The Illusionist

I've finally gotten the chance to view Sylvain Chomet's "The Illusionist". It was everything I was expecting and more. A beautifully crafted film from start to end, magnificent compositions, exquisite lighting and colors, and the typical character design style that Chomet is now famous for, but most importantly the characters and stories were original and refreshing. The physical acting of the character animation is what I marveled at most, the performances were amazing to say the least, not quite as caricature-ish as his Belleville, but precise and delicate to say the least. The script was penned by France's equivalent of Charlie Chaplin, Jacques Tati, and Chomet was given permission to adapt it by Tati's daughter, Sophie Tatischeff, who died before she could see the completed project.

Chomet has a pretty good claim to be one of the greatest European animators of our age. He managed to make a dark, individualist, almost-wordless story about a top-class cyclist, his club-footed granny and a bizarre transatlantic kidnap plot sufficiently appealing to a mainstream audience to garner two Oscar nominations, $7m at the US box office and healthy international sales on DVD.

In the four years since Belleville Rendezvous (aka Les Triplets de Belleville) Chomet has flirted with several major studios, but wrong-footed just about everyone who thought they knew what he should do next. Now, his newest film, "The Illusionist" is exquisitely drawn and bathed in beautiful light, each shot carefully hand-crafted by an army of animators, together they form a visual love song to the Capital from one of the world's most acclaimed animation filmmakers of our time. The film tells the tale of a French conjurer, the illusionist of the title, who is struggling to find work in 1950s Paris, as his public desert him for the new-fangled rock 'n' roll. He accepts a gig on a Scottish island, Iona, which has only just got electricity, where he falls for a local girl, and together they travel to Edinburgh.

Chomet's admiration for Tati can already be seen in Belleville, in which his characters watch Tati's 1949 classic Jour de Fete. It was to secure permission for this that Chomet first contacted Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff. Tati wrote the story about a traveling entertainer meeting a young girl alog the way and she tags along during his tour. But Tati died before making it the film. Sophie liked the style of Triplets and didn't want this film to be produced unless it was made through animation.

Chomet had always admired the physicality and inventiveness of Tati's comedy, and the way in which it does not rely on dialogue. The magician at the heart of the story is a foreigner, unable to understand the language and the accents of the town he's in. Chomet, set up a studio in the heart of Edinburgh after falling in love with the city while at the Capital's film festival in 2003. He moved with wife Sally to North Berwick, while his studio Django Films, was set up in the New Town with the past few years being spent working on The Illusionist.

The end result to Chomet's tireless work and passion for the craft is is the story of a stage magician - possibly not a very good one (and with an ill-tempered rabbit) — faced with the prospect of an audience that no longer exists, living in a world that no longer has a place for him or indeed for any of the simpler entertainments of his day. (There’s a bit of Chaplin’s Limelight (1952) and his A King in New York (1957) in here, too). Our magician sets out for London in hopes of a warmer reception, but things are even worse there—except that he gets an offer from an exceedingly drunk and unintelligible Scotsman to travel north and perform there.

Appearing at first in a small town, things do seem to go better, especially with the young serving girl, Alice, who is entranced by Tatischeff’s magic and touched by his kindness to her. But there is a hint of trouble to come when his act is followed by a jukebox being hauled out to play the pop tunes of the day. Plus, there’s an obvious limit to how long you can keep going with the same tricks in a town with a limited audience, so—now accompanied by Alice—he makes his way to Edinburgh to try his luck at the dying music hall there. They make their home in a boarding house specifically geared to—and populated by—other music hall artistes, none of whom are doing any better, as illustrated by an alcoholic ventriloquist and a suicidal clown.

Both the downward spiral—and the fact that Alice will ultimately gravitate toward her own age group (again, there’s the specter of Chaplin)—are inevitable, but it makes neither arc any less moving. The film’s final scenes—especially a note written by Tatischeff — are among the most genuinely heartbreaking scenes you're likely to see. (Though there is one final gag if you stay till the end of the credits.)

The Illusionist is like a seance that brings to life scenes from the 50s with eerie directness, in a way that glitzy digital animation or live-action period location work could somehow never do. Something in the unassuming simplicity of the composition allows the viewer to engage directly with the world being conjured up. This is, after all, a film for which the 1950s is the present-day. The visions of the old King's Cross railway station in London, or the old boat-train, or Edinburgh with its lonely seaside-cry of seagulls, are all weirdly like a remembered dream of a fictional childhood. Everything is paradoxically, vividly present. So I beg you, do not miss this beautiful film.