That Movie Magic

"How did he DO that!" gasped a four-year-old Japanese boy, as a he gazes, up wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at a stage in Operyland, Tennesee (Nashville's answer to Disney World, and sort of a spiritual predecessor to Dollywood).

The object of this boy's fascination was a stage magician, famous in Opryland and nowhere else, whose name not even he remembers anymore. The trick in question was no big feat; it was no Copperfieldian de-materialization of the Statue of Liberty, no Houdinite stunt of death-defiance, no David Blaneist act of self-mutilation involving a razor blade, car battery, and apparent blunt force trauma to the head. It was a simple trick, by modern standards: an avian "evaporation," by which lively and particularly spirited canary was made to vanish as if it were never there.

I knew, of course, how he had done it.

Vaguely.

Some unseen hand, no doubt belonging to a beautiful, busty, Bunny-like assistant (or burly Bulgarian stage hand), would somehow remove the bird from the cage as the magician laid the supposedly "mysical" cloth upon it, leaving the cage empty and the crowd amazed whence the cloth was removed. I knew all of this, of course; I had seen it a million times, and by age four I was already something of a magician myself (I could make my mother's quarters disappear faster than she could pretend to humor me). Even so, when the man in an outrageous top hat and shimmering black cloak asked for a "volunteer" from the audience and selected my mother, my death grip upon her arm could only be released by his choice of a different victim to vanish.

I knew, it wasn't real, of course. I knew it for a fact. But the art of a true magician, however, is the one which can make his audience forget what they know.

This is the allure of the film.

There is no act, no single illusion of smoke and mirrors or sleight of hand that can compare to the magic and mysticism of the movie. It draws in and fools even the greatest human minds, it tricks and bamboozles the most cunning and conniving members of the supposedly "advanced" human race. The movie makes fools of us all, but like any good magic trick, we thirst for it all the same.

Pascal Bonitzer's piece "Off-Screen Space" touches on the concept of film as a willing fiction on the part of the film, accepted on the part of the viewer as truth, but with the implicit understanding on the part of all parties that the viewer "doesn't really think" that the flashes of light on the screen are real. As Bonitzer says, we "question the 'authenticity' of a costume, criticize the actor 'behind' the character, wonder whether a background is or is not a back-projection," rationalizing logically about the inherent and glaringly obvious fictive aspects of a film's experience.

We know that Natalie Portman is not in fact an epileptic girl in Garden State. We know that real life doesn't cut-on-action or shot-reverse-shot during dialogue (at least, not without the use of some seriously heavy, industrial-grade hallucinagens). We know that men, no matter how "super" cannot fly. To think otherwise would be spectacular self-delusion and detachment from reality. And yet, every day, millions of four-year-old boys across the nation and around the world will galavant around their homes bearing undergarments on top of their trousers, and bathroom towels around their necks, ever watchful of green glimmers of Kryptonite.

Even though we know that it is just red dye and a pressurised hose, we gasp asMajid commits suicide right before our very eyes in Cache. Even though we know that is just an artfully made latex mask, we shriek in terror at the approach of Freddie Kreuger in Nightmare on Elm Street. And even though we know that Hugh Grant is not (unfortunately) the Prime Minister of England, we still cry at the end of Love, Actually...

...some of us. Not me of course. That would be...stupid...

But Bonnitzer raises and excellent point, albeit just in passing; as an audience we do criticize films that are somehow "unbelievable" or ruin the suspension of disbelief that makes truly artful films such an exquisite experience to behold. We laugh at horror movies that are "so fake," and mock kung fu and Western films that ruin an otherwise compelling and moving tale with over-wrought mannerisms and poor-quality acting. It is, as Bonnitzer says, a "critical 'pulling back,'" and "very much a defense against the impression of reality'" that the films attempt to generate; we resent these films with their half-assed acting and hackney'd plots, their low-budget production and no-budget effects. They are pale imitations of the truth, unbelievable and unfaithful facsimiles of reality and plain and outright lies. As rational, logical, non-delusional individuals, we are put off by their indignity and intolerable attempt at perfidity. But not because they tried to trick us, but because they did a piss-poor job of doing so.

We are inexplicably critical and picky of the lies we enjoy having spun to us.

Because of this, we also criticize films as if the things they show us are very real (or, if not quite real, then real enough that they deserve to be treated judged as such). Who among us hasn't thought to themselves, "My God...Anakin is such a whiney little douche," while watching Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Who hasn't secretly found themselves rooting for the "challenger" in Rocky, despite knowing logically that a) he has no chance, and b) he isn't real! We know what we know, and we can't help but know it. But, god dammit,

"GET UP, ROCKY! GET UP!"