Stage Beauty (2004) – Shakespearian gender confusion with a side of wit

Stage Beauty (2004) is a costume drama taking place in 1660′s London in the world of theatre where gender roles are confusing to say the least. All female roles on stage are played by men, something that has to do with various preconceived notions on the general moral decay of the world of the stage. Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is the famous, and infamous, main leading lady/man, and his most acclaimed accomplishment is his role as Desdemona in Othello. There are still women at the theatre, but they are relegated to the role of dressers and general dogsbodies, working behind the stage only. Maria (Claire Danes) is one of them. Maria dreams of the stage herself, learning everything she can from Kynaston, all the way down to his gestures and inflection.

I get the sense that a part of the aesthetic behind all this is borrowed from the Shakespeare plays that are so heavily referenced in the story. The stages and costumes and the very showiness of the setting is a bit too much to be considered realistic. The actual performances of the plays within the play are not naturalistic, but rather very formal and contrived. Something of the naturalistic comes through in the very last performance of Othello and Desdemona that Maria and Kynaston give, and it’s done well enough that the entire house is so quiet that you could hear a pin drop. All this is very interesting, in a very art as a symbol for itself and woven through itself and using itself as a metaphor kind of way.

Also, the ban of female actors gets revoked through some very physical convincing from the King’s mistress, Nell Gwynn (Zoe Tapper). The King, played with a kind of decadent whimsy by Rupert Everett, inverts the whole world of the stage by forbidding male actors to perform female roles and thusly pulls the rug out from under the feet of the notorious Kynaston. Maria gets her shot at the stage, and more importantly, at Desdemona.

Through a series of mishaps and miscalculations on Kynaston’s part, he goes from being in the highest honours on the stage, with a noble patron/lover, the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin), and royal backing since the King is fond of theatre, to living more or less as a drunkard destitute mockery of himself on the less discriminating stages that mostly entertain the lower classes.

There are many themes in this piece, everything from class issues to gender issues and meta structural components that highlight the contrast between modern and post-modern presumptions on the actual playing of a role within a role, to the more rigid ideas of particular gestures adhering to a specific emotion on the restoration stage. It is a game of masks and identities and it could presumably keep a scholar busy for a while, but even with all that intellectual stuff there to keep the mind occupied, there is still something unformed about the central core of the narrative. For me, personally, I think it has to do with the way what happens to Kynaston is presented as a comedy of errors as well as a tragedy. Billy Crudup gives this performance an arm and a leg and a cynical twist that hides a sensitive heart. Clare Danes is good enough to be able to portray an actress who is frankly not always very good, which is difficult in and of itself. If anything the subject matter can be derived at as the malleability of gender and everything that goes with that.

I would have preferred that to be played slightly less for comedic value and more with some kind of serious intent. Take Maria’s performance as Desdemona the first time she does it, for instance. She models her acting completely on Kynaston’s. She is a woman playing a man playing a woman. That is more than complicated enough for me to cringe inwardly when she gets seriously mocked on stage for doing a bad job of it. That is more than enough fodder for thought without it being played for slapstick value. So the wit is occasionally like that of Shakespeare, who had to compare with bear-baiting and decidedly less gentile amusements when he wrote his plays. Presuming he did write them, if we want to be post-modern about the whole thing. The rudeness of the comedy is somehow at odds with what the there could be at the centre of it all this.

It is still well worth watching. The costumes and settings are sumptuous and gritty at the same time, Crudrup’s performance is impressive and there’s a nucleus of doubt about the value of hereto-normative certainties and the sometimes crude wit is entertaining and occasionally cringe-worthy. All that adds up to a slightly confusing, but entertaining spectacle. And that’s good enough for me.

Stage Beauty (2004) directed by Richard Eyre stars Billy Crudup (Ned Kynaston), Clare Danes (Maria), Tom Wilkinson (Betterton), Ben Chaplin (George Villiars, Duke of Buckinham), Hugh Bonneville (Samuel Pepys), Rupert Everett (King Charles II), Richard Griffiths (Sir Charles Sedley), Zoe Tapper (Nell Gwynn), Edward Fox (Sir Edward Hyde).

Article first published as Movie Review Stage Beauty (2004) on Blogcritics.

Bright Star: Stunningly Beautiful and Suitably Poetic

Article first published as Movie Review: Bright Star Stunningly Beautiful and Suitably Poetic on Blogcritics.

