Magic In The Moonlight [DVD] [2014]

This charming and nostalgic film is a loving tribute to Woody’s boyhood fascination with magic and magicians. As a lad he himself was an amateur magician, which could explain why his films are often suffused with magic, including the magic of love.Berlin, 1928. Night time, the sky dark, the façade of a theatre brightly lit in counterpoint. The camera moves in closer and we see the billing for this evening’s performance. The Great Wei Ling Soo, an eminent Chinese magician, is performing.The camera takes us inside. The house is packed. The strains of Stravinsky are heard from the orchestra as a huge elephant on stage is made to disappear. Next Ravel’s Bolero as a lady is sawed in half. Then Beethoven and the Great Wei Ling Soo himself, bundled into a sarcophagus by assistants and teleported from there to an easy chair with its back to the audience. The chair swivels round and there Wei Ling Soo sits, sending the audience into raptures of delight.Performance over, backstage with the performers and stage hands, Wei Sing Loo is furious. The tempo of the orchestra was off, the cues from his assistants muddled. He wonders aloud with contempt how he manages to remain professional when surrounded by so many stiffs. An autograph seeker seeks his attention but he dismisses the request with the condescending insight, “Autographs are for mental defectives.”The accent is not Chinese. It’s upper middle-class educated British. In the dressing room the rubber skull cap is peeled away, the Fu Manchu moustache removed, likewise the sequinned robe and silk slippers, revealing an Englishman named Stanley Crawford (Colin Firth). Yes, Stanley of all things. Almost as pedestrian as Woody, the mystery of the exotic Orient dissolving into the prosaic Western quotidian.Stanley is a tyrant backstage, nothing meeting his approval. But he perks up when an old chum knocks on the door and enters. It’s Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), a fellow English magician. Howard happened to be in Berlin and dropped by to see the show. Marvellous, you’re the greatest, as ever, Stanley. But Stanley knows this already and isn’t interested in hearing it from Howard. Instead, Howard’s reason for looking him up interests him intensely.Howard knows a rich American family (the Catledges) currently socialising on the French Riviera. In their midst is a young American psychic named Sophie Baker (Emma Stone) and her mother, Mrs. Baker. The rich husband of Mrs. Grace Catledge has recently died, and Grace is beside herself with grief. If grief truly has five stages (i.e., denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), Grace is in the bargaining stage. She pleads with spirits, ghosts, the hereafter, the Great Unknown. Sophie is her medium, her bridge to the spirit of her dearly departed husband.Stanley has no time for charlatans, frauds, hucksters, con artists, all of which he considers psychics to be. They prey on the weak, the desperate and gullible, fleecing the grief stricken without pangs of remorse, rationalising their deceit by saying they give the stricken hope, comfort and solace. He delights in exposing them and debunking their techniques. He boasts there hasn’t been one yet he hasn’t outed.He says to Howard over dinner that night, “I don’t know who I loathe more, those who use simple tricks to prey on the gullible, or the gullible who are so stupid they deserve what they get.”But no, Howard protests. He has seen Sophie’s séances and he swears they work. She’s the real thing, he tells Stanley. But Stanley will have none of it, saying condescendingly:“There is no real thing. It’s all phoney. From the séance table to the Vatican and beyond.”Even so, he’s champing at the bit. He wants to meet this fraud and publicly expose her. Back home in London he tells his fiancée Olivia of his plan but she’d rather not accompany him to the Riviera. They had made plans to sail to the Galapagos Islands and she doesn’t want to cancel the plans. She’ll go alone without him. She’s that way — independent, headstrong, confident. She’s a match for him intellectually too, he feels, because from the beginning she logically saw through his feints, tricks and ruses. He was impressed. They are, both agree, a match made in heaven.From London, usually dark, damp and drizzly, we arrive in the bright colours and sunlight of the South of France. The juxtaposition is stark and jarring. But we soon settle in.Sophie and Mum are staying with the Catledges at their large estate somewhere along the Cote d’Azur. One of the Catledges is young Brice (Hamish Linklater) a ukulele-strumming sop smitten with Sophie. He makes love to her with music, poetry, promises and starry-eyed admiration. He is the prince, she the young American pauper, and he will make her a princess of the Riviera, much as Prince Rainier of Monaco would later do with young Grace Kelly. Sophie likes but doesn’t love Brice, unimpressed by the simple-minded material promises he makes to her to win her heart. But his mother is her patroness and pays handsomely, so she must treat him well.Stanley and Howard arrive by motor car. Stanley is introduced to the Catledge family as Stanley Taplinger. His cover is import-export, an innocuous trade designed to keep Sophie’s guard down.They meet (Stanley, Howard, Sophie and her mother) in the garden of the Catledge estate. Sophie engages in theatrics from the start. Looking at Stanley, she also looks through him to the wild blue yonder beyond, raising her arms to her face and saying she’s