THE MAGICIAN (2005):
A Critical Review

Rhys Lopez
MED231
Australian Cinema
April 2006

PART I: Film Information

Director: Scott Ryan
Writer: Scott Ryan
Cinematographer: Massimiliano Andrighetto
Producers: Scott Ryan, Michelle Bennet and Nash Edgerton.
Production: Blue-Tongue Films/Cherub Pictures/I Will Films Pty Ltd Australia
Released by: Hopscotch Films

Lead Actor: Scott Ryan as Ray Shoesmith. Ray is an ex-military Melburnian hitman with a wry sense of humour. He is opinionated and dominates everyone else in the film, yet at the same time is likeable and tolerant (for a hitman). Throughout the film he seems to fall deeper and deeper in love with the idea of creating his own folklore on film.

(Entire) Cast: Massimiliano Andrighetto as Max “Massimo” Totti. Max is Ray’s neighbour and friend. The film is shown through his camera, while he makes a documentary on the daily life of his hitman buddy. He stands up to Ray over comparatively small moral issues, while continuing to film (and later assist) him while he murders drug dealers and other underworld figures.

Ben Walker as Tony Rickards. Tony is a drug dealer who has a price on his head. He spends most of the film pleading with Ray to spare him, using every ploy he can think of.

Nathaniel Lindsay as Edna. Edna is a junkie who is suspected of burgling his ex-housemate Max. Ray decides to pay him a visit.

Kane Mason as Benny. Ray and Benny used to be friends, and Benny used to deal heroin for Ray’s current employer Freddy. Benny has since become a junkie, and the friendship is further complicated by Freddy instructing Ray to kill Benny for talking to the police.

Adam Ryan as Garage Victim. The first victim of Ray in the film, which basically shows that yes, he is in fact a hitman.

The cast and crew were comprised entirely of first timers, so discussion of their filmography is not applicable.

Release dates: film – 29th of September 2005
                       DVD & VHS – 29th of March 2006
                       It is to be released in UK and USA in May 2006
Budget: the film was made for approximately $3000. Distribution and advertising cost $450,000.
Box Office Figures: From its release in late Sept until the end of the year, The Magician made $160,405. In its opening week it earned $35,568, which is about 22% of its total for the year (Source: www.moviemarshal.com/boxaus2005.html). When compared to the budget for making the film this is a great success, but a failure considering the amount spent on advertising.
Awards and film festivals:

Reviews:

Other Information
http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/themagicianx08x03x06
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0461989/
http://www.moviemarshal.com/boxaus2005.html
http://www.popcorntaxi.com.au/Events.asp?Event_ID=412

Interviews
http://nofreelist.com/diary/?entry=25
http://www.abc.net.au/atthemovies/txt/s1469585.htm
http://www.smh.com.au/news/film/hell-of-a-journey/2005/09/08/1125772626078.html

 

Online Presence

Being that it is such a recent (and limited) Australian release, the Internet is pretty much the only source of information on The Magician. Unfortunately it will not be released in UK and US cinemas until May 2006, so all of the reviews are either from Australia or they are previews for international markets. Due to the underground nature of this student production, there aren’t even many of those. All of the online reviews fall into one of two categories (and sometimes both). The bigger category praises the film for its unique way of treating a familiar subject, for creating such an engaging film on a tiny budget, and most of all for Ryan’s brilliant performance. The other category criticises the film for being too derivative (often citing Tarantino films or the Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog).
In all of the interviews with Ryan, he comes across as a tortured artist who was at his wits end when he pulled this film together. In almost all that I have read, he mentions his manic depression, and how the success of the film was his own form of self-treatment.

Part II: Critical Review

 

Synopsis:
The Magician is a fictionalised documentary that follows hitman Ray Shoesmith around the streets of Melbourne while he kidnaps, threatens and sometimes murders small time underworld figures. We see Ray through the eyes (or camera lens) of his neighbour Max, who is making a student film about him. Ray debates unimportant issues in an ordinary way, covering topics like cars, cheating footballers and which stars were in The Dirty Dozen, then instantly switches back to his persona of menace and intimidation.

