The Illusionist - Page 2

Other than a penchant for hitting women, attempting to usurp his father's throne, being extremely egotistical and offended at the least slight to his person, and being a dictator-in-the-making a la Saddam Hussein, he was probably a nice guy. On the other hand, it does seem that Norton and Biel did an evil deed.

And the evil of the rulers of that time and place may have been so great that the makers of the film didn't feel like they had to spell it out, that everyone would know the CP was bad by his very nature. Still, his father was probably just as bad, and the Prince did speak of changes he tried to make before he killed himself. As far as beating anyone, it was told almost like gossip, and we never actually saw him mistreat JB, outside of their final meeting, when he had been drugged. Overthrowing his father..well, he's a Prince, what else is there for him to do? Seriously, I just found the morality of it disturbing, especially when it wasn't even questioned in the movie that it might have been a bad thing they did.

that the movie has to have a happy ending or else they never would make it and with a title of "The Illusionist" what else could the ending possibly be.

I don't think you can blame Eisenheim and Sophie for the prince's suicide. While the events were set in motion by them (or at least we are lead to believe they are), there were a number of events that were outside their direct control.

There couldn't know that the inspector would actually turn on the Prince, and they wouldn't know that the Prince would actually take his own life.

At worst, you could say that they were trying to prevent him from usurping his father's crown and righting other injustices, while also freeing themselves from his far-reaching tyranny.

As a side note, the director's commentary was quite interesting. One thing that he mentions, is that the end of the movie is intentionally ambiguous. The movie is really told from Uhl's point of view. What he pieces together may, or may not, be what actually happened.

At the very least they were framing him for murder, and planned to have him put away for a long while. Otherwise he would hunt them down, as SJ pointed out. I guess my problem comes because for me they implied the Prince was evil but nothing in the film really spells it out. Most of the comments in reply to mine are reading into the film to justify what happens to him-nothing on screen shows him deserving his fate, which I find a fatal flaw in the film for me...In other words, nothing he does to anyone equals what was done to him, and yet we are supposed to accept it as justified in order to have a happy ending...

even though we don't actually see him kill his prior love interest, we do see him slap Sophie in nearly-unhinged anger when she dares to defy him. This lends credence to the story of him being a murderer.

Besides, his motivation for killing himself doesn't come from being implicated in murdering Sophie. It was already established that the law has no jurisdiction over him for what is done at the castle. That was only an ancillary matter.

His real fear was that his father found out about what he was plotting in Budapest, which we know was true. His suicide wasn't a foregone conclusion, but being stripped of power or even imprisoned was extremely likely. That would have been enough to allow Eisenheim and Sophie to live in peace, albeit anonymously.

So, was her whole family in on the scheme? Where was the body? What did they do about a funeral? Would they tolerate their daughter, a duchess, scheming to give up the crown to marry the guy they dragged her away from at the beginning of the movie (i.e., Eisenheim), a guy with a Jewish name, Abramowitz?

Am I the only one uncomfortable with the actions of our "heros" and the message it sends? Whether the Prince deserves it or not, was what they did justified because they loved each other? I can't help thinking it would be like Bogart killing Bergman's husband in Casablanca so they could be together...

I also wondered about the body. I don't see any way that her family was in on it. They would never have allowed, much less assisted her, in bringing down the prince and settling for a commoner.

There are only two things I can think of for the body. Either he slipped her some more of the potion, so she appeared dead during the funeral, and then recovered her body later, or she really was killed by the prince.

Another problem I had, was that the locket and gem were still in the stall when the inspector went back there. At least a couple of weeks (if not months) had passed, and that stall would have been cleaned out multiple times since then. The only explanations I could think of to cover this, is that the stall was never used since she was "killed," Eisenheim went back an re-planted them, or he had an accomplice that planted them whenever the inspector would show up.

And, here's one final one. The illusion he produced that had the little boy actually walking down the aisle, close enough for audience members to actually touch, seemed to be way beyond the technological capabilities available at the time. Two explanations for that would be that the kid wasn't actually walking down the aisle, but that was simply the inspector's (faulty) recollection - similar to the reaction of the observers in the street. The other explanation is that Eisenheim isn't really an illusionist, but was actually able to summon the dead.

The way that the movie is structured, either is possible.

They couldn't be together, because the Prince would never allow it.

The Prince was also guilty of bad things, namely accusedly murdering a former love interest and plotting to overthrow the king)

For the first, there was no justice to be had. No one had jurisdiction over it, and the evidence had been lost and/or covered up.

The second is the more serious threat.

The only action taken by our heroes were to create a situation that would convince the Inspector that the Prince must be stopped from his power-hungry quest. The tipping point was the "murder," but what really motivated the Prince's suicide was knowing that his planned coup was revealed to the King.

Our heroes didn't kill the Prince. They probably didn't even guess that he would end up killing himself. All they wanted to do was have him out of the picture and without power.

At best, you could say they were protecting the country by stopping a dangerous man from obtaining even more power. A selfless act, which would also allow them to spend the rest of their lives together.

At worst, you could say they acted selfishly. But, the Prince was to be punished for what he actually did, so I don't find that uncomfortable.

I'm voting for the first one.

Eisenheim was employing trickery, rather than having any mystical powers.

one way of explaining this is to remember that the film is seen from Uhl's point of view. The actual illusion may not have been anywhere near that spectacular, but his memory of it may have been "enhanced."