RECOMMENDED Neil Burger demonstrated a deft grasp of intrigue and indirection in “Interview with the Assassin” (2002), where an out-of-work documentary filmmaker tracks a cryptic JFK conspirator. Once again, the art of illusion is practiced for high stakes against the backdrop of political history. For a splendid period thriller, Burger adapts Steven Millhauser’s 1989 story “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” set in fin-de-siècle Vienna. “It was the age of levitations and decapitations, of ghostly apparitions and sudden vanishings, as if the tottering Empire were revealing through the medium of its magicians its secret desire for annihilation,” writes Millhauser. Eisenheim is a cabinetmaker’s son in love with a duchess. Fifteen years later he (Edward Norton) performs magic in Vienna and finds that his long-lost love (Jessica Biel) is betrothed to a seditious crown prince (Rufus Sewell.) As in “Lady in the Water,” Paul Giamatti plays an intrepid unraveller of supernatural intrigue. This police inspector attends Eisenheim’s every performance. Millhauser writes that he accused the Illusionist of “crossing of boundaries” between “art and life” and “illusion and reality.” “For where would the Empire be, once the idea of boundaries became blurred and uncertain?” Burger dresses up the original story with extra romance and royal scandal, but keeps intact the theme of statecraft as stagecraft. Much of this resonates with Werner Herzog’s “Invincible” (2001), where an occult impresario books a Jewish strongman in 1932 Berlin. Politics aside, “The Illusionist” casts a spell with its exquisite, eerie staging of illusions for the screen. It’s a virtual waltz of smoke and mirrors and special effects. 110m. (Bill Stamets)
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