getting mental vibrations. Whereupon she says Stanley is not really Stanley. She thinks he’s from somewhere in the Orient, perhaps from China. If Stanley is surprised by this news, he hardly shows it.But as time passes Sophie reveals more and more intimate detail from Stanley’s life. How she can know this he hasn’t figured out yet but he’s confident he will.One night at the séance table in the Catledge house Sophie as medium goes to work on the spirit world. Grace Catledge is eager to know if her husband’s spirit is resting in peace. Stanley is not seated at the table but in a nearby chair so as to better observe Sophie and her mother. Howard is seated at the table with the others, including Brice Catledge.Grace is concerned that her dead husband know she had always been faithful to him throughout their marriage. Does he know this? One rap on the table means yes, two raps mean no. She asks. He responds. One rap sounds on the table. Grace is relieved that her husband never doubted her. But how do we know the spirit is really that of her dear husband? We need to have a sign. Show us your supernatural powers. He does, apparently. A candle in the middle of the table levitates three or four feet above it. Astounded, everyone gasps. Howard rises quickly to check the candle. Later he exclaims to Stanley, “There was nothing supporting it. No threads, no wires. It was floating until I brought it down.” Stanley is stumped, unable to find a rational explanation as yet for what he considers nonsense.Despite everything, Sophie in summer dresses and sun bonnet is fetching, though Stanley is unable to admit this to himself. He’s too busy tinkering with her mind, seeking the lock that opens the door to her charlatanry. They take drives along the Riviera, get wet in the rain one early evening, dash into a local observatory that contains a large telescope. Stanley remembers coming here as a boy long ago. The night sky in those days was menacing to him. “Why?” Sophie wonders. Stanley says because of its forbidding immensity.Many other social engagements occur: parties, dinners, dances. They also picnic by the seashore. Stanley and Sophie may be worlds apart philosophically, yet there seems something to their social attachment. Are they growing fond of one another? Sophie is tempted by Brice’s offer of marriage, which he eventually makes, and Stanley says he’s completely content with fiancée Olivia. Even so, we wonder.A crisis occurs. Stanley’s dear elderly Aunt Vanessa (Eileen Atkins), who also lives on the Riviera, has crashed her car. Rushed to a local hospital, she is unconscious, her condition touch and go. Stanley is close to her emotionally and he’s desperate for her health, desperate that she should recover. Howard seems to have been right. Sophie’s mystical powers seem authentic. Stanley’s world of rationality, the only he has ever known, may not be the complete picture he has thought it was. Could there be more? He never seriously thought it possible and has spent a career ridiculing those who believe it, but lately, due to Sophie’s influence and his own conflicted feelings….In desperation at the hospital, alone in the waiting room, he folds his hands in prayer and begins a long soliloquy addressed to the unseen Being beyond. This goes on for some minutes but doesn’t end in a feeling and declaration of faith. Instead, pulling back from the mystical abyss, he comes to his senses, pronounces the procedure nonsense.Lately he made a public statement to the press, admitting that as the Great Wei Ling Soo he’s been unable to expose Sophie as a fraud. But his near-encounter now with God has shaken him awake. He’s had a revelation. He doesn’t know how Sophie pulls off her miracles but knows with newfound certainty that they’re fake.He returns from the hospital to the Catledge estate to find Howard and Sophie in conversation. In effect what he hears from them (without them knowing it) solves the riddle for Stanley. Yet, strange to say, it seems to matter less to him that he knows certain truths concerning Sophie. Meanwhile his love for Olivia, always unstated but assumed, seems less sure now. He calls her to put off the engagement, even as Sophie wears the engagement ring bestowed on her by the ukulele-strumming Brice.How does Woody close the story? You can picture it. The title of the film is significant. The magic we see on the stage is also seen in the lives of people. In particular, the lives of Stanley and Sophie. Moonlight signifies romance. The night sky they looked up at while in the observatory is no longer menacing. Now the stars shine, even for Stanley, to illuminate love.Though the film is one of Woody’s larks, a serious existential question lies at its heart:Which is better, the bliss of ignorance or the suffering knowledge brings?Or, put another way:Which better, faith or reason?Stanley’s position:This is all we know — this life — and all we’ll ever know, and the thought of no longer knowing it fills us with a sorrow that’s inexpressible. The only antidote, if there is one, is to live fully right now before everything fades irretrievably into forever.What hope is there in such a bleak assessment?Woody’s answer is simple: love and the leap of faith required to believe in it. What love exactly is and where it comes from nobody knows, but everyone knows it exists and is here to be experienced. To love and be loved is our solace, perhaps even our purpose and meaning in life.Both head and heart are what fulfill and sustain us, Woody says, and it’s this that Stanley discovers in the end.