The poet John Keats is one of the heavies in the second generation of the Romantic movement, along with Shelley and Byron. It probably helps that he died at the tender age of 25 from tuberculosis. Keats had modest success during his lifetime, wasn’t very popular with the critics and had trouble making a living in general. Jane Campion’s movie Bright Star (2009) takes its title from one of his poems. It focuses on the relationship between John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish) and, of course, on the poetry of Keats.

Keats meets Fanny Brawne when he’s staying with his friend Mr. Brown (Paul Schneider) who is sharing a house in the country with the Brawnes: Mrs Brawne (Kerry Fox), Toots (Edie Martin), Samuel (Thomas Sangster) and Fanny. Fanny is at first gaze a fairly shallow young lady, more interested in fashion than in poetry. She carries on a fairly antagonistic kind of flirting with Mr. Brown, but takes to John when she hears that his brother Tom (Olly Alexander) is dying in tuberculosis. The relationship develops into a romance, but one that is never really fully consummated into any kind of marriage because Keats doesn’t have the means to marry. The expectation that a young lady should never attach herself to a gentleman of no means is what causes problems here. One simply did not marry for love. And there’s a lot of social commentary there, the whole social structure so often seen in Jane Austen’s novels, brought to the fore of this otherwise perfectly gorgeous movie.

Visually this movie is stunning. Hampstead, where this movie takes place, has all the bucolic charm a romantic poet could possibly wish for and Campion has gone out of her way to make sure that the visuals complement and underscore Keats poetry. Several of his most famous poems are read in voice-over and also in the interaction between the characters and, being and old student of literature, I am very happy with the way they are read. There’s nothing camp or overly sentimental in the readings, and that’s not an easy trick to pull off. There’s an earnestness to the reading of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, for example, that shows the depth and honesty of the poet. He had death as a constant companion, and expressed it in his writing in a way that could easily become melodramatic and corny if handled badly.

All this, the stifling rules of Keats contemporary society, the unrealized love between Fanny and Keats, the death of the young poet in Italy, where he was sent to recover – it could make for very sentimental fare indeed if it had been handled badly and if the actors had not been chosen wisely. Ben Whishaw gives meat to the characterization of John Keats. He is by turns funny, a dreamer and weighed down by his constant mortality salience. Abbie Cornish gives her portrayal of Fanny an arm and a leg, makes her flesh and bone and shows that she is not just a social butterfly who likes to dance and flirt and preen and pose. She has depth and heart, which is necessary for the viewer to understand why she becomes so fascinated with Keats and with his poetry. Jane Campion treats the story with tenderness and the unavoidable tragedy of the young poets death is handled with decorum. We are spared the deathbed scene and instead we are shown how Fanny receives the news of Keats death and how her heart breaks, which is even more poignant.

This is a slow-paced, beautiful and intricate piece of work. It’s carefully constructed and pays attention to detail, everything from the looks of the house to the garments to the butterflies Fanny captures and keeps in her room is premeditated and still understated. The performances are likewise multifaceted and rich. And it’s heartbreakingly gorgeous, which should appeal to any cineaste.

Bright Star (2009) directed by Jane Campion stars Ben Whishaw (John Keats), Abbie Cornish (Fanny Brawne), Paul Schneider (Charles Armitage Brown), Kerry Fox (Mrs. Brawne), Thomas Sangster (Samuel), Edie Martin (Toots), Antonia Campbell-Hughes (Abigail) and Olly Alexander (Tom Keats).

Of Mice and Men – Playing with the bunnies

Article first published as Movie Review: Of Mice and Men (1992) – Just Playing With the Bunnies on Blogcritics.

Set during the Depression in California the story follows two young men, George (Gary Sinise) and Lennie (John Malcovich), who are living the rootless migrating life of day labourers. It quickly becomes obvious that Lennie isn’t all the way there, but he is strong as an ox. That is actually part of the problem. We start in medias res with George and Lennie running from a posse, something that is explained later.

The gentle giant Lennie has a soft spot for animals. The only problem is that he loves them a little too much, squeezing the life out of the things he pets. The viewer quickly understands that Lennie really does mean no harm, he just does not understand how strong he really is and he doesn’t seem to be able to learn. George takes care of Lennie as they travel together, but the relationship is not an uncomplicated one. All the tension and apprehension between the two is played beautifully by Sinise and Malkovich.

Lennie is obviously mentally still a child in some ways. The communication between him and George has a reoccurring refrain, something you have the feeling George has said a thousand times. It is mainly a plan for a better life for the two of them, where they will settle down on a little farm with cows and pig and rabbits. The rabbits are particularly important to Lennie who chimes in that he will “tend the rabbits”.

