INTERVIEW WITH ILLUSIONIST DIRECTOR NEIL BURGER

T: I was immediately struck by the similarities between The Illusionist and Interview Wit The Assassin?

NB: Yes, on the surface they appear to be two very different films. They couldn’t be more different visually. Assassin is this raw documentary style thriller and The Illusionist is more of a dreamlike period piece. But of course what both movies are about in a sense is in asking “How do I know what is true?” They also both blur the line between truth and fiction or truth and illusion.

In Assassin what was important to me was asking how I can live in a world where everybody has their own subjective version of the truth. How do I become grounded? In The Illusionist the question was different, “How do you deal with living in a world where so many things are unexplainable.

T: You frame your answers philosophically? We’re you raised in a religious environment or in an environment where the big questions we’re asked a lot??

NB: I had a pretty average middle class experience of that stuff growing up. My mother had been a dancer etc. but truth was a big thing for me growing up. That was what was expected of me- to be truthful. And that was what was expected of the government and.... let me put it this way. I grew up with the idea that most people were honest and trying to do the right thing. Maybe I’m naïve but to a degree I’m still sort of shocked when someone doesn’t tell the truth. It’s a feeling of dismay, wondering how people can live with themselves.

T: It’s interesting isn’t how the things that ground us, honesty, love, compassion forgiveness, etc. are abstract, film is also abstract in that way. Did you sense that about film from the beginning?

NB: I think what draws me to these stories is exploring how people find meaning in the lives they lead. All the characters in my films go through that process. We watch Eisenhiem make the choices he has to make to be with Sophie watch that struggle in him between the old mystical ideas and the progressive person he really is when confronted with the corruption of this man who would be king. Inspector Uhl wants the good life but he gets to a point where he’s forced to make a choice between twisting arms for the King and breaking them, hanging on to the last little shred of his soul that hasn’t been corrupted by his willingness to turn a blind eye.

T: Your use of the word soul is interesting. The old bible quote is You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And of course that’s what Uhl is being asked to choose- truth over comfort. Did you see this as a philosophical move forward from Assassin, which almost saw truth in terms of despair?

NB: It wasn’t conscious but as I was adapting the material from the short story it seemed the way to go. The spiritual element is definitely there. I think a magician, especially in this story, should inspire wonder and awe at the mystery of existence. We should feel a little smaller and a little larger for having witnessed what he wants to show us. Smaller in the sense of the cosmos but larger in terms that we do exist and have a wonderful freedom to explore but that there’s also the danger of losing ourselves.

T: Again it’s a lot like the way film narrative works.

NB: Film is absolutely existential. It invites you in but it’s other at the same time. The darker take on everyday politics and the possibility of conspiracies in Interview With The Assassin is really just the flipside of the hope we cling to while not having all the answers in The Illusionist. I think most people have both of those sides generally. The Illusionist actually is a pretty dark movie all things considered and yet ultimately it’s grounded in reality and I think hope.

T: This might be a good time to point out that the special effects used in Eisenheim’s magic act in The Illusionist are almost all the same sorts of effects that would have been used a real turn of the century magician.

NB: Well, again, film is magic isn’t it and yet at the same time it’s a trick. That’s the difficulty. The audience, especially today, is already on guard and knows how the trick is done more often than not. The magic in our film had to come from onstage, and I think we did a good job of staging some really good tricks but in letting the audience in on some of those tricks we set up a situation where their view of everything changes. The world isn’t the same anymore. There are possibilities you didn’t before. That’s real magic for an audience these days I think. Particularly when we have a sense that we are different after encountering it, that we’ve had something revealed to us that we needed to know.

T: So magic or the ineffable, changes us? But where do we find that outside of stories? Are stories honest when they tell us there is hope?

NB: I think there is hope in the world. Uhl sees the possibility of redemption, or release from his bonds and for all the darkness going on in the world right, I think we have a sense that good wins out in the end even if it’s hard to see right now because of the way things are being handled by a few bad apples.

T: Are we talking about our government or the one in The Illusionist?!

NB: Both! I guess what I’m getting at here is you have to trust in a cosmic weight to human choice. It matters what we believe, how act and ultimately that’s what’s going to be harvested in the way of meaning from our lives. No one can take that away from you, no matter how corrupt they are. A lot of things the King says in The Illusionist are, unfortunately true. But of course he ends up making choices based on his pride, on arrogance and that’s what he winds up being about.

T: So what next?

NB: Just want to keep making movies. I’m shooting my next one in January. All I can tell you is that it’s a road movie about people who return to America after a long trip and start seeing the country through new eyes. It’s about the same from a budgetary standpoint. It’ll probably be independent. Making movies is a lifelong thing for me. And I definitely see myself moving around a lot when it comes to genre.