The Illusionist is a 2006 romantic mystery written and directed by Neil Burger. Edward Norton plays Eisenheim, a magician working in turn-of-the-century Vienna. Paul Giamatti plays Chief Inspector Walter Uhl. Jessica Biel plays Sophie, the childhood love Eisenheim cannot have. The film runs 110 minutes and carries a tagline that promises nothing is what it seems.
It premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and opened the 2006 Seattle International Film Festival. It reached theaters in limited release on August 18, 2006, then expanded nationwide on September 1. It was a critical and commercial success.
Burger based the film loosely on Steven Millhauser’s short story “Eisenheim the Illusionist.” It also folds in a fictionalized version of the Mayerling incident.
Trailer, via HD Retro Trailers.
Eisenheim Comes Home to Vienna
The film opens in 1889 Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Eisenheim is arrested by Uhl during a show built on necromancy. Uhl then tells the magician’s life story to Crown Prince Leopold.
Eisenheim was born Eduard Abramovich to a carpenter. A chance meeting with a travelling elderly magician turned him toward magic. While learning the basics he fell in love with Sophie, the Duchess von Teschen. They were forbidden to see each other because he was a peasant. They met in secret until they were caught and separated by force.
Eisenheim left Austria and spent 15 years travelling and studying magic. He returned to Vienna to perform. At one show he meets the adult Sophie again and learns she is expected to marry Leopold. Rumors say the prince is brutal toward women and has even murdered one.
The Palace Show and the Ban
Leopold invites Eisenheim to perform at the palace. Eisenheim uses the occasion to humiliate the prince in front of the royal guests. Leopold bans him from performing in Vienna again.
Sophie comes to offer help. They have sex. Eisenheim asks her to flee with him, but she is afraid they will be caught and executed. She tells him the Crown Prince is planning a coup d’état against his elderly father, the Emperor.
At the Mayerling hunting lodge, Sophie tries to end the engagement. Her body is found the next morning in the Vienna Woods. An unknown man is blamed. Eisenheim sinks into depression. He buys a theater and starts a new run of shows centered on summoning the dead. Leopold secretly attends one. Eisenheim summons the spirit of Sophie, who says that someone poisoned her.
Norton and Giamatti Carry the Film
Burger assembled a cast that does the heavy lifting the script sometimes leaves undone:
- Edward Norton as Eisenheim
- Paul Giamatti as Inspector Uhl
- Jessica Biel as Sophie
- Rufus Sewell as Crown Prince Leopold
- Eddie Marsan as Josef Fischer
- Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Young Eisenheim
- Eleanor Tomlinson as Young Sophie
- Jake Wood as Jurka
- Tom Fisher as Willigut
- Karl Johnson as Doctor / Old Man
- Vincent Franklin as Loschek
- Nicholas Blane as Herr Doebler
Norton plays Eisenheim as a man who has decided that control is the only dignity available to him. He is calm in rooms where calm should be impossible. That works, because the film needs a center that does not wobble while Vienna wobbles around him.
Giamatti is the better role, and he knows it. Uhl is a working inspector in a city run by a prince, and Giamatti plays the whole job as a negotiation he is losing slowly.
Sewell has the thinnest assignment. Leopold is written as a brute with a title, and the film never gives him a moment that complicates that. Biel has little to do beyond being the thing two men want.
What the Magic Is Actually About
The performances are not the problem. The problem is that The Illusionist keeps promising a trick and then explaining it. The genre mix — fantasy, drama, thriller, romance — is the tell. It wants to be a love story and a mystery and a political story at once, and it never decides which one gets the last word.
The mechanics are the strongest part. Eisenheim’s rise from a carpenter’s son to a man who can humiliate a crown prince in his own palace is a clean arc, and the film tracks it without sentiment. The 15 years abroad are handled in a sentence, which is the right call.
Where it slips is the supernatural question. The film wants the audience to wonder whether Eisenheim actually speaks to the dead. It stages the séances with real craft. Then it treats the answer as a reveal rather than a subject.
The Mayerling Problem
Folding in the Mayerling incident is the film’s most interesting decision and its most wasted one. The real history carries weight. Here it becomes a plot device that gets Sophie’s body into the Vienna Woods and gives Eisenheim a reason to grieve.
The coup subplot has the same issue. Sophie tells Eisenheim that Leopold is planning to move against his elderly father, the Emperor. That should raise the stakes of everything. Instead it sits in the background while the film returns to the love story.
Uhl’s investigation should be the spine. He is the one character whose job puts him between the prince and the magician, and Giamatti makes every one of those scenes count. The film keeps cutting away from him just as he gets interesting.
Release and Reception
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2006 | Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival |
| 2006 | Opened the Seattle International Film Festival |
| August 18, 2006 | Limited release in theaters |
| September 1, 2006 | Expanded nationwide |
The published critical score for The Illusionist is 6.8/10, with a Metacritic score of 68/100. That lands where the film does. Norton and Giamatti are worth the ticket. The script is not.
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