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Magician's Final Trick
Rating: Two & 1/2 Stars
By JONATHAN L. FISCHER, The Bulletin
Around the time “The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button” came out late last year, I posited that even without the magical-realism conceit, any story about a boy growing up among the elderly would have to result in a character so similarly and profoundly accustomed to the concept of death.
Boy, I was wrong.
If we are to believe “Is Anybody There?” — and we should — then it’s clear that no forward-aging lad has much to gain from growing up amid those about to exit this life. The one here, Edward (a captivating Bill Milner), is about 10 years old, lives in a seniors’ residence run by his parents, and he makes young Mr. Button look like a model of well-adjustedness.
Set in 1980s England and small in scope and ambition, this bittersweet film by the Irish director John Crowley essentially centers on a son and two fathers — one biological and the other surrogate — who confront mortality in individual, eccentric and ultimately intertwined ways, helped in no small part by a mother. In a rich and stirring performance, Sir Michael Caine stars as the Amazing Clarence, a retired magician whose joie de vivre is long extinguished by the harshness of old age.
Edward, hoping to understand death, obsesses over ghosts: Early on, he listens to a recording he made of the immediate moments after one resident’s death. (This is a frequent conceit: Several times, the plot is nudged along by Edward’s cassette recordings.) He enjoys watching “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World” on the telly, and has no friends at school. On some level, he pines for a normal childhood, or at least his old room back. His mum (Anne-Marie Duff) tells him he should count his lucky stars: Living in a retirement home is like having a dozen grandparents.
Meanwhile, Edward's father (David Morrissey) is terrified of dying — or middle-age, as it is. He’s 39, can’t keep his eyes off the home’s nubile assistant (Linzey Cocker) and sports a haircut straight out of a Flock Of Seagulls video. He also gets the least amount of screentime, which is probably for the best.
This leaves Clarence, for whom death couldn’t come soon enough. When we meet him, he nearly runs Edward over with his converted ice cream truck, and he glares at the boy with bulging eyes and the devil’s fury. A social service agency has sent him to live with Edward’s family and the parishioners who live there, whom to Clarence are “a buncha jabberin’ simpletons.” “This is temporary,” he tells Edward’s mum, although he means that in not quite the way we expect.
Clarence, now living in Edward’s old room, quickly butts heads with the young ghost hunter, and the two eventually develop a rapport: Although he humors Edward’s supernatural interests, he wants to help the boy “make contact with the living.” This involves a magic trick or two, though nothing audiences will recognize from another magician’s tale co-starring Mr. Caine, 2006’s excellent “The Prestige.”
It’s a familiar odd-couple paradigm, yet often, Mr. Crowley has trouble calibrating this parable’s bittersweetness. He largely segregates his humor from his human drama, and the result is an emotional flatness that the film’s very affecting denouement barely overcomes.
The film’s thematically heavy strands belong to Edward, his parents and Clarence, while the comedy — mostly typical geriatric sight gags — stays in the hands of a retinue of veteran British character actors, like Rosemary Harris, Elizabeth Spriggs and Leslie Phillips. Which, come to think of it, is a useful tonic to Clarence’s world-weariness: Maybe there is something funny about growing old.
Jonathan L. Fischer can be reached at jfischer@thebulletin.us
Boy, I was wrong.
If we are to believe “Is Anybody There?” — and we should — then it’s clear that no forward-aging lad has much to gain from growing up amid those about to exit this life. The one here, Edward (a captivating Bill Milner), is about 10 years old, lives in a seniors’ residence run by his parents, and he makes young Mr. Button look like a model of well-adjustedness.
Set in 1980s England and small in scope and ambition, this bittersweet film by the Irish director John Crowley essentially centers on a son and two fathers — one biological and the other surrogate — who confront mortality in individual, eccentric and ultimately intertwined ways, helped in no small part by a mother. In a rich and stirring performance, Sir Michael Caine stars as the Amazing Clarence, a retired magician whose joie de vivre is long extinguished by the harshness of old age.
Edward, hoping to understand death, obsesses over ghosts: Early on, he listens to a recording he made of the immediate moments after one resident’s death. (This is a frequent conceit: Several times, the plot is nudged along by Edward’s cassette recordings.) He enjoys watching “Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World” on the telly, and has no friends at school. On some level, he pines for a normal childhood, or at least his old room back. His mum (Anne-Marie Duff) tells him he should count his lucky stars: Living in a retirement home is like having a dozen grandparents.
Meanwhile, Edward's father (David Morrissey) is terrified of dying — or middle-age, as it is. He’s 39, can’t keep his eyes off the home’s nubile assistant (Linzey Cocker) and sports a haircut straight out of a Flock Of Seagulls video. He also gets the least amount of screentime, which is probably for the best.
This leaves Clarence, for whom death couldn’t come soon enough. When we meet him, he nearly runs Edward over with his converted ice cream truck, and he glares at the boy with bulging eyes and the devil’s fury. A social service agency has sent him to live with Edward’s family and the parishioners who live there, whom to Clarence are “a buncha jabberin’ simpletons.” “This is temporary,” he tells Edward’s mum, although he means that in not quite the way we expect.
Clarence, now living in Edward’s old room, quickly butts heads with the young ghost hunter, and the two eventually develop a rapport: Although he humors Edward’s supernatural interests, he wants to help the boy “make contact with the living.” This involves a magic trick or two, though nothing audiences will recognize from another magician’s tale co-starring Mr. Caine, 2006’s excellent “The Prestige.”
It’s a familiar odd-couple paradigm, yet often, Mr. Crowley has trouble calibrating this parable’s bittersweetness. He largely segregates his humor from his human drama, and the result is an emotional flatness that the film’s very affecting denouement barely overcomes.
The film’s thematically heavy strands belong to Edward, his parents and Clarence, while the comedy — mostly typical geriatric sight gags — stays in the hands of a retinue of veteran British character actors, like Rosemary Harris, Elizabeth Spriggs and Leslie Phillips. Which, come to think of it, is a useful tonic to Clarence’s world-weariness: Maybe there is something funny about growing old.
Jonathan L. Fischer can be reached at jfischer@thebulletin.us
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