The farm where George and Lennie end up working is peopled with about as many quirky characters as you would expect from any movie based on a Steinbeck novel. There’s the short and even more short-tempered Curley (Casey Siemaszko) and his bombshell of a wife (Sherilyn Fenn), the old farmhand Candy (Ray Walston), Slim (John Terry) who acts as a kind of voice of reason and the old bent and broken Crooks (Joe Morton).

There is a very basic quality to the telling of this particular story. It relies heavily on the actors’ ability to convey much of what is left between the lines, and I personally think it is never entirely fair to compare the movie to the book anyway. Movies are collective efforts where cinematography and characterization are subject to interpretation and some things are elided by necessity. Sinise does a good job directing and starring, something that has always seemed a difficult thing to pull off to me, whereas it carries with it the temptation of letting the movie become a vehicle for one actor only. To my mind there is none of that going on here, even though there is obvious care taken to make sure that the actors are given room to work. It is also beautifully shot.

Coming into this story we already know it can’t end well. It’s just a matter of knowing how bad things will get before we get to the inevitable. Curley’s wife (Sherilyn Fenn) is the siren here, coming into the bunkhouse and getting the workers into trouble in various ways. Curley is possessive and jealous and abusive and there is never any doubt that his wife is unhappy with the situation, lonely and bored and locked into a life she does not really want. She winds up trying to befriend Lennie, and that is where things turn dark and desperate. Lennie just does what he always does, petting the bunnies until they break and it is done without any real malice. He breaks Curley’s wife’s neck without really meaning any harm. George knows that this is the end and there’s nothing he can do for Lennie now, except make sure he does not wind up in a cage.

Tragedy always hits harder when preceded by hope for the future and circumstance outside the lead characters’ control. We know this story well enough that there is no real surprise at the way things will end, but the actors make the journey well worth the time. Malcovich, who we are more used to seeing as a cerebral cool villain, really knocks this one out of the park. And Sinise understates all his reactions so well that it is kind of fascinating to watch. Sherilyn Fenn is drop-dead gorgeous and plays this well enough to elevate something that could have been a bad cartoon cliché.

It’s not the book, but it is far too well executed to be dismissed despite the fact that you probably have your own images and ideas even as you step into the vision Sinise creates with a great and obvious love for the material. In short, well worth watching.

Of Mice and Men (1992) is based on the Steinbeck novel of the same name. Horton Foote has written the screenplay and this version is directed by Gary Sinise, who also stars as George Milton. The rest of the cast consists of John Malkovich (Lennie Small), Sherilyn Fenn (Curley’s wife), Casey Siemaszko (Curley), Ray Walstone (Candy), John Terry (Slim), Richard Riehle (Carlson), Alexis Arquette (Whitt), Joe Morton(Crooks), Noble Willingham (The Boss), Joe D’Angerio (Jack), Tuck Milligan (Mike) and David Steen (Tom).

Mule

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – The Price of Fame

The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford (2007) directed by Andrew Dominik stars Brad Pitt (Jesse James), Sam Shepard (Frank James), Casey Affleck (Robert Ford), Sam Rockwell (Charley Ford), Mary-Louise Parker (Zee James), Jeremy Renner (Wood Hite), Brooklynn Proulx (Mary James) and there’s even Nick Cave with a guitar performing in a bar. Cave wrote the soundtrack too, which I willingly confess makes me all kinds of happy. The movie is based on the novel with the same title written by Ron Hansen.

The story is a known one. Jesse James gets shot in the back by Robert Ford while dusting off a picture, hence the epithet of coward – you shouldn’t shot people in the back. It’s just bad manners.

“Can’t figure it out: do you want to be like me or do you want to be me?” Says Jesse James to Robert Ford – and that’s kind of the rub right there.

I have to say I didn’t expect something quite this big and stunning at the outset, but there’s a reminiscence here of the way the landscape always plays into the really good western movies,  like it was a character itself. There are wheat fields and forests and farms and the stark and stunning visuals come across almost like the faded sepia prints of the turn of the century photographs that can make even the most drab face seem interesting. Not that any of the faces here are even remotely drab.

I can’t help thinking of Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978), but I think that’s mostly because of Sam Shepard and because I had that same straying thought there about photography and how stylish something as simple as a white shirt and black vest can seem, when set starkly against a backdrop of fields and the strange desolation of premodern times.

