Ah, magic. It feels like just last month I was dressed up as a sorcerer OC at a film festival. Oh wait, that WAS last month. But I do love magic from time to time, have some actual magician friends, and have had to put up with a significant amount of Harry Potter thanks to a younger brother who went full geek in his youth. Magicians, Card tricks, the works. What would we do without all of them? Have you ever wondered why magicians care for their cards more than a wand or a very tall hat or even a bunny? What is it about cards? Why are they the most common trick? Let’s learn some magic together with this documentary that focuses on cards, and will most likely be a target for links from casino advertisers who want to collab on here sometimes.
The film features an amazing man I’ve actually worked with in the past, Shawn Farquhar. Not only do I consider him a top magician friend, but he was nice enough to give me and my gf at the time front-row seats to a magic show he hosted. Shawn starts off with explaining how a deck of cards is the equivalent to a swiss army knife. He dwells deep into his backstory on how he knows about magic, how he started out, and where he got featured. Now for his interest in cards, Shawn started out carting large props everywhere, but when his back started hurting, like it does to a lot of us when we reach that age, he decided to switch to sleight of hand. This happened in Beijing, China where he entered a contest and won. I’ve witnessed his tricks myself and the ‘card-puke’ as I call it is my personal favourite. After reading a book on cards, Shawn discovered how interesting they look, and inspected the history of the card designs. That goes into the first most important part: Where the design came from. Of course, nobody can really explain the design. Well, Shawn says they’re clues to a cold-case murder mystery. I did NOT see this coming, and apparently, neither did any of the people he chatted with. Shawn focuses further on the King of Hearts, who looks like he has two hands, and was stabbing himself in the head. But maybe that wasn’t the case. Given the hands looking different, could it be someone else killed him? But who killed the King of Hearts? Shawn packs up his suitcase and goes on a journey to find out.
His journey consists of Turnhout, Amboise, Paris, London, and Madrid. What does he find out? The possibility that the King of Hearts is King Charles VIII who died back in 1498. Yeah, did you know his wife Anne of Brittany wasn’t satisfied with the marriage? She tried to have kids but couldn’t and often spent her time alone because King Charles was out doing campaigns. In Shawn’s theory, he also believes that the Queen of Spades is Anne of Brittany due to her facing in another direction and some similiarities between a couple pieces of cloth she’s holding and the King of Heart’s tunic. So apparently, the King of Hearts was involved with the Queen of Spades? But there’s still some more questions coming out of all that. Was the Queen of Hearts involved? And how? If not, who was? And just how? Well, you’ll have to see the movie to find out. We also get the history of how cards were designed, what they were used for, their international usage everywhere, the fact that they were forbidden, how they are made, and Shawn gave us some other interesting stories of how cards helped people in more ways than expected, such as currency centuries ago in France and secret maps during WWII. Shawn also features conversations with people like Alexandra Duvivier, Michael Vincent, Juan Tamariz, and Richard Turner. Shawn observes their tricks, and makes plans to improve his own sleight of hand to make his act more advanced. Hence the title: Lost in The Shuffle. As he goes on his quest, Shawn learns to make the greatest trick of the year which is also an educational lesson in history dating back to years ago and telling a story nobody could’ve possibly considered, thus rewriting history.
I gotta say I learned a lot more than just my usual dose of history I get when I research ancient topics. Now I’m not even sure I can see my client named Brittany the same way ever again after learning about the French Region. But I”m still thrilled with how this was made, and enjoyed seeing the many different locations while witnessing the many different tricks. The interviews were astounding and told me a lot in terms of both magic and ancient times, the subjects themselves were completely genuine with lots of warmth adding charm to the whole thing. You may not learn how to do some of these card tricks in this documentary but you will learn the story of what I believe to be Shawn’s best card trick of all time, and you’ll learn some more stuff too. It’s all in the cards. The fate, the story, the past, whatever. I might just take up card reading myself and consult my own personal deck to see what my future holds.