder mystery, sci-fi and period. This may portend a trend,
where directors and actors get together and arrange their own funding,
and hit the festivals with the advantages of enormous resources. Michael Caine, playing
Cutter, explains the setup well. "There are three parts to any magic
trick. The first part is The Pledge. The second part is The Turn. But
you have to bring the object back. The third part is called The
Prestige." Now The Prestige pretty much forms the paradigm for the whole
movie plot about two magicians rivaling each other in 1899 London.
Christian Bale plays Alfred Borden, who is to hang for the murder of his
rival Rupert Angier, played by Hugh Jackman. Scarlet Johansson plays
Olivia Wenscombe, who plays one rival against another, offering "trade
secrets" and then reversing course. David Bowie is scientist Nikolas
Tesla, whom both magicians contact in Colorado for competitive
advantage. Tesla, portrayed as the inventor of alternating current, has
a "box" that can make an object disappear and be teleported instantly,
and sometimes seems to duplicate objects, including hats, cats and
people. Toward the end, the mystery takes on a David Lynch quality, with
duplicate bodies and swapping identities, stuff that almost anticipates
ideas in books by Arthur C. Clarke or perhaps Clive Barker. Nolan seems
to present the incidents in the very intricate plot out of sequence, a
favorite technique of his. The portrayal of the "technology" of magic is
more detailed here than in "The Illusionist" and Nolan's work here makes
me wonder if he could take on Clive Barker's monumental 1991 novel "Imajica."
The script does point at
some social values. Borden, while in jail, is told that his baby
daughter may not have much of a life because of his crimes, and Rupert
writes that he won't embarrass his own family with excessive publicity
about his stunts. But Cutter explains that an explanation ruins a magic
trick. It is the performance -- of the Prestige -- that matters, nothing
else. Appearances mean everything, truth means nothing. Yet, the film,
for all its out-of-sequence plotting, maintains its suspense by prepping
up for an extra-physical "explanation" from Tesla.
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