Plot:
The film is essentially three episodes edited together asynchronously, plus a whole lot of walking the streets of Melbourne, which functions as the character development and back-story. One storyline involves Ray demanding that Benny leave town before he is murdered for talking to the cops. Another directly involves the filmmaker Max, who inadvertently sets Ray upon the person he suspects burgled his home. The longest (and most dramatic) episode centres around a drug dealer named Tony, who doesn’t want to get killed and makes no secret of this fact.

Comments

The Magician is a testament to the brilliance of Scott Ryan. The film itself is pretty good, even though it drags at times, but it is Ryan as the lead that makes it so engaging. It takes a good 10 minutes to warm up, and for the viewer to accept that every scene will have Ray staring down the lens. However, once the flavour and pace of the film sets in it is thoroughly enjoyable.

It is what is commonly known as a mockumentary, although producer Nash Edgerton prefers it to be described as a fictionalised documentary. If there is a difference between the terms, it must be that rather than focussing on extreme characters for laughs, the Magician finds the humour in the ordinariness of the characters and dialogue (like every other decent Australian film). The grittiness that is inherent in most Australian cinema comes naturally to this one, as it is shot entirely on hand held DV. The bush shots look like they have been shot with a single torch mounted on the camera, and the lens is occaisionally grubby or wet, all of which adds to the doco feel.

Ray Shoesmith is really likeable, for a hired killer. He works for a smack dealer called Freddy whom we never see, and likes to throw around his opinions on drugs and crime and Wayne Carey. He is a magnetic, domineering figure to all those around him, completely relaxed because he is always in total control of the situation (the gun helps a good deal with this). When Benny begins to regret what he has said on camera, Ray says, “he’ll edit that out. Don’t worry”. The filmmaker Max, despite his bravado when dealing with Ray, says nothing of this editorial decision being made on his behalf.

But this part of his character contradicts what it is that makes us like him. While he is opinionated, he is also tolerant of disagreement in conversation. When he is not in his tough guy mode he seems to be perpetually about to break into a smile, as if the world amuses him. He forces the handcuffed, claustrophobic Tony into the boot of his car, then he flattens out the burger wrapper so Tony can eat more easily. While forcing Tony to dig his own grave, Ray gets a moral dilemma over eating Max’s last piece of chewing gum. The way he deals with Benny is another example of the contradictions of the caring bastard. He even makes his own paranoid homophobia mildly entertaining.

Ray is also coldly calculating (and often funny) when speaking about his work. He states that if ‘the cops have no body, what have they got? Just a missing person,” as the answer to why he remains at large. The opening scene shows him calmly outlining his plan of attack upon a victim in his own garage, saying with his broad ocker that once he has snuck in he’ll “give him the good news.” He loves talking to the camera, seemingly writing his own folklore, but gives details of his past in a very typical Aussie male fashion. Max asks him why he left the Army. He replies, “I didn’t leave I was discharged. I had a bit of a problem with a guy.”
“Like a superior?”
“Yeah. Had a bit of a personality clash.”
Ok, maybe not so impressive in print, but in context these lines are hilarious. Other reviewers compare him to Trainspotting’s Begbie or early Robert De Niro characters, but Ray is neither. At all times he is calm and friendly, switching to a calculated menace only when it temporarily suits his professional purposes.

Max, the European student filmmaker, is less entertaining but still an important part of what is arguably a buddy flick. He obviously looks up to Ray, and seems to try and prod him gently to assuage his guilt. But at the same time, he is strangely brave when confronting him (or coming onto him). We don’t see where this lack of fear comes from until 55 minutes in, when Tony alludes to Ray’s ethical code preventing him from killing non-criminals.

The rest of the characters are pretty unimpressive, with Benny (the friend) seemingly more scared of Ray than Tony (the target) is. It is the mundanity of the dialogue, centred on Ray, which makes the film so interesting. The film is often accused of being derivative of Quentin Tarantino’s films, as the criminals talk about regular stuff instead of constantly talking about being criminals, but every film in the crime genre has at least some nod to Tarantino’s work since the late 90s.

