Talk:The Illusionist (2006 film)

message: is there any historical basis for the political story of leopold planning to overthrow his father, and then committing suicide? there was an austrian Crown Prince Rudolf who mysteriously committed suicide along with his mistress.  there is speculation that this story is not true, either that he beat his mistres to death (sophie) and then commited suicide, or that he was involved somehow with a plot to overthrow his father.--Rukiddingme? 05:27, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: historical relevance?

message: were the tricks on the movie based on real magic tricks?? other wise they seem pretty ridiculous
:yes, they were all portrayals of real magic tricks of this era. The movie and the "short" story it was based on, suggest that Eisenheim took tricks he collected on his 15 year journey, and elaborated on them. Like the Orange Tree (a famous trick of Robert-Houdin), which the movie's police inspector guesses right is an automata, but which does not explain the appearance of butterflies in the trick.
::The butterflies were part of the original trick.  I've seen a demonstration of the orange tree clockwork automata.  It isn't quite as impressive as in the movie as it starts with a small tree with leaves already in place.  The magician takes an article of jewelry from a lady in the audience and wraps it in a hankerchief which is placed in a box the lady holds throughout the trick.  When the automata is triggered it first "grows" several orange blossoms.  Then the oranges appear.  The magician passes most of these to the audience to demonstrate they are real oranges.  Afterwards the top orange opens and two butterflies rise out carrying the open hankerchief with the item of jewelry tied to it.  The box the lady is holding is shown to be empty.  Although the beginning of the trick is more impressive in the movie, the butterflies are just as amazing in the real trick.
: Like the inspector is fascinated by this improvement of the illusion, the movie viewer may ask where illusion ends and spirituality begins. This is also why (I think) the movie did not show the real tricks, but a CGI representation of something similar of what a description of the illusion must have looked like to a theater audience. If you know how the trick really has worked, you would judge the portrayal of the trick as fake. I therefore can't agree with the first bullet point in the trivia section, where it is stated
::So that the crew would not have to use CGI to "fake" the magical illusions seen in the movie, Norton received intensive training in sleight of hand and other stage magic techniques from British magician James Freedman
:It is clear that Norton did receive some training on how to act on stage, to recreate a 19th century magic show, but the only scenes where sleight-of-hand is demonstrated (primarily the coin trick Eisenheim does for the poor children) the hand double of James Freedman may have been used. The claim in the first bullet point is also not supported by the news article it quotes.Filminfo 22:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The trick works unless you lower your hand too soon, or maybe unless your skin tone is too light or too dark to begin with, or your skin is thick, or the room is cold, or – well, anyway, I deleted this bullet point. Regardless of whether the trick works every time, I agree that it isn't the kind of thing that makes a trivia item. Cognita 23:36, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

text: When I still performed I did it with coins, but only in front of an audience of either children or elderly, because it is such basic science that most people nowadays know it already. Back in the 19th century simple chemical tricks (like smoke effects and the paint effect shown in the movie) still worked. So I don't know if common sense may take away the skepsis created by something like not being able to Google it, but I have no problem with this bullet point.Filminfo 22:29, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Real Magic? 

message: I removed the ending of the movie from the plot section (even though there are spoiler warnings).  There are events that happen in the end of the movie that would ruin the enjoyment of this wonderful film if discovered beforehand. At least while the film is in theatrical release, I think its secrets should be kept secret.  --Navstar 19:33, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with its removal. There are spoiler remarks and anyone who doesn't want to know the ending shouldn't read the plot outline in the first place. Tanner65 22:37, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I disagree with the removal. Many films have surprise endings, and stopping their plot summaries before the ending would leave the summaries incomplete. A summary shouldn't be truncated like that; some readers will want the whole story. People who want an idea of what a film is about but don't want to know how it turns out can read reviews instead, which usually skip spoilers. The spoiler warning here is enough. Cognita 18:30, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

text: You really shouldn't be writing a paper on King Lear if you haven't already seen/read the whole play! You'd have no justification for being annoyed in such a case. But I agree: this is an encyclopedia, not a review, so the end should of course be included. AFAIK, that's standard Wikipedia procedure. Aridd (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  No Spoilers 

message: There is a lot of ressemblance between this film and Hanussen (1988) or any of its previous or later versions, which is based on a real story. In Hanussen, an Austrian Magician-Soothsayer-Hypnotist amazes the pre-nazi Germany. In this case it is the nazis with whom the magician gets in trouble. Were there so many magicians at the beginning of the XXth century, who convinced people they had real magical powers? luis_de_pedro 12:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eisenheim and Hanussen

message: One item in Trivia begins "Norton's character's doctor . . ." Shouldn't this be "the royal family's doctor" or "the doctor"? Cognita 18:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whose doctor? 

