To get over the ruckus or to add to it... (SPOILERS)
First of all, I'd appreciate it if nobody trolls this thread. My image of a troll is horrendous. I'd also encourage anyone to read my entire post before commenting on it. A few dry and minor jokes in my post, but hopefully you, the reader, can bear with it. Only trying to make a point, although it may or may not seem clear (I think my post is fine the way I wrote it and I'm not willing to change it. Interested to see what people gather from it and if there's any quarrel over it lol).
Anyways...
I've read some threads and I don't understand why people disliked the movie. I thought it was great. I didn't quite care for The Prestige when I saw it a time long enough from now, yet I can't recall why I didn't care for it. Just my preference I guess.
In my opinion, the "twist" is in any one person's own mind (a knot in ones brain perhaps), and it's how he or she unravels it. In other words, rather another word: theory. Anyone's theory shall be plausible as long as not proven not credible. How the twist was conceived can vary the effect of its predictability.
Certainly, the film was a romance. It involved Eisenheim and Sophie from beginning to end and portrayed a love connection between the two of them.
Yes, it was told in third person by the narrator, Inspector Uhl. Yes, it did involve magic.
Some about magic:
I've never know a magician to tell his or her tricks. It's the magician's job to entertain, and I was very entertained. Wondering how magic is performed adds to the entertainment; figuring it out, however, takes from the entertainment, although it may be more enlightening.
There are possibly many ways Eisenhower could've performed any of the tricks, including it being actual magic. Eisenhower may have just wanted people to believe his tricks were fake, only to stay fooled. Maybe some, maybe none, maybe all of the tricks he explains or writes out on paper could've been a part of his own plot.
Maybe we aren't supposed to know how the tricks are done. Maybe we're supposed to be entertained by them in complementing the romantic story. Who knows if the writer and director even thought or cared about this, or any argument made on these message boards? <--(rhetorical; please don't answer. Besides, I believe the writer/director of any movie just wishes to give an audience a story worth attending by ear or eye and/or perhaps prosper off it. He or she may not want to think in many ways the audience does. He or she may just want to display the flick relevant to how he or she wishes to see it and may not wish to defend or explain that reasoning.)
The magic tricks are all possible to be performed as tricks in real life as well as the movie. As for the tricks being magic, I know it's possible in being part of a movie, but I'm not sure if it's possible in real life.
Some about Inspector Uhl:
As I noticed on another thread, we also can't count out the fact that Uhl was an "unreliable narrator" and could've exaggerated the truth, let alone made any of it up. To me it sounds like this entire plot was made up by somebody, although perhaps influenced by other love stories and magicians. It's still a different plot in comparison to The Prestige. Just because they both have magicians in them doesn't mean that they need to rival each other.
Maybe Eisenhower, a master of diguises and magic/tricks, is Inspector Uhl covering for himself. Maybe he's really the Crown Prince who needed a cover for fleeing from a boring, luxurious, royal life and staged an entire story about a guy named Eisenower (including him as a child). Maybe Eisenhower, the Crown Prince, and Uhl are all three-in-one of the same person. Maybe it's Kaiser Soze! "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist" or even that he was someone else or three other people. This can get pretty "twist"-ed if there's even a twist at all in this motion picture straight-forwardly portraying romance.
Think about it or don't think about it... Just try to enjoy the movie. Try to be entertained. Try to be happy and imagine in your own way a cliche love story out of all of it. I did, and that's why I liked it. Thought it was great as well as the actig, could anything always ever be better.
Open your mind.
The movie's called "The Illusionist" so let yourself be illuded.