During the period depicted here burgeoning media coverage is creating strange celebrities, like the outlaw Jesse James and Pitt seems like the perfect choice for a part that deals with that, considering his own public persona.

I’m kind of a sucker for the visual, and this movie delivers. There’s also a lot more to the performances here than you might expect. I seem to recall that there was some speculation as to whether or not Pitt could carry a leading role the way this demands, having been stuck with his pretty-boy reputation for a long while. He can and he does. Casey Affleck also gives a great performance as the sycophantic wanna-be side kick whose treacherous affection turns sour the minute reality clashes with his ideas as to what the relationship between him and Jesse James should be.

Jesse James is unpredictable in the most interesting way possible. He is paranoid and callous, but he is also a loving family man and a devoted husband. The relationship between Jesse and his older brother Frank is strained to say the least, Frank seems to think there’s something strange about his younger brother. There is less than no dialogue between the two, but you feel it none the less.

Sam Rockwell manages to completely steal the scene in which his character Charley Ford performs the character of Jesse James on stage, there’s a visceral change in him, the way he walks, the way he holds himself, that actually does give you the distinct impression that Charley is suddenly possessed by the Jesse James we have seen throughout the movie.

This movie is long and it takes its time, setting a slower pace than most westerns and sidling towards the art house meditation, again something that I think audiences might take issue with. It torques the tension between the characters by giving the uncomfortable silences time to grow. That’s not to say there isn’t action, there is, train robberies and gunfights and what-not.

This movie has a lot to recommend it, not least the actors’ performances. It takes a lot to have neither of the two lead characters be the least bit likeable. They are both fascinating to watch, though, Jesse James in all his cruel and bullying harshness and Bob Ford who is fawning and visibly untrustworthy and to top it off speaks in a way that grates on your nerves.

You have to come prepared for the pacing, though. This is a long story and it takes time telling.

Mule

Total Eclipse – Sex, drugs and … poetry

Total Eclipse (1995) directed by Agnieszka Holland stars Leonardo DiCapro as Rimbaud, David Thewlis as Verlaine, Dominique Blanc (Isabelle Rimbaud) and Romane Bohringer (Mathilde Maute).

I’m a reader. Not even a closet reader, but an out loud and proud reader, at that. I know Rimbaud and Verlaine. I’ve studied enough literature to know these two pretty well, actually.

Rimbaud was the enfant terrible, the herald of decadence and an all around interesting character with some pretty massive quirks. He wrote very seminal stuff between the ages of something like sixteen and twenty-one. After that he stopped writing altogether and went on to make a living trading slaves and guns in Africa.

Verlaine on the other hand was a symbolist poet, involved in politics (of the non-favoured flavour), married a seventeen year old moneyed young lady, quit his job and started drinking as if that was his new career.

When Rimbaud sent Verlaine a letter with some of his poems Verlaine immediately invited him to come and stay in Paris. Rimbaud went, sixteen years old and full of huge big ideas on how to change everything. He wanted to be a revolutionary in an all-encompassing kind of way.

Rimbaud and Verlaine started what can best be described as an incendiary relationship, physically as well as on every other level. It ended badly, Verlaine shot Rimbaud in the hand in Brussels and Verlaine was subsequently arrested and served two years in prison for that, and for sodomy.

There are some true life stories that certainly have all the ingredients that could make an excellent movie, sex, drugs and rock’n'roll – or poetry as the case might be, and it’s just depressing to no end that this movie isn’t better than it is.

Leonardo DiCaprio does a good job as the young terror Rimbaud with his clean boyish face and the cruelty of youth as a way of dealing with his interpersonal relationships. David Thewlis plays Verlaine as a snivelling drunken has-been and that’s most likely a deliberate choice, but not one that does anyone any favours.

I marvel at how very little poetry there is to any of this, despite liberal quotes from letters and poems.

There is a trick to depicting dysfunctional relationships and it hinges largely on making the viewer understand what the attraction is, even through the danger, the emotional and physical abuse and the general messed-uppedness of the protagonists. Rimbaud is flat out fascinating to anyone who has read his poetry and knows a little of his life and the seemingly impossible dichotomies of it. None of that comes through here. Neither Rimbaud nor Verlaine are likeable in the least – and I am not one of those viewers that need to like the leads to get something out of it, but you have to be given reasons, starting points, something.

Some of the intricacies of the interaction have the potential of showing how this is a beautiful disaster, but I am left feeling annoyed and sick of the whining and mostly just blankly disappointed despite the occasional glimmer.

