Simon Magus **** (1999, Noah Taylor, Stuart Townsend, Ian Holm, Rutger Hauer, Sean McGinley) – Classic Movie Review 1788

Writer-director Ben Hopkins’s 1999 film is a sincere, atmospheric and enjoyable if occasionally slightly plodding Jewish fable of old Silesia. There the lanky simpleton Simon Magus – nicely played by Noah Taylor (the youth from Shine) – is made an outcast by the elders after saying he communes with the Devil and can curse the crops.

But, when dairy farmer Dovid Bendel (Stuart Townsend) asks the local squire Count Albrecht (Rutger Hauer) to sell him some of his land to build a railway station, he finds a rival in anti-Semitic businessman Maximillian Hase (Sean McGinley), who ruthlessly uses simple Simon to spy on the villagers.

So, there are plenty of interesting ingredients in the tale, and  they are pretty well stirred. In a good-looking, well set-up film, Wales makes a surprisingly successful stand-in for 19th-century Silesia. The intriguing, very mixed cast includes Embeth Davidtz as Leah, the widow who ignites Townsend’s flame, and Ian Holm as a wandering wiseman, Sirius or Boris or maybe the Devil.

But, although everyone acts capably, they speak the less than brilliant dialogue in different tongues – Aussie, Irish, Dutch and American. Amanda Ryan, Terence Rigby, Toby Jones, Jean Anderson, Katharine Schlesinger, Valerie Edmond, Kathryn Hunter and Maggie Steed also co-star.

Even if, in the end, it’s perhaps just Simon Minus, the result is a pleasing, intelligent and thought-provoking effort. Beware of pale imitations, though: a Hungarian film of this same title, written and directed by Ildikô Enyedi, was premiered just 10 days before this one.

Townsend as cast as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) but was replaced by Viggo Mortensen after four days of shooting. He made three movies with his fiancée Charlize Theron: Trapped (2002), Head in the Clouds (2004) and Æon Flux (2005). She thanked him in her Oscar acceptance speech (2004). They split in January 2010 after nine years together.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1788

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