A story with many layers

Rating: 10/10 (5 March 2011)

I saw this movie here in Brazil on cable TV, then I went to my DVD store, bought a copy and started to watch it again and again at home. This is simplely one of the finest movies that I saw in my whole life.
Everything in the movie is perfect: Production, cast, soundtrack, etc, etc. But, besides that, the script is doing a lot more than to tell you the story of the magicians who are competing to be the "best". Actually, it seems to be inviting you, by metaphorical ways, to think and analyze the process of ideological construction and interpretation of our day-to-day reality. At the beginning and at the end, Michael Caine's character says "you are not really looking, you want to be fooled". Is he talking only about theather magic or algo talking about how we construct our vision of the world and our opinions about the most varied subjects? As a fellow user of this site said, there many layers in this movie to be analysed and discussed, and it is still a commercial movie, not some kind of experimental video done by college students. That, by itself, is an awesome achievement.
The movie says that we want to be fooled, and that the magicians, in order to fool their audience, must be willing to deal with brutality and secrets. Aren't the magicians, in this movie, a representation of our parents, leaders, bosses, and those who have power and need to ideologically and morally justify themselves, in order to stay in power? The upper classes need to present their rule as just and natural, but they know that power can not be achieved and retained only by virtous manners. As Nicolai de Machiavelly pointed out centuries ago, you have to get your hands dirty in order to be a prince/a magician/to mistify, confuse, engage your audience/subjects and achieve your goals/perform your magic trick successfully.
And the audience is us, the ordinary people who live their daily, working class lifes, willing to believe our bosses so we can sleep tonight. We want to be fooled.