Death Defying Acts – Houdini Horror

From (Australian) ABC’s At The Movies:

The year is 1926, and the world-famous illusionist, Harry Houdini, (GUY PEARCE), is on a world tour including Sydney, Australia, where the Harbour Bridge is nearing completion.

Houdini offers a reward of $10,000 to any psychic who can tell him his mother’s last words, and by the time he arrives in Edinburgh, Mary McGarvie, (CATHERINE ZETA-JONES), who features in a manufactured psychic act with her precocious daughter, Benji, (SAOIRSE RONAN), is determined to win the prize. In the process romance surfaces.

My first introduction to the story of Houdini was a cheap, Scholastic-book special that I brought as a child. It had quite a few pictures, went through the major points of Houdini’s life (lots of emphasis on the role of his mother and his wife). I think it eventually fell to pieces. I enjoyed Skepticality’s interview with the Houdini Museum and picked up a copy of The Secret Life of Houdini by Larry Ratso Sloman last year.

So to hear that an Australian-led production of Houdini’s life [as mentioned in the comments of a great review by Magic Unlimited Blog, it was not only directed by Gillian Armstrong, but involved the Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC), Myriad Pictures, BBC Films, et al], a high-profile film with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Australian Guy Pearce… well, I was kind of looking forward to it.

Until I started hearing about how it interpreted Houdini’s life.

In short, from this film, I would have learnt two things about Houdini if I wasn’t better educated on his contributions to the world:

1) He’s a magician who did a world-tour and died after some red-haired Canadian twit punched him in the stomach (which is pretty darn lousy in itself for a biography) and

2) Houdini was an egotistical, posing bastard who not only cheated on his devoted wife [for which there is some evidence for, but not to the extent portrayed] but had a bloody kinky-fetish thing about his mother, which led him to blatantly delude the public that there was an afterlife -- just so he could have comfort-sex with a woman who reminded him of dear dead mam.

Ew. And no gasping ‘oooh! He’s like God! He’s so wonderful! He changed our lives!‘ by the irritating voice-over of the insect-repellent deserving lead actor could change that. What a pest.

Neither of these summations are fair about Houdini the person… nor does it makes a good movie. After I was introduced to the excellent plot-dissection site TV Tropes (great Wiki, you should check it out), all the cliches that I’d read came flooding back -- and I came to the conclusion that there really wasn’t anyone likable in this film. Excuses of poverty in turn-of-the-century, moping in a distinctly pervy-way over the loss of long-ago family members and even the vaunted ‘my heart is in chains’ excuses -- just led to wanting to give them all a good dunking in a duck pond with no key for the padlocks.

So, expect the following if you go to this film: you’re going to have a babbling voice over by little ‘Benji’, an asexual young con-artist daughter of Zeta-Jones’ Mary McGarvie -- the usual guff about ‘having a gift’. This apparently is good enough reason to turn a profit from it.

It’s going to start with lots of shots of the smug flexed-muscled Houdini posing in front of a half-made Sydney Harbor Bridge (which doesn’t match with historical accounts) after doing an underwater escape, which delights the young Benji who watches the news-reel film in an attractively impoverished Edinburgh. To her, Houdini is ‘like a god’ and comic books featuring his adventures is one of the few things she can afford. This is because she and her mother (Zeta-Jones, who does some rather familiar Velma-Kelley-like moves) prance around a music-hall stage as ‘Princess Kali and her Dusky Disciple’ (dusky means bunch of shoe-polish on the face, by the way), making a lousy living as stage psychics. This is done by swiping mementos off the audience prior to the show and flashing Mary’s knickers unenthusiastically to a library clerk in order to get some hot-reading material.

No. It isn’t hot on the screen either. Rather dull, to be frank. Soon Mary and Benji are living in a rather cute little house (this is grinding poverty? Looked more like Hagrid’s house) next to a graveyard, dreaming of the next scheme. Then they go to the movies, again, where they see Houdini’s most recent adventures on his world tour.

Thus, the stage is set and the con is on -- Mary and Benji want the ten thousand that Houdini throws merrily at the camera in return for some evidence of an afterlife. Houdini is heading to Scotland on the next stop of his tour (eh, just before he dies on Halloween in 1926 in Montreal, in front of a phalanx of press agents? Not in Michigan? Who checked the timeline for this movie, monkeys with a typewriter?) and their caper is to get themselves recognised as more than mere entertainers with pickpocket and research skills. Because, as Benji said in her opening monologue, there’s such a thing as a ‘gift’.

The ‘I’m an honest trickster who might actually have something like a real gift‘ approach by Mary contributes to Houdini’s sudden infatuation (forgetting that Benji was clearly turning over the dressing-room prior to their audition for clues -- the mostly ignored agent of Houdini, Mr Sugarman spends much of the film yelping that they’re clearly liars… duhh… ).

Mary and Benji are wined, dined and even have a seriously bizarre date with ballroom dancing lessons, showing off Zeta-Jones’ hoofer background… as they try again and again to break into Houdini’s luggage and find some hook to convince him that they know ‘the final words of Houdini’s mother’.

Apparently Mary looks like Houdini’s mother. Mmmph. Shagging ensues at some point later, but who cares. Seriously, you don’t care who gets some -- link to mp3 that says it all…

Here’s where skeptics might actually have some interest in this dreadful movie -- and this is kind of a spoiler: there’s been some debate for quite some time as to whether ‘psychics actually do some good, by helping people get over their grief.” My suggestion is check out the website Stop Sylvia Browne, personally.

But how’s this for a spin on that question: “Do psychics and the people who support them, if they know full well that the psychic is not actually doing anything for people beyond some sort of warped spin on ‘grief counselling’ -- have a responsibility to stop supporting the deception even though they got some comfort from being deceived?”

Now, whether or not you have one view or another is kind of moot… because they’re portraying Harry Houdini as that second sort of person. Would Harry Houdini hand over the equivalent of a James Randi Million Dollars, knowing full well that the display he was given was not evidence of an afterlife? Would he let all the viewing audience walk away thinking that Houdini found the evidence?

Especially after his vaunted flapping around of an envelope from Scientific American and how he was working with them. They sure didn’t skimp on how he was a big supporter of the scientific method (although all the brass implements and machines that go ping that weren’t anything more than distracting side-show fare in the final ‘challenge’ kind of waylaid that too).

That’s why this movie really kind of sucks.

As reflected by a magician with superior knowledge to mine in this review -- the only nod to his card-magic skills was vaguely patting a pack in the background as Mr Sugarman made a phonecall and a few displays of the Chinese Water Torture Cell trick. Even the TV show ‘Hustle‘ made a better effort in making their card-shark look like someone knew how to do it let alone practiced.

I was kind of hoping that throwing oneself off the Scott Monument would have been a final fling for this fictional Houdini. I guess you’ll just have to settle for knowing that even in this lousy rendition, he’s gone by the time the credits roll. Here’s hoping the same happens to this film in your local cinema -- that it’s gone soon.

Tagged as: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Death Defying Acts, film, Guy Pearce, history, Houdini, Hustle, King Kong, monkeys, mp3, psychics, review, Tripod