The Magician falls quite clearly into two genres. As a crime film, it is distinctly of a Tarantino flavour (as stated above and in countless other articles). In this it is similar to other Aussie crime films that have come before it, such as Two Hands, The Hard Word and to a lesser extent Chopper, as it successfully portrays the ordinariness and mundanity of Australian culture alongside the exciting gun violence.
The other genre that it resembles is the mockumentary. It creates a fascinating interaction between the filmmaker and his subject, and turns its lack of budget into an asset that illustrates how gritty and real the world of the ‘documentary’ is. Without this vehicle for telling the story, the film would be completely different and probably just another badly done cheap gangster movie.

All things considered, The Magician is a thoroughly entertaining film, but more importantly it shows how cheaply a movie can be made, providing you have talent. Through what it isn’t, it points out how even Australian films tend to favour big budgets and prettiness over substance.

Key Figures
Scott Ryan was a student filmmaker before The Magician, who had never produced, directed, written or acted in any professional capacity (according to www.imdb.com).

Nash Edgerton began his career in film at age 18 as a stuntman. He is credited with the stunts in over 50 films and TV series, as well as having directed, produced, acted and written for the screen. He directed the award winning Fuel, and has worked on Star Wars III, The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions, Dark City and many others.

Michelle Bennet began as a photographer’s agent in the 1980s, and later moved on to work with filmmaker Richard Lowenstein on many music videos, including those of INXS, Prince and U2. She was the one behind the 1990 documentary on U2 Lovetown, and in that same year formed the production house Cherub Pictures. In 2000 she produced the box office hit Chopper, which is what gives her the Aussie crime flick credibility.

Production and Release
Scott Ryan was a film student at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology when he put together The Magician. The entire cast and crew is made up of other RMIT students who owed him favours for working on their films, and it was shot in 10 days spread out over the course of a year. The budget for the production was about $3000 that Ryan has scrounged together from Centrelink payments.

At the WA premiere at Luna Cinemas, Scott Ryan had a question and answer session after the screening. At one point someone in the audience has the audacity to ask, “what was there to spend $3000 on?” Ryan, seemingly still in the character of Ray, responded with a mix of humour and irritation that we see throughout the film. Apparently the majority of the budget was spent on food for the crew, rental of the car and motel room, and the purchasing of the digital video camera.

After screening a 30-minute version at the St Kilda Film Festival, it caught the eye of producer/director/stuntman Nash Edgerton. He requested a copy with the idea of showing his brother (actor Joel Edgerton) who was thinking of making a mockumentary at the time. Ryan had no other copy of the short film, so he sent Edgerton the feature length version instead. Edgerton was even more impressed by the depth and humour of the central character, and convinced Michelle Bennet to co-produce the film with him. After fixing the sound and re-editing, the film was advertised widely in the indie media. These things combined cost a total of $450,000.
Since its release, the film has generated $160,405, of which $35,568 was in its opening week.

Critical Uptake
As can be seen in the bibliography of reviews, the majority thought The Magician was very good, and Ryan’s performance was brilliant. It was widely praised for being such a unique and engaging film on such a modest budget, but conversely it occasionally was panned for being too derivative and boring. It is said to draw too much from Quentin Tarantino films (particularly Reservoir Dogs) and the mockumentary about a serial killer Man Bites Dog. As it has only had a domestic release so far, we shall have to wait and see how the foreign critics take it when it premieres next month in the UK and USA.

The uptake of The Magician tells us a lot about the state of Australian film. Firstly it shows that the strength of the good Australian films lies in the exceptional performances of the mundane lives of the characters, not big budgets and visual effects (it had to be said somewhere in the article). It also illustrates both ends of the limited spectrum of films that Australia tends to produce, that is; quirky comedies and disturbingly dark films. If anything is to be learnt from the mistakes of The Magician, it is that its producers did not appreciate the film for what it was. Instead of releasing the film and allowing small advertisements and word of mouth to help it gain notoriety, they instead poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into advertising that it did not recover. They could have easily had a financially successful film based simply on the minimal budget it was made for, rather than try and treat it like a big-budget blockbuster designed to make back the advertising budget in the first weekend.

The big impact that The Magician will have on the Australian film landscape is that it will be a huge dose of encouragement to struggling filmmakers out there. Even I, someone with absolutely no prior interest in filmmaking, am somewhat inspired to pick up a camera after watching it.