Au-delà de l'illusion

Gillian Armstrong makes fine movies: she is a director who knows how to tell stories and enhance what appears on the surface to be reality with a healthy dose of fantasy. Her sense of pacing and image creation adds substance to her tales that sometimes border on bizarre.

DEATH DEFYING ACTS uses the character of Harry Houdini as the stimulus of to tell a story about the folk of Edinburgh, Scotland at a time when stage shows were embraced much the way America was using vaudeville - an escape from the rather dreary state of living to a world of entertainment and love of magic. Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and her daughter Benji (Saoirse Ronan) survive in Edinburgh by picking pockets not merely for cash but for information to use in their act in the little theaters. Mary does exotic dances then uses her 'gifts' to see into the 'other world' of people in the audience ( Benji does the investigative work and is the prompter for the séance like acts Mary performs). Their idol is Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce) and when they learn Houdini is coming to Edinburgh to 'perform', they discover Houdini is promising $10,000 to anyone who can prove they have the ability to look into the future (or past). Houdini's manager Sugarman (Timothy Spall) arranges Houdini's water tank escape acts and other acts of 'magic', and when Mary and Benji arrange to meet Houdini, Sugarman is aware they are charlatans. How Mary and Benji work their way into Houdini's belief system and love life with their con game forms the meat of the sparing.

The atmosphere of the film is well captured by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos who understands who to balance the mire of the streets of 1926 Edinburgh with the gorgeous fantasies used during Houdini's escape acts. The musical score by Cezary Skubiszewski is a terrific mixture of Scottish tunes and instruments with solid melodramatic mood music. Pearce, Zeta-Jones, Spall and Ronan turn in excellent performances. This is an unjustly overlooked film that, while not being a masterpiece, serves up a fine story well told. Grady Harp

Another magician movie? But The Illusionist and The Prestige were great movies, so why not? Catherine Zeta Jones plays a foxy, yet poor, mother, scamming away through life pretending to be a psychic. When Guy Pearce's Houdini comes into town to prove or disprove the existence of the paranormal, they come into contact.

It is both a sad and a hopeful movie. A little too "psychic" for me and too little about the true nature of Harry Houdini except his fascination for his dead mother. The script itself does not lend itself to praise, but the atmosphere and realisation are top notch.

Bottom line: watch it when you are in a mood for a rom-drama, but you don't care much about the subject.

There's nothing death defying about Death Defying Acts. This is a pretty conventional motion picture that doesn't try to do anything new with the genre it's portraying. There's nothing terribly wrong about this, but there isn't anything particularly original about the movie either. While it's been pretty maligned in some circles - maybe this is why it never was released in the States and it arrived two years late in Peruvian theatres - it's not a bad movie; it's OK, I guess, but nothing spectacular. This is the hardest type of movie to review - the kind of film that didn't make an impression on me, but that isn't that bad either. This will definitely be a short review.

The film tells the story of mega-famous magician and trickster Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce - Memento). He's arrived on Britain as part of one of his tours - he's looking for a magician or psychic that can be able to guess - or "see" - the last words his mother uttered before dying. You see, this is all part of a scientific experiment he wishes to conduct. Something unexpected happens the moment he arrives at Scotland, though - he falls in love with psychic Mary McGarvie (Catherine Zeta-Jones), whose daughter and "apprentice", Benji (Saoirse Ronan) approached to accept his scientific challenge.

If that small plot summary sounded simplistic, that's because it is. The movie is not particularly ambitious, and that's maybe why I was left overwhelmed by it - there's so much to say about a figure as famous and recognizable as Houdini, and the film decides to focus on something decidedly dull. The film actually starts with some promise - I liked Ronan's voice-over, and it almost seemed as if the film was to focus on something interesting. But then, of course, I started to discover this was going to be a romance - a very clichéd, underdeveloped romance, at that - and I shuddered.