Instead of renting from Amazon to watch over 48 hours, or waiting for it to be screened one Christmas on TV, buying a dvd is like owning a movie to watch as many times over as you like with family and friends, and keep forever and not find that it has been taken off a streaming platform'Magic in the Moonlight' is an unusual story, with one scene quite like a prequel to the romance scene in 'La La Land', set in a planet observatory with a giant telescope pointing at the heavenly stars. Emma Stone as a young emerging star and 'clairvoyant', while Colin Firth is charming as ever and cynical too, as a stage magician who does not believe in magic, only in tricks - and is out to expose her 'tricks'. As 'fate' would have it, these two were meant to meet and maybe the magic is not so much in the moonlight but in her smile that would brighten everyone's day .... this movie will put a smile on anyone's face too.Amazon :-)

Funny and entertaining feel good film

Disappointing film. I had really looked forward to seeing this as I love Colin Firth, but this film bored me to death. It was just one long speech by Colin Firth. The story could have been so much better.....also it was so unlikely that he and the young girl would get together that it was almost laughable. Well acted but a lousy script. Thumbs down for this one!

Of all Woody Allen's films, this is probably the most enjoyable one. The story of carmudgeonly stage magician Stanley being tasked with unmasking delightful psychic Sophie as a fraudster is entertaining, the 1920s setting in the south of France in summer is beautiful, the cinematography is outstanding, and the soundtrack with many favourites from the period is well chosen. Add to that a wonderful cast led by the delectable Emma Stone and the always watchable Colin Firth and you get an hour and a half of pure escapism. Pour yourself a glass of wine, curl up on the couch with the dog (or cat), and enjoy!Lovely young medium Sophie (Emma Stone), managed by her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), is in France at the invitation of the wealthy Catledge family. During her seances she keeps Mrs. Catledge (Jacki Weaver) happy with messages from her late husband, reassuring her she was the one and only love in his life. Her son Bryce (Hamish Linklater) is smitten with the lovely medium. He serenades her and plans to marry her. His sister Caroline believes she is a fraud and, at the advice of magician Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney), hires his friend, the eminent stage magician and expert on metaphysical matters Stanley (Colin Firth), to unmask her. Stanley is disagreeable and condescending towards everybody. Sophie counters his hostility with a smile and a positive attitude. Will Stanley be able to prove she is a fraud, or will Sophie be able to change Stanley's cynical outlook on life?The acting is quite wonderful all round. Colin Firth is cast somewhat against type as an arrogant and disagreeable cynic and seems to have enormous fun with the role. While it's impossible to like his character, it's a joy to watch him on the screen. Emma Stone is drop dead gorgeous in 1920s period costumes as the uplifting Sophie, and her performance is flawless. The supporting actors are all top notch, Hamish Linklater is amusing as the naive millionaire playboy, Jacki Weaver is pure gold as the needy rich widow, Simon McBurney's is the most Allen-esque character in the piece, the meek magician overshadowed by his famous rival Stanley, and the grand dame of English acting Eileen Atkins makes an appearance as Stanley's spinster aunt. Also worth a mention is the short cameo of Ute Lemper as the Berlin cabaret singer belting out a song. Nice touch that.The DVD quality is good. Both picture and sound are great. The cast interviews included in the extra features are fun to watch.

Wrong format won't play in my area, Maine.