The costume and environs are just right and well done. The acting itself is… well, I feel like the director is probably responsible for much of the disconnect. The events are pretty much preordained seeing as how they follow actual history so closely.

The distance is probably unintentional, but it kills any interest I might have had in the interaction between the two protagonists stone dead long before Verlaine takes a shot at Rimbaud and that’s a pity. The overall end result is disappointing to say the least. It just doesn’t work. It’s unfortunate but there you go. I recommend you read the poetry instead.

Mule

The Painted Veil – China and Orientalism

The Painted Veil (2006) directed by John Curran is based on a W. Somerset Maugham novel. It stars Edward Norton as the ambitious doctor Walter Fane, Naomi Watts as the socialite Kitty Fane, Liev Schreiber as Charlie Townsend, Toby Jones as Waddington and assorted other actors of Asian decent in various minor parts. I will explain why I put it like that in a little while, so stay with me here.

Now, I’m a fan of Edward Norton. I think he’s done some really first-rate work in his career, and that’s why I will let him get away with the slightly shady English accent here. Naomi Watts, same thing, really, she does a good job – the accent thing shouldn’t pose much of a problem for her. And then we’ve got the show-stealer Tony Jones who is really brilliant in the role of Waddington and the unusually suave performance of Liev Schreiber who I last saw as Sabretooth – so that at least shows that he’s got range.

Maugham’s stories are often quite subtle, they teeter between fine sarcasm and what can loosely be termed romance, though it’s never as simple as that. It’s also about class and appearances and what that does to the human heart. So here we have the passionate and taciturn doctor Fane who falls for a bored socialite and manages to get her to marry him. It’s obviously an infatuation on his part and a social necessity on hers. He takes her to Shanghai where she promptly has an affair with the cad Townsend. She gets caught out and is given an option – which is really no option at all. If she gets Townsend to agree to divorcing his wife and marrying her instead Fane won’t cause a scandal by citing adultery as the cause for the divorce. Townsend has never had any intention of divorcing his wife. Kitty is trapped and caught and forced to accompany her husband to a provincial Chinese town infested with cholera.

So far so good. All this is what you can expect in terms of keeping up appearances, holding on to archaic values and so on and so forth. Walter punishes Kitty by being cold, disinterested and in general acting like a jilted husband. The fact that they are deep into a foreign county surrounded by the dead and dying makes this little chamber drama more acute.

The scenery is stunning. The shooting locations are actually in Shanghai and the Chinese countryside – spectacular, fantastic, beautiful beyond belief. It’s all … awesome, in the original meaning of the word.

The Fanes are forced back on themselves in this desperate and desolate time and finally they break through to some kind of intimacy and Kitty realises she has to do something with herself – make herself useful in some way, so she involves herself with a local convent run by a hardcore old nun played masterfully by Dame Diana Rigg.

So – Where is the sting in all this honey?
Orientalism, in the good old-fashioned intellectual tradition of Edward Said. This is 1920s China, we’re talking communism, the Cultural Revolution. It strikes me as particularly clumsy that this movie makes no concessions, but sticks to the Maugham view – which is fine for Maugham, but not so much for 2006.

The sundry Chinese characters are treated pretty much like scenery – cute little singing orphans and the occasional mildly threatening young man in the street, the contentious, but obviously a bit stupid guard, the Chinese mistress and Colonel Yu (Anthony Wong) and all in all they’re really not given much space.

Colonel Yu get at least a few good lines in like “I think China belongs to the Chinese people, but the rest of the world seems to disagree.” Which does a little something, but it really does not go even a third of the way on how much richer the story would have been had we been given even a something more than just the British doctor and his ditzy wife swooping in to save the day when the whole cholera epidemic is the fault of the ignorant Chinese peasants burying their dead too close to the main water source and also superstitiously keeping their dead on lit de parade for three days instead of doing the wholesome thing and dumping their bodies at once.

I want to like this movie. I just can’t, despite the scenery, the acting and the pretty of it.

Mule

The Libertine – London, the Earl of Rochester

The Libertine (2004) directed by Laurence Dunmore has an incredible cast consisting of Johnny Depp as the Earl of Rochester, John Malkovich as Charles II, Stanley Townsend as Keown, Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet, Tom Hollander as Ethrege, Richard Coyle as Alock and Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry and so on and so forth…

The story takes place in an extremely mucky, dirty and smoky 17th century England where John Wilmot, the second earl of Rochester drinks and fornicates his way through a series of women while writing extremely bawdy poetry and hanging around in taverns with this friends and cronies. He is a poet, good friends with the king (when he’s not being banished for his raunchy mouth) and he lives a life of privilege and powdered wigs.

