The illusionist - how Romeo & Juliet should have been

I like this film very much! Protagonist is Edward. As a boy he becomes fascinated with magic and starts practising every day. This causes him to be scorn by rich boys, but at the same time fascinates a girl, Sophie. They become friends, but unfortunately she's a duchess, so there's lots of people who won't allow her to choose her friends or her life. They are forced apart. She goes on being a duchess, and he goes away. 15 years later he reappears as a great illusionist, and he meets her again. And this time they are determined to stay together. Unfortunately, she's sort of engaged to the prince.
Edward Norton plays the illusionist, now calling himself Eisenheim. He's great, and really cool. I liked their love scene, when he suddenly kisses her, and then you understand they are loving each other, but you actually see nothing of them. Not really . I liked that. I think that nudity in films is almost always cheap and unnecessary. I say almost because it's unfair to be absolute about anything. There might be a case in which is necessary to the story, but it's so rare that right now no example comes to mind.
I liked also their conversation after that, when he told her of his wandering, and of how his heart could never forget her (aww), and since after 15 years she still wears the necklace he gave her with his picture, it's pretty clear the same applies to her. They want to be together, he asks her to run away with him, but she's afraid, she knows the prince will never let her, and here she says the most important line of the film. She says that 'as long as we are alive, he'll always come after us'. So he starts planning his greatest illusion. Which, to be fair, is never entirely explained to the viewers.
What they want everyone to believe: that they are planning to run away, but when she leaves the prince he is drunk, gets angry and stabs her with his sword. Then Eisenheim is heartbroken, stops performing for a while, but then starts again with a bunch of chinese workers. He puts on a new show, where he can summon the souls of dead people, apparently. First a young man, then a child, then of course, Sophie. All of this to gets the inspector curious about things, he starts believing that the prince really did kill her, and when he thinks he has the proof, he writes to the imperator. The prince then kills himself. Problem solved. Then at the end we have a scene much like in the usual suspect, when the detective understands everything. Here is inspector Uhl who finally understands that it was all a big illusion in order to free her. We see how she drugged the prince before staging her own murder, how then he gave her a potion or antidote so that she comes back to life, very much what should have happened in Romeo and Juliet had it really been about the love story.
So in the end we see them together, who knows where, living in a little wooden house, no more riches and jewels for her, but finally what she actually wanted. Him and  happiness.
Hooray! Good! But they don't explain to us how he created the illusion of the ghosts, both on stage or walking down the theatre. People would try to touch them, and the hand would go through it as if it was a hologram. A really perfect illusion, so perfect that it was probably impossible to explain, so they didn't. But this time I'm not at all bothered by this, the important bit is that they showed how Sophie 'died'. After all, he's an illusionist, so it's right and proper that you don't know how they do it, it would take away the magic :-p It's coherent with the story, so it's okay.
Paul Giamatti is inspector Uhl. Jessica Biel is Sophie, and although I'm not a big fan I'll say she was right here. A good Sophie. But the big star is Edward Norton, great.