"Magicians: Life in the Impossible" is a documentary that fails to pull a rabbit out of its hat. The film follows several professional magicians over a couple years. This approach to documentary filmmaking can capture both magic and the mundane. Unfortunately, "Magician" captures more mundane than magic. It never elevated the material beyond the myopic "day in the life" to capture a larger epiphany on the human condition. We see the individual magicians hustle for bookings, have relationship issues, and have moms that are proud of them, like non-magicians.
The filmmakers also make a possibly necessary but unfortunate choice to not show how magic is done. We hardly ever see the magicians slaving in the workshop creating new tricks, nor do we ever receive more than a simplistic understanding of why these individuals became magicians.
It appears most magicians get their start because they are given magic tricks as a gift when they are young. However, were they trying to disappear from a difficult home life, bullying, to become popular, or impress a significant other? What is the psychology of becoming a magician. The interior life of the subjects are never illuminated to a degree that provides real insight.)
There is one noteworthy relationship captured in the film between a young magician in Las Vegas and his patron, who takes him from north strip to south strip. The filmmakers should have probably focused on the two of them, because their snippy, quirky, and funny repartee accentuates that the other featured magicians lack lives that depict anything new about the human condition.
All films must reveal truth, and documentaries more often do than other films, but sometimes the truth captured on film is not that magical.
The filmmakers also make a possibly necessary but unfortunate choice to not show how magic is done. We hardly ever see the magicians slaving in the workshop creating new tricks, nor do we ever receive more than a simplistic understanding of why these individuals became magicians.
It appears most magicians get their start because they are given magic tricks as a gift when they are young. However, were they trying to disappear from a difficult home life, bullying, to become popular, or impress a significant other? What is the psychology of becoming a magician. The interior life of the subjects are never illuminated to a degree that provides real insight.)
There is one noteworthy relationship captured in the film between a young magician in Las Vegas and his patron, who takes him from north strip to south strip. The filmmakers should have probably focused on the two of them, because their snippy, quirky, and funny repartee accentuates that the other featured magicians lack lives that depict anything new about the human condition.
All films must reveal truth, and documentaries more often do than other films, but sometimes the truth captured on film is not that magical.