of what we've lost in cinema. Practical Magic 2 is a new fantasy drama and sequel to the 1998 cult classic with the same name. It was directed by Susanne Bier, and it's based on Alice Hoffman's novel The Book of Magic. In it the tall and handsome Lee Pace (47) plays an immobilized, cursed professor of magic named Ian Wright who's naked in bed and under an evil spell when Sandra Bullock (62) and Nicole Kidman (59)'s characters arrive at his appartment in London.
Pace had to lie completely nude and covered in prosthetic tattoos for his very first day of filming. So the two actresses enter the bedroom to undo the curse, standing over his character and discussing his body while he had to stay still with his eyes closed. It all made me annoyed and not because of the nudity nor two mature women discussing a younger nude man. No, I was thinking of how Alec Guinness wonderously entered Great Expectations (1946) just by opening a door.
The moment involved an unstuck door as Guinness's intro. When Pip (John Mills) goes to visit his new lodgings in London, he finds the door to the apartment stuck. Herbert Pocket (Guinness) arrives carrying groceries, struggles with the awkward door, and bursts in with cheerful energy that completely shifts the tone of the movie. Pip's world was dark, gothic, and tense. Guinness's character literally and figuratively opens a door to lightheartedness and comedy.
Yes, I missed that in Practical Magic 2. I'm afraid that it's yet another one of Hollywood's "unpolished". David Lean's movies, of which Great Expectations was his first as a master cinematic director and dates already from way back in the last century, were truly great because he combined breathtaking visual scale with rigorous editing precision and deep, intimate human emotion. Those elements are now often disregarded for special effects and other production demands.