If there's a reason why the film is not bad, it's because of some solid performances. Guy Pearce is one of the most underrated actors working today - see his work in the aforementioned Memento if you don't believe me - and although the screenplay doesn't present a particularly three-dimensional version of Houdini, he makes him believable and humane. Catherine Zeta Jones is pretty good too, sporting a credible Scottish accent (!) and trying to portray Mary as a sympathetic figure despite the fact that the writers' don't seem to like the character. Timothy Spall - as Houdini's manager - is great as always, but the real standout is Saoirse Ronan. (Who was also really amazing in Atonement, by the way.) It's not only that she portrays the most developed, interesting and fun character, it's also that she brings it to life - Pearce and Zeta Jones' performances are precisely that (performances) but Ronan seems to be inhabiting her character, definitely putting a lot of passion into a project that arguably doesn't deserve that much.

Despite the fact that Death Defying Acts is already available on DVD and Blu-Ray in most countries, I got to see it in theatres. I can't say I regret having paid for this particularly theatrical viewing experience, but I won't enthusiastically recommend the movie either. The screenplay, while not terrible, is pretty ordinary, and the direction is all right. (Cinematography is gorgeous, though, and the score is beautiful.) Performances - especially Ronan's - are what save the film from entering the realm of mediocrity, but if you really want to watch a magician's flick, I'd recommend either the Illusionist or The Prestige.

What had drawn me to watch Death Defying Acts, is that it's a story with Harry Houdini, arguably the greatest illusionist and escape artist of our time. A few days ago I was browsing through a book which revealed the secrets behind his brand of death defying acts, and really he's a man of science, engineering and most of all, a performer to bring to life the act of fooling an audience into believing his stunts. Sure there's an element of danger, but with proper risk assessment and safeguards, they strip away all the mystique that serves to confound.

But contrary to the title, there's nothing really death defying about the movie, as it treaded on safe ground and doesn't dwell any more on the illusions that it has to. In fact, you can count the number of stunts which involve Harry Houdini, and the filmmakers left that for another biographical movie that someone else should pick up on. What we have instead are glimpses into the man's personal life, and Guy Pearce provided quite an intense and charismatic Houdini with personal demons of his own to do battle with, though the story seemed to rein him in from dwelling too much on that aspect, and preferred to have a more romantic tale weaved in.

The romanticism of the movie is not with his illusions, but with a single parent who's a psychic of sorts, relying on her street smarts to get her own act going. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Mary McGarvie, who has to rely on her wits to build credibility for her stage character. Together with daughter and sidekick Benji (played by Saoirse Ronan of Atonement fame), the mother and daughter team tries hard to make a living from their acts, but realize that they're by no means close to Houdini's widespread fame and fortune.

However, Houdini himself throws a gauntlet to all psychics far and wide, that whosoever can accurately reveal what his late mother had last said to him, will inherit US$10,000. His purpose it seems is to reveal that the majority of these soothsayers are tricksters in disguise, until of course he meets the luminous Mary, and affairs of the heart throws him off course. Naturally, Mary and Benji find themselves up against the best in the business, but when your back is against the wall, there's nothing much to lose it seems.

As mentioned earlier, this movie's more of a character study of the master magician, and explores things like his guilt because of dedication to his craft and performance, as well as his questionable motives in being attracted to the fictional Mary McGarvie. Narrated by the character of Benji, we see things through a child's eyes, and perhaps therein lies the loss of some pathos in the romantic angle of it. On one hand, it isn't your classic romantic story, while on the other, it doesn't seem to want to preach the method, rationale and mindset of Houdini himself.

So what emerged is a mixed bag. Beautifully shot, but again falling on the emptiness of its effort in trying to allow the audience to feel for the characters. At least Timothy Spall, who plays Mr Sugarman, Houdini's manager, allowed for some light moments as the guarded and wary person that he is. And credit goes to keeping the ending quite right too.

It might be the weakest of the latest "Magicians" movies (see Prestige and the Illusionist, the latter being overseen at the Box office), but it still has one strong central performance by Guy Pearce. I'm wondering when he will be in some top rated material again. Because the book does let him down a bit here.

He tries everything and he is pretty good in it, but does not have so much to play with, as Ed Norton, Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. All are great actors and the others have the opportunity in their movies to shine. This being based on "true events" (some of them I guess, without having the complete background scoop on it), it does fall flat on it's back at times (no pun intended). Plus it might be a bit too much worried about the love story, than actually the story of our main character. At least that's how I felt ... still it can make a nice watch!