Bradley Cooper burns down a house, then hops a rattler to a carnival someplace. Mostly keeping his mouth shut, he learns how to do a mentalist and spook act from David Strathairn, while boffing Strathairn's girlfriend Toni Collette and lusting for electric girl Rooney Mara. Strathairn croaks from bad booze Cooper gave him by mistake, he and Miss Mara shuffle off to Buffalo, where they do a mentalist act and, at the behest of psychiatrist Cate Blanchett he communicates with the dead for the rich and powerful.
It's based, like the 1947 flop starring Tyrone Power, on William Lindsay Gresham's novel. It's a much more accurate telling of the story, not only for the stuff the Hays Office made them leave out, but the shocker of the ending. The visuals, as you would expect from director Guillermo del Toro, are impeccable, from the ghastly exhibits at the side shows, to the Biedermeyer decor of Doctor Blanchett's office -- clearly she studied in Vienna. Location shooting in Buffalo and nearby cities help. The color palette looks like late 1940s Fox Dramatic Technicolor: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN.
If there is a problem with this 150-minute movie, it's that it's edited too short. The first half, set at the carny, seems leisurely enough, until everything reappears at the end, showing it was all foreshadowing. The Buffalo sequence is edited so tightly that you can't figure out Miss Blanchett's motives, and the ending feels rushed. But I stayed through to the end, with nary a bathroom break, despite the urge.
It's based, like the 1947 flop starring Tyrone Power, on William Lindsay Gresham's novel. It's a much more accurate telling of the story, not only for the stuff the Hays Office made them leave out, but the shocker of the ending. The visuals, as you would expect from director Guillermo del Toro, are impeccable, from the ghastly exhibits at the side shows, to the Biedermeyer decor of Doctor Blanchett's office -- clearly she studied in Vienna. Location shooting in Buffalo and nearby cities help. The color palette looks like late 1940s Fox Dramatic Technicolor: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN.
If there is a problem with this 150-minute movie, it's that it's edited too short. The first half, set at the carny, seems leisurely enough, until everything reappears at the end, showing it was all foreshadowing. The Buffalo sequence is edited so tightly that you can't figure out Miss Blanchett's motives, and the ending feels rushed. But I stayed through to the end, with nary a bathroom break, despite the urge.