Outstanding.

Rating: 8/10 (19 September 2007)

What a splendid team effort this film represents. The direction and the performances are fine, and they're lifted well above the simply "fine" by the art direction, set dresser, photographer, and by Philip Glass's most aptly otherworldly score. Even Prague, frozen in time, the perennial stand in for turn-of-the-century Vienna, looks more authentic than it has before.
The story involves the rivalry between the evil and ambitious Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary (Rufus Sewell) and a humble cabinet maker's son (Edward Norton) who has turned into a world famous stage magician or "illusionist") for the love of a young noblewoman (Jessica Biel). It's well written and acted. Sewell could have turned the Prince into a maniac frothing at the mouth but instead has kept him a quietly smug heavy who mostly keeps his violence under wraps. Jessica Biel is competent and not too beautiful as the prize, although, to be sure, judging from her appearance as a child, she should have grown up to be Cate Blanchett instead of Jessica Biel. Edward Norton, just when you think he's exhausted his bag of thespian tricks, comes up with another fresh character, this time intelligent, confident, elliptical, enigmatic.
The special effects deserve a prize. After the supposed murder of Jessica Biel's character, Norton appears again on stage, but this time not in tails but shirtsleeves and without props -- no cane, no fluttering doves, no top hat concealing an albino rabbit -- not even an introduction. He sits alone before the audience, saying nothing, raises his open palm and an apparition slowly appears. We know it's all process photography, yet through the sensory impressions left by the visuals and the score, it turns into a very spooky moment. The rumor spreads that Norton has made a Faustian pact and it gets him into even more trouble.
I won't go on with this, I don't think. "All will be revealed," as Charlie Chan used to say, or was it Hercule Poirot? I can't say the plot is entirely successful but I can say that there haven't been that many more beautiful movies lately.