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Death Defying Behind The Illusion ActsBY BRIAN MCFARLANE With a dozen or so features (and as many shorts) under her belt, Gillian Armstrong remains an unpredictable filmmaker. HE has dealt with big stars (Mel Gibson strong’s oeuvre since her lovely and tender feature and Diane Keaton in Mrs Soffel [1984], for film debut, My Brilliant Career (1979), it is a concern Sexample) and seemingly sure-fire material, for women’s lives under pressures of various kinds. such as Susan Sarandon and Little Women in her adaptation of the same name (1994). She was ready In a sense, her latest film, Death Defying Acts to tackle Peter Carey’s eccentric novel in Oscar and (2008), is a variant on this preoccupation, which still Lucinda (1997), a far less certain box office assign- makes its presence felt – even if not so centrally as ment, and she has interrupted her features career has sometimes been the case. It is a film with two with documentaries such as Bingo, Bridesmaids & chief plot strands, and its weakness may well be Braces (1988) and Unfolding Florence: The Many that it doesn’t draw these closely enough together. Lives of Florence Broadhurst (2006). If there is a The first strand is to do with the legendary magician recognizable thread running through Gillian Arm- and illusionist Harry Houdini. A young girl’s 10 • Metro Magazine 156 Metro Magazine 156 • 11 ▐ Somehow, Armstrong misses the opportunity to make this mixture of fact and fiction a fascinating new experience. ▐ voice-over tells us at the outset, over water impressively buffed- rippling in light, that her life and her mother’s up torso, isn’t quite ‘changed forever’ with the coming to Edin- charismatic enough burgh of the great Houdini. Perhaps not to offer a short cut unreasonably, this leads us to suppose we’ll to our grasp of be given some sense of the famous esca- Houdini’s prowess. Houdini tells her. Sugarman, who knows that pologist doing his stuff – doing, that is, what In comparison with show business is about nickels and dimes, has made him a byword for daring and inge- The Illusionist (Neil not about science, is properly sceptical of nuity, for illusion beyond the quotidian reali- Burger, 2006), Death Mrs McGarvie. ‘It means you read The New ties of our lives. The other strand involves Defying Acts never York Times,’ Sugarman comments to her the girl’s cash-strapped mother and her affair succeeds in making its showman protagonist regarding the subject of her special ‘knowl- with Houdini. Curiously, this romance never and his works compelling. edge’ of Houdini. Mary’s cynical reply: ‘It rises much above the conventional, and in was The Tribune, actually.’ the end it is hard to say where Armstrong’s On the other hand, the romance between interest most securely lies. working-class Mary McGarvie (Catherine Houdini invites Mary to a posh lunch where, Zeta-Jones) and the visiting Houdini doesn’t in a moment of wit, she so misreads the You would think Houdini might be a gift fill the gap either. She is a single mum living menu that she only orders bread, and he to film – of all art forms, film is the most with her young daughter, Benji (Saoirse follows suit. ‘I want to treat you as the lady amenable to representing illusionism. Oddly, Ronan), who idolizes Houdini: ‘He was a you so clearly are. You’re special. You have a though, there have been very few attempts god, that’s what it said in my comics.’ They gift,’ he reassures her. He makes much of his to film Houdini’s exploits, and no feature work a music-hall act in which Mary does a own humble origins: he feels he has come film centred on him since the Tony Curtis sort of belly dance before a backcloth of the from nowhere and has lost something since biopic Houdini (George Marshall, 1953). Pyramids, joined by Benji as her blackamoor ‘the real days’. This is not of itself interesting; Armstrong’s film opens, as I have said, with assistant. They perform a few perfunctory the tension arising from Mary’s own difficul- the image of water. This proves to be water ‘Egyptian’ hand movements before stun- ties and deceptions in relation to Houdini’s in a tank in which Houdini (Guy Pearce) is ning their working-class audience with a bit growing interest in her, both romantically and immersed, chained. On stage, his manager, of simple trickery. ‘We gave them what they for the promise of her ‘gift’, should be more the shrewdly opportunist Sugarman (Timothy wanted,’ says Benji in voice-over justifica- tantalizing than it actually feels. Spall), is becoming anxious about him just tion of the