THE sensational stunts of Harry Houdini have always beguiled moviemakers, who regard sleight-of-hand merchants as part of the family, but the potential of a fable about illusion and self-delusion is increasingly ignored by Death Defying Acts, until i
t finally disappears into thin air.
Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Mary McGarvie, a disconcertingly glam single mother living in 1926 Edinburgh with her young daughter, Benji (Atonement's Oscar-nominated Saoirse Ronan). A couple of grifters, Mary is working as a psychic at a time when interest in the occult is at a peak, while her daughter is already an accomplished thief. Their radars ping with interest when they learn that the great illusionist Harry Houdini (Guy Pearce sporting rippling muscles, sharpened cheekbones, and altogether looking pretty good for a stocky 52-year-old Hungarian) is coming to town. Discovering that he's offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who can detail the last words uttered by his late, dearly beloved mother, they set out to hoodwink the escapologist.
They're not alone. All sorts of sideshow acts and charlatans parade their acts before Houdini and his protective manager (Timothy Spall). But before long, Mary and Benji have insinuated themselves into the magician's life by breaking into his hotel suite and diligently researching him. It doesn't hurt that Mary also looks like a young version of Mother Houdini.
But then strange things begin to happen. For one, Mary and Houdini embark on a series of photogenic sequences that telegraph a growing mutual attraction. And for another, Benji's increasingly detailed psychic experiences may actually be the real thing.
In his later years, Houdini lavished money and energy exposing the activities of charlatan spiritualists and purveyors of false hope; yet according to this film, he was desperate to find someone who could disprove his scepticism. He wanted to believe that it was possible to communicate with his late mother, to whom he had been obsessively devoted. Sometimes he glimpses her floating image, cadaverous and casting lilies, at some pretty inconvenient moments, such as the crucial final struggle to unlock his handcuffs while submerged in a water tank. These visions make you wonder less about Houdini's preoccupation with his dead mother and more about the oddness of making his wish for reunion look like something from the Evil Dead.
For local movie audiences, there are other distractions, such as Zeta-Jones' peripatetic accent, which crosses the Atlantic more times than the Queen Mary, and despite the authenticity of the Edinburgh backdrops – the Scott Monument, Edinburgh Zoo and the courthouse all have cameo roles – the film resorts to some pretty venerable clichés to impress on us where we are: bagpipes and kilts mostly.
In a film that can't resist repeating the groaningly obvious, the worst offender is our narrator Benji, who provides a commentary that reminds you of Billy Crystal's father-in-law in Forget Paris, a man who reads aloud the names of all the shops as they drive past them. "We had to live in a graveyard," details Benji as the camera pans across tombstones and crypts to a small cottage where Zeta-Jones is cooking.
The over-explanations would be forgivable if Death Defying Acts aspired to complexity, but it largely shies away from difficult or unpalatable ideas. Like the revised version of JM Barrie's life that Finding Neverland gave us, Death Defying Acts removes a lot of thorns that co-exist with a rose, backing away from the obsessive implications of Houdini's mission and softening the film into a passive, fictionalised story of impossible romance. "It was not Houdini's body that was wrapped in chains, but his heart," interpolates our relentless narrator.
In Charlotte Gray, Gillian Armstrong delivered a passionless, elegant period yarn that left little impression, and the same handsome remoteness haunts Death Defying Acts. Though all the elements are in place, ironically for a film about magic, there's little to be found. If the real Harry Houdini was watching this, he'd have made his escape long ago.
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Cineworld, Renfrew St, Glasgow, and Vue Omni, Edinburgh from FridayThe full article contains 694 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
