Two Plot Holes (SPOILERS)

The first one isn't a plot hole because her family is never even a factor in the movie. She also could have been independent of them seeing as how she was living with the Crown Prince. For the second, you have to take into account that the stable wasn't a "crime scene" per se because no one was ever found dead there. People witnessed her being carried off to an unknown location on a horse...so how could the stable be the scene of a crime? The crime scene is where the body actually is, if anything it would have been the creek where Sophie was found.

Life isn't about finding yourself...life is about creating yourself!

Agreed. I could accept the scene where the impostor coroner gives the gem to the Inspector, but I found it nonsensical that the Inspector happened to catch the glimpse of something in the stable stall and then be able to find another gem with the actual locket at a far later time.

Come to think of it, no... I can't accept the scene of the first gem being valid evidence. How would the first gem become stuck in the folds of the Duchess's dress in the first place and had not shaken loose during the trotting while upon the horse and then not wash away from in the lake? You would think the Inspector would have gave this some crucial thought as it would surely been a strange occurrence.

If the impostor coroner had said that he found the little gem in her corset or something to that effect, that would have made some sense.

As far as the Duchess's family, the Duchess could have pre-planned her fake death with her family. The only trouble is that I don't buy that because royal families expect far too much from their offspring and the Duchess's family would certainly not have allowed her to run off with a lowly magician. The fake funeral would certainly be a plot hole in itself. How would the impostor coroner finish the task of having a body delivered to Hungary? Maybe the coroner was real, but paid off. Although, I highly doubt that Eisenheim would risk trying to pay off a coroner that would entail being jailed or worse. Being a paid impostor coroner, how did everyone accept that the old fellow was the official town's coroner and the real coroner missed the high priority call to examine the body of a Duchess?

Oh, my... I'm really digging way too deep, aren't I?

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And that's when cheese was born.

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No. Suspending disbelief has to do with accepting the universe the film is set in. I accept the magic in Lord of the Rings as common to that universe. I suspend disbelief that Peter Parker could make webshooters because there's a sci-fi aspect to Spiderman.

Plot holes are not cause for suspending disbelief. Plot holes are cause for issues in the story. To go back to Spiderman, if his webshooters were distroyed, but then he uses one again a little later when he obviously didn't have time to rebuild it, then its a plot hole.

Someone not cleaning that stable is not consistent with the movie universe. It is a plot hole.

I also found the idea of having evidence lying around in a stable for many days (It appeared to me as if weeks had passed, with Eisenheim faking grief etc) without being discovered or at least cleaned out, preposterous, but I was willing to overlook that.
What annoyed me a whole lot more are the gemstones.

1. Eisenheim supposedly took them during his little sword trick at the Hofburg - this means he was either trying to rob the crown prince, or was already at that moment planning on framing him - far before he has valid reason to think that Sophie is still in love with him.
of course he MIGHT have somehow gotten his hands on those stones afterwards, or Sophie might have removed them from the sword right at the scene in the stables (But this would make the flashback of the sword-trick pretty superfluous).

2. How is it that killing someone with a jewel studded sword by stabbing them in the neck is likely to make jewels fall from their sockets AT THE LOWER PART near the hilt of the sword?! Did he ram the entire thing into her from head to toe? This was probably just overlooked, since it would have been just as easy to use the jewels at the other end of the sword, but it made me cringe nonetheless.

I think joolztoolz best explained it:

"This is another cool part. The inspector doesn't check her pulse. He holds her hand and visually inspects her wound. Eisenheim had something in a vial he packed into a suitcase for her that must have put her in a state that feined death and he had an antidote. Since she was found in the water, that would have lowered her body temperature somewhat. All the inspector did was to possibly see if rigor mortis had set it in to determine the time of death perhaps.

Eisenheim planned everything from the start. He was one step ahead of everybody. Remember at the beginning when she asks him to make them both disappear? He tells her when they're teenagers that there's a guy in China that can make anything disappear. He eventually goes there.

It seems he did have mystical talents. The sword trick was cool. He already knew he was going to frame the Prince before he ever showed up at the castle.

I liked the movie--Eisenheim was way ahead of everybody."



"Son of a submariner!" - Kefka Palazzo

In the winter in Germany many people wouldn't clean the stables because it would help keep the horses warm. If the locket was small enough not to be picked up by a pitchfork then the stall could have been cleaned without necessarily finding it (unlikely but possible). The place wasn't a crime scene because it was property of the prince and the police had no jurisdiction there. The fact that the stones aren't realistic evidence doesn't really matter. He left them there so that the inspector would associate the wound with the Prince's sword, whether it would stand up as factual evidence is irrelevant.

"She rode away on the horse from that stable. There is no indication the horse was ever returned - the stable is still empty when the inspector visits. So why would it be cleaned?"

We see the horse walk back by itself and the camera pans around it and we see blood on it.

Unfortunately, those aren't only plot holes. The film is full of them and for me it ruined the enjoyment of it.

The first BIG one is why go on with the entire charade? Everyone thought Sophie was dead, police arrested a suspect and Eisenheim could have just gone from Vienna, pair up with Sophie somewhere and live happily ever after. No one would look for them. Sophie wouldn't be able to use her real name anyway. So, why did he do it? Nothing in his character implied that he cared for the country. He even said when they made love that it was practically only his love for her that brought him back (the one big mystery he couldn't solve).

It is unlikely that he went with the scheme just to be safe from the crown prince. Since everyone thought Sophie was dead and a scapegoat was in jail, no one would look for them. Sure, there is one in a million chance that somewhere someone would recognize here but it is million times less risky than taking on the crown prince and the entire police. There is really no logic in what he did.

Compared to that, all other plot holes are minor - stables that are not cleaned ever, what happened with the body and the burial, how did inspector figured it all out (he couldn't have known all the details), the fact that chief inspector was laughing when he found out that he was responsible for crown princes death because of a crime crown prince didn't commit (yes, he was a scumbag but chief inspector knew that before),

Very amateurish, with the big plot twist at the end to confuse us and hopefully divert our attention from the big plot holes.

All they needed to do was send a different body to her family for burial. It would have taken several days to get there anyway. No one would have bothered to check it was her body. he family could have been easily fooled with a fake body.

The stable thing was a big set up. When her apperation says that her locket is missing that was a cue given to the police guy to search the stable. Someone was working with the countess from the inside. Helped plant the locket or steal the gem and plant it in the stable.

The entire plan was hatched on the day they had their romantic encounter. Hence her unusual boldness in confronting the crown prince. She provoked him but also ensured that he was very drunk too drunk to remember. There was probably someone at the stable waiting for them, or she did the whole thing herself. He probably never stabbed her. He may have passed out and then she removed the gems form the sword sprayed her self and horse with stored blood.

The directors wanted the illusions to be convincing enough to enthrall a movie audience so CGI is permitted.

This is one of the best movies I have seen.