Movies began as trickery, a game that science played on the eye. Film is a series of photographs passing through a projector so quickly that the eye believes the images on them are moving. That lie, of moving pictures, seemed like magic to early spectators and, when all the conjuring arts and techniques are aligned, seem so today. Viewers still allow themselves to be fooled by the director: the illusionist-in-chief.
So The Illusionist, based on a story by Steven Millhauser, is the perfect title for any movie that wants you to consider the first principle of cinema: take nothing you see...