What makes it different from others?

Am I Missing Something?

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

You may of course disagree but John Fowles sometimes "goes beyond the edge" and, in my view, after "The Magus" and "The French Lieutenant's Woman" he may have depleted his more interesting sources of literary creativity. As I look into "The Magus" I see in it a magnificent deconstructing of reality where symbologies & myth become the only identifiable elements in an unknown territory. I know of at least one Ph.D. Thesis dealing with similar topics here in Spain, at Comillas University, by a young American philosopher called M.Armenteros. He has seen the film and related its contents to some contemporary features of agnosticism. In "The Magus" the whole of reality is questioned. Only symbols appear as if to soften the sense of total absurdity. But even such symbols are discomforting, the meanings of life and death, deprived of transcendence, wind up getting closer and closer to the fog of mythology (i.e. "nothingness"). I interpreted the "Magus" as a film which attempts to depict hopelesness through absurdity. It is not about "climb every mountain" but rather "doubt every faith". In the book, the element of personal and political "Freedom" ("Elevteria") played a larger role in that deconstructed vision of a supposedly questionable reality. For both Fowles and Sartre our lives are an absurd where freedom becomes a mirage that distracts us from the only basic reality: death. Freedom is just meandering across our own hells. Even if I disagree with it I find the film discomforting indeed but worthy of watching and far better that the cheesier version of "The French Lieutenant's Woman".

Being an arty psychological puzzle - and one which might well be not just incomprehensible but also meaningless - I'd always been interested in checking this film out; the fact that it was a critical and box-office failure made it doubly fascinating. Still, what must have seemed like the turkey of the year when new has, with time, acquired a certain charm all its own! On the surface, the film is certainly good-looking (shot by Billy Williams in numerous European locations, mainly a sunny Greek island) and boasts a fine score by Johnny Dankworth (which, in keeping with the film's theme, seems oddly unsuited to what's going on); the star cast responds competently to the mystifying plot (structured like a Chinese box - where past events are constantly re-enacted, identities exchanged and, of course, nothing is what it seems). Still, while Anthony Quinn may be everybody's idea of a Greek larger-than-life character, here he is saddled with an unbecoming Picasso hairstyle and, underneath it all, Michael Caine may well have been mirroring the bewilderment felt by his character since, in his autobiography, he singles out THE MAGUS as his worst film ever (though I personally would beg to differ and choose THE ISLAND [1980] for that unenviable spot)! Actually, it all reminded me of L'INVENZIONE DI MOREL (1974) - another obscure island-set drama where a man intrudes upon a remote community sharing an exclusive fantasy existence: incidentally, that film was partly shot in my native country and also featured Anna Karina (who in THE MAGUS has the rather thankless role of Caine's jilted girlfriend - though her performance is quite good and his callous treatment of Karina has a strong bearing on the main character's ultimate personal growth) as the mystery woman who captivates the hero; with this in mind, as I lay watching the film under review, I wondered at the possibilities had Karina exchanged her role with that of Candice Bergen (who's too young for her role but great to look at nonetheless).Then again, the subject matter was far more congenial to a Joseph Losey rather than the journeyman Guy Green...and one can only surmise how different - and more significant - the film would have been in the former's hands! As it stands, there are some undeniably compelling passages but also a lot of shallow modishness (the skin-flick with Bergen and Julian Glover[!] at the climax is plain risible) and lame moralizing (the WWII flashback scenes, featuring a bizarrely but effectively cast Corin Redgrave as the Nazi Commandant, being especially maudlin).At several points towards the end, it feels like the story is coming to some sort of conclusion but it just goes on and on, peeling off yet another layer to the meandering enigma; to get an inkling of what the film is like, just imagine watching two of the more cerebral episodes of the cult TV series "The Prisoner" (1967-68) back-to-back! In hindsight, the film's epitaph may have been delivered by none other than Woody Allen who once remarked that, if he had to live his life all over again, he would do everything exactly the same...except watch THE MAGUS. As for myself, I wouldn't mind taking another look at it in future: by then I'd be over the initial "shock" and could perhaps appreciate it better...

I loved the gorgeous Greek scenery but the story, which is not something you can follow anyway, was even harder to follow in the movie. I cannot imagine how anyone watching the movie can get any kind of grip on it if they have not read the book, and then, like me, they would probably wonder why Australian Allison turned into French Anne, and many other seemingly pointless changes in the story. The mysteries in the book seemed to be chopped up or left out in the movie. I saw it when it first came out and had the same problems with it then, since I had read the book several times. I recently watched it with my granddaughter (very intelligent at 20 and usually into movies I like) who was mostly amazed at how young Michael Caine and Candace Bergen were in it, but otherwise could not imagine why one would watch it except for the scenery.

Since THE MAGUS is a confusing puzzle that really has no solution, one should sit back and enjoy the scenery. Set on a "remote Greek island," it stars a very uptight Michael Caine as a teacher working at a school for boys who gets caught up in mind games with local wacko/mystery man Anthony Quinn and his daffy girlfriend Candice Bergen. Quinn, looking like Pablo Picasso with white hair and striped sailor shirt, is actually pretty good but Caine looks like he's ready to explode. Bergen, although stunning, should NOT put on a British accent EVER. She's not very good at that type of thing. Guy Green's direction is fine, but unless you have infinite patience with the circular logic of the film, you will not enjoy it. A real sour note is the casting of the effervescent Anna Karina in the completely joyless role of Caine's girlfriend. After seeing her in the likes of A WOMAN IS A WOMAN and A BAND APART, her presence here is quite jarring.