chicanery they have practiced. as Houdini emerges, having unshackled It is Mary’s supposed psychic powers that The screenplay by Tony Grisoni and Brian himself underwater. After this, however, there bring her to Houdini’s attention. She poses Ward sometimes seems to be suggesting as is very little sense of what has made Houdini as a maid at Houdini’s hotel, checking out a thematic tightener the idea of two sets of such a world-famous name. Death Defying information she may be able to use in pursuit parent–child connections. Houdini is pos- Acts makes use of silent film newsreels with of the £10,000 Houdini is offering to whoever sessed by the idea that he was not present titles proclaiming how Houdini has exposed can discern his late mother’s last words. at his mother’s death to hear her last words, fakes whose psychic powers he has solicited and it is his need to know this that has led in the matter of his late mother’s last words. Given that Houdini has exposed numerous him into the reaches of spiritualist quackery. preceding fakes, it is surprising that he does Houdini tells Mary that he wishes she could It may well be countered that presenting not cotton on to the fact that Mary is an have met his mother: ‘You would have got Houdini as the great showman is not Arm- obvious con artist. Or is he so smitten by her on like a house on fire.’ Is he, in his dealings strong’s intention, but, even so, one feels a beauty (and Zeta-Jones has never looked with Mary, in some way trying to repair his need for more sense of what his réclame rests more fetching) that he wills himself to trust sense of loss? In the Mary–Benji pair, Mary on. Further, Guy Pearce, despite his her? ‘I think you’re the one I’m waiting for,’ shows plenty of resilience and ingenuity, but 12 • Metro Magazine 156 Metro Magazine 156 • 13 14 • Metro Magazine 156 ▐ Zeta-Jones does all she can with Mary McGarvie, but the screenplay is too bitty to allow more than enticing glimpses of the woman to emerge. ▐ Benji appears always to be watching out for might have conducted himself or herself her, and the fact that Benji alone has access in such other circumstances as the novel- to the film’s voice-over reinforces this. Benji ist or filmmaker has devised. There is real is the one who steals the watch that is es- elegance in Pearce’s Houdini, but this is not sential to their music-hall act, but it may also enough to solicit our interest in his dealings be the case that she is the one with the real with Mary, despite the mysterious beauty was more in tune than is the case with Mary ‘gift’. In the opening voice-over, she reflects, with which Zeta-Jones imbues her. Allegedly, McGarvie. A more important association ‘As I grew up, the gift vanished, just like my the screenplay, which had a long gestation, may be with High Tide (1987), a more single- mum said it would, and I saw the world as it didn’t originally include Houdini at all, and minded exploration of the theme of mothers really was with all its fleet ways and trickery.’ perhaps this accounts for the oddly perfunc- and daughters. Death Defying Acts may have tory way he is inserted into the narrative. been a stronger film if it had chosen to focus Given the privileged placing of Benji’s more firmly on this aspect of its narrative, statement at the start of the film, and that How does the film line up in relation to some relegating Houdini to the more-or-less cata- no one else gets to address us so directly, of Armstrong’s other work? In Gemma Jack- lytic role that seems to be adumbrated in the it confers on her a status of insight not availa- son’s handsome production design, it recalls opening and closing voice-overs. ble to anyone else. She has the film’s closing My Brilliant Career and Little Women for its words too; the film ends with Benji, not with evocation of period and place. Edinburgh in I don’t want to imply that there is nothing either Houdini or Mary. One also begins to 1926 is sumptuously brought to life, using to savour in Death Defying Acts. It passes wonder if Benji is not indeed the film’s pro- both actual Edinburgh locations as well as the time easily enough; it looks and sounds tagonist. Perhaps, too, there is an irresistible other locations (including London’s Theatre good (Cezary Skubiszewski’s score is often intertextual reference at work here. Benji is Royal, Drury Lane and the Savoy ballroom) most romantically apt); and it pulls off some played with observant alertness by Saoirse and studio-shot sequences (at Ealing Stu- genuinely charming moments and effects.

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