message: Here's a copy of a comment I added to Purplesnake's talk page:
:Hello, Purple! In The Illusionist, you put double brackets around Ted Liebowitz's name, turning it into a link to a Wikipedia article. But the link goes nowhere: there's no W. article on Ted Liebowitz. Do you plan to start one? Cognita 22:11, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Five days later, there's still no article on Liebowitz, and Purplesnake hasn't replied. I removed the brackets. Cognita 01:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ted Liebowitz – comment on change 

message: In the plot summary, an anonymous user made this change:
:Former version: This is followed by a quick flash of the conversation between Sophie and Leopold – this time, though, we are shown that Sophie had drugged Leopold so that he would pass out for a short time in the stables.
:Current version: This is followed by a quick flash of the conversation between Sophie and Leopold – this time, though, we are shown that Eisenheim had drugged Sophie so that she would pass out for a short time in the stables.
Can this be right? It doesn't make sense to me. Cognita 09:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who drugged whom? 

message: While watching this film many of the plot points seemed eerily familiar. I finally figured out, halfway through a viewing, that it reminded me of Robertson Davies' Fifth Business. I need to re-read that novel again to do a real point-by-point comparison, but I was intrigued to find that the name of the illusionist in that novel (a boy who had reinvented himself and returned home after many years abroad) had a stage name very similar to Eisenheim: Magnus Eisengrim. This may be a connection worth investigating, at the very least as an inspiration for this article's short story and film. —Kaijan 19:51, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Illusionist inspired by Robertson Davies' ''Fifth Business''? 

message: There seems to be way too much speculation in the plot summary. Too many "implied"s and whatnot. Could someone, perhaps one who has had experience with movie reviews, can go through this and edit this to fit Wikipedia standards? Thank you. Disinclination 00:18, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too much speculation 

message: Can anyone establish what time period this takes place in? To me it appears to be the 1880's or 90's, but my family says its 1900. Any thoughts on this? Editing Maniac 04:28, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Absolutely agree. No one could make so many errors of period by mistake. It must have been a conscious decision to conflate many periods. 212.71.37.72 16:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time 

message: Is it really necessary to use an obscure Latin phrase in medias res which not only needs to be explained in English in parantheses but could just as easily be served by removing the Latin phrase and said parentheses?  Kakaze 09:23, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's nothing "obscure" about in medias res. It's a commonly used phrase in English. Especially in fields such as literature and cinema. This isn't the Simple English Wikipedia; readers can be expected to know common everyday phrases. Wikipedia shouldn't be dumbing things down. Aridd (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latin and it's relevance to modern English 

message: The picture is small enough to fit in one half of the locket, so the trivia section isn't entirely correct (if you look at the close-up, it's obvious that they used two different props, but I don't see a discussion of that belongs in the article).  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.247.0.244 (talk) 08:58, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Locket 

message: I edited the following sentence in the plot synopsis.
Finally, Leopold orders Eisenheim's arrest, but when Uhl tries to arrest him during a live show, Eisenheim's body fades and disappears, implying that he did not perform the show as a corporeal human being that night but, rather, as yet another illusion.
Though Eisenheim must have been an illusion for the whole performance, when I first watched the movie I thought he had just then become a "spirit," so I removed "implying ... illusion."  As far as I can tell, Wikipedia is supposed to report fact and leave the implications to the reader. But please correct me if I was wrong to do this.
Tripswithtiresias (talk) 05:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Implication

message: As far as I know he's got nothing to do with this movie. Someone got mixed up between this and the prestige perhaps?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.4.238 (talk) 17:59, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is Hugh Jackman listed on the credits? 

message: Is the Too Long tag on the plot summary still relevant. The length of the plot summary seems pretty reasonable to me, but I don't want to remove the tag before all editors are happy. 212.67.168.234 (talk) 11:55, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Plot summary: too long tag

message: Yes, the hidden truth about this article (and by the way, about this movie ...) is: is not entirely an american movie (made by the U.S.), but rather, a joining Czech-American production. And, unfortunately, this truth was NOT disclosed. Unfortunately... Why did this happen?
200.101.93.197 (talk) 00:28, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The hidden truth 

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thread_title:  External links modified