Rochester is a historical figure and he is portrayed here with as a complete and utter scoundrel, which he no doubt was. He died of syphilis and alcoholism at the age of thirty three, something the movie takes it upon itself to show in horrid detail.

Now, Johnny Depp is one of those actors who can scowl with the best of them and he manages to convey Rochesters utter disdain for life with the merest quirk of his brow. The dialogue is witty, fast and true enough to the language of the times. ‘

The movie opens on a prologue in with Rochester says “allow me to be frank at the commencement. You will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on.” It is the born cynics way of giving the whole world fair warning. The prologue ends with Rochester proclaiming “I am John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and I do not want you to like me”.

That’s a lie, of course. The story is an unending seduction in which the viewer is shown again and again, that yes, Rochester is a cad, but he has other qualities. You come away from it thinking there was a man with so much talent and so many opportunities who did nothing good with all the gifts he was given. Of course you get seduced. It’s inevitable. And you may not like Rochester in the end, but he won’t leave you unaffected.

The movie is shot with a very loose and mobile camera and the environment is non stop mud, rain, dog shit and smoke. It has plenty of nudity and sex and … dildos. But… that being said, it also has tenderness, love and brilliant dialogue, philosophy and politics. You can’t help sympathizing with Malkovich’s portrayal of king Charles II who is beleaguered from all sides by political and financial concerns, which he expresses with lines like “I’m being pissed on from half-a-dozen directions at once and it don’t accord with my majestic dignity”, and still manages to care about his friend Rochester and mourn him.

The acting is of stellar quality throughout, no matter what the subject matter is. The emotional value of some of the interactions between Rochester and his theatre prodigy Lizzy Barry is down right chilling.

There is so much in this movie, so many themes and tropes that I can’t do them all justice in a paltry review like this one. I’ve never had any patience with the Ivory Merchant/Jane Austen type films. This is the diametrically opposite version of the costume drama, so of course it’s going to appeal to me. If you want poetry and roses, don’t even think about this one. If you want extremely high quality acting, good dialogue, dirt, soot, fornication, drunken revels and heart stopping cynicisms… this is the movie.

Mule

The Prestige – Illusions are everything

The Prestige (2006) is directed by Christopher Nolan and stars Hugh Jackman, Christopher Bale, Scarlett Johansson, Michael Caine and also has a wonderfully obscure David Bowie in the role of Tesla.

The two young magicians Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale) start out as friends and colleagues working the magic circle of late nineteen century London under the watchful eye of the experienced Cutter (Caine). One night an illusion goes horribly wrong and Angier’s wife dies on stage. Angier and Borden become bitter enemies and rivals stopping at almost nothing to sabotage each other’s acts and lives.

The setting is frankly sumptuous. It’s a dream London where even the nasty bits look gorgeous. This could have been a price of baroque gothic if it hadn’t been for the stellar performances of the main cast. One of the best tricks to get away with a movie like this is to get actors who will commit to their roles. Angier and Borden are set up as opposites in almost every respect, including social backgrounds, but they share one overriding passion – magic. Or, perhaps more correctly, illusions.

The basic premise for watching a magician is what the poet Coleridge termed “the willing suspension of disbelief”. We all know there is no such thing as magic. Still, the illusionists job is to sow the tiniest little doubt and make us go Oooooh. This might take hours and hours of practice and any number of tricks and trapdoors and slight of hand. For me the biggest parallel is of course self-referential. Illusions and movies are the same thing. Keep that in mind when the veteran actor Caine talks of magic and it will all make beautiful sense – all the way to the end.

The McGuffin of the plot is the magic trick Borden uses in his act that Angier tries to replicate. Angier goes so far as to hire the scientist Tesla played by Bowie. And here you really have to let the suspension of disbelief get to work, but frankly I don’t mind. Especially not when Bowie as Tesla delivers the brilliant line “Exact science, Mr Angier, is not an exact science.” What Angier forgets is how deeply obsessed illusionists get – and Borden is no exception to that rule.

It’s difficult to speak of the actual plot of the movie without giving away the ending. And the beginning. And, actually, some of the middle bits… Suffice to say you can watch it twice and enjoy it twice. And it’s beautiful and masterly. Movies and illusions. Same thing. This one definitely makes you go Oooooh.

Mule