To compare with Nolan's The Prestige...

Rating: 7/10 (2 January 2007)

Neil Burger's 'The Illusionist' would immediately fade and its magic would fritter away. The two turn-of-the-century magician tales beg a comparison and indeed they share many similarities like fractured chronology, narration, deceptive illusions, era and music score but they are ultimately two different stories focusing on two wholly different aspects of magic, rivalry between two magicians and a love triangle in the court of Vienna respectively. Although The Prestige also intertwines some romance in its story, the love side of the tapestry firmly belongs in The Illusionist where it fares best. Both films are nothing short of wonderful, The Prestige with a meticulously-composed, brutal pay-off and The Illusionist with a warm centre.
In the latter, two young lovers are separated by rank but brought together again fifteen years later on stage as Eisenheim (Edward Norton) is performing magic and requests an audience member to volunteer, which rekindles their illicit romance in a moment of tense chemistry and nostalgic recognition. The problem is Crown Prince Leopold (resident baddie: Rufus Sewell) who plans to wed duchess Sophie (Jessica Biel) and has no desire to lose her to a struggling magician. Through lushly sepia-tinted flashbacks we are given the sweet story of young Sophie and Eisenheim, a ploy which affirms their positions in the protagonist slots and cues the viewers in to root for them. Through tricks and twists Eisenheim engages in an intense battle of wills for his lover, with chief inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) on his tail who scratches his head trying to figure out his next magic act.
The Illusionist is a decidedly brighter story with likable characters and clear-cut antagonists, while The Prestige comprised of grey-zoned, selfish lead characters that only momentarily held our sympathy, only to dispel it with their pride, greed and obsessive dedication to the craft. Here the dedication is to love, to Sophie, and the theatrical magic takes a backseat to the love story. It follows then that the setting holds the same bright beauty. The dark 'Prestige' took us to the murky backstreets of London; The Illusionist sweeps across the grand gold-strewn halls of Vienna. The period and costumework are undeniably much better crafted in the latter with a screen that is awash with lyrical colours and luxury, but it may well be that Vienna is simply more of a thankful setting to lose yourself in. There is in this way a tremendous visual sense throughout 'The Illusionist', which Nolan never truly reaches in gloomy, damp The Prestige.
For all of its optimistic turns and beautiful outlook, The illusionist does not hold a candle to the majestic Prestige, which towers over the former on a script-level. It is a webby meshwork of magic, an ever-shifting hall of mirrors that kept us guessing throughout, and topped it off with one of the most inventive plot twists in cinematic history. The Illusionist may boast of a clever plot-turn too, but one that is infinitely more conventional and perhaps even predictable to those that pay extra attention. The acting in both films is consistent in the way that the leads are uniformly strong and that Scarlett Johansson is consistently bad in The Prestige. I had never crowned Jessica Biel a particularly capable actress but she performs well in the role of Sophie with a fair European accent. Edward Norton is intense and brooding as the layered Eisenheim with a very European-sounding accent but ultimately he is quite the dullard in the story, which is possibly Giamatti's show as the observing, narrating detective. He may be the only "grey-zoned" character in the film, as I first labelled him an antagonist of sorts.
Lastly, I have a few serious qualms with the stage 'magic' that took place in The Illusionist; certainly entertaining parlor tricks and astounding magic are performed  but these tricks are not explained in the film, only alluded to by Eisenheim's vague concession: "Everything you have seen has been an illusion." This is a cheap and lazy cop-out, because if you never bother to explain the magic acts, then you can basically whip out anything, CGI wonders and supernatural creations. So what? The 'mystery' genre is achieved through teasing the audience, not dishing out magical extravaganzas without hinting as to how they have been performed. Christopher Nolan realised this with the script of 'The Prestige' which he and his brother penned, and as a result the mise-en-scene of the film is its key component, letting the audience in on all the secrets... almost.
In conclusion it appears as though The Illusionist and The Prestige are rather different films after all. The former is smaller-scaled, lower-budgeted, sweeter and more forgettable and in all fairness, it is only its fantastic, epic score by Philip Glass that reaffirms its home on the big screen. The Prestige, by contrast, is utterly unforgettable and I am still scratching my head in awe at its meticulously-composed mystery even though I was probably equally entertained while watching the two magician stories.
7 out of 10 for The Illusionist. 9 out of 10 for The Prestige