Review: 'The Illusionist' Astounds

With the film The Triplets of Belleville (2003) animator/director Sylvain Chomet released one of the most entertaining and beloved French films of recent years, rivaling perhaps only Amélie for popularity in the United States and settling a new standard for art-house animation of any nationality. Though a very different film The Illusionist lives up to Chomet’s meticulous animation standards, and is a fitting epilogue to the work of French film icon Jacques Tati.

The Illusionist is one of those movies that’s worth watch with wide-open eyes, and more than a tad bit of patience. An homage to Jacques Tati, the former mime turned film actor and director, The Illusionist is also an adaptation of one of Tati’s most personal projects, an un-filmed screenplay that dates back to the 1950s. The classic feel of The Illusionist is unavoidable, and maybe a little over-bearing.

Chomet’s film does Tati justice by maintaining the feel of a classic French film translated into ink and watercolor. Tati is considered as something of a later-era French Charlie Chaplin, so you can imagine the pressure on Chomet to do the material justice in animation. He succeeds, mostly, though it helps to keep in mind that the original script for The Illusionist was meant as a poetic love letter to his estranged teenage daughter. This fact makes the conclusion of The Illusionist seem about five times as depressing, not that it needs it.

Set in the 1950s in the lushly illustrated backdrops of Paris, rural Scotland and Edinburough The Illusionist follows Tatischeff (Tati’s real last name), talented but unappreciated magician who is forced to work smaller and smaller venues as he is faced with disinterest and competition from emerging rock’n roll acts. The beleaguered Tatischeff does his best to maintain his dignity while clinging to his obsolete art form, but soon he finds himself performing in the Scottish backcountry, where the town pub has just gotten it’s first light-bulb and where he meets his one and only fan.

The impressionable young girl, Alice, follows Tatischeff to Edinburough and the whimsical Little Joe Hotel. Staffed by midgets and populated by failed vaudeville performers this is the setting where The Illusionist’s charm and humor really hits it’s stride, that is before hitting you with several subtly depressing scenarios as Tatischeff is forced into worse and worse jobs to support his platonic love.

The storytelling maintains a chaste restraint, reminiscent of Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, which is admirable in a sense, but a bit narratively under-whelming when added to the lack of dialogue. Tatischeff and Alice support each other lovingly and then drift apart towards a bittersweet ending. The last sequences are profoundly sad, but are directed to near-perfection as the gorgeous medieval city of Edinburough swallows up the two characters and sends them on their separate fates.  

Though The Illusionist may stand on it’s own visually it does help to have seen one or two Tati films such as Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon Uncle (1958) or Play Time (1967) to get a sense for his clever physical humor, poetic sentimentality and love of dialogue-less interactions that nevertheless manage to be funny and touching.

The only problem with The Illusionist, perhaps, is that it doesn’t convey Tati’s humor enough. It’s a slow but charming film without any discernable talking (the characters mainly mumble in two or three languages) but Chomet’s flair for visual storytelling shines through with tiny character ticks, expressions, and looks. Chomet seems able draw more life into side characters such as a mischievous rabbit or a depressed clown than most commercial animation can get out of a whole movie.

Visually, The Illusionist is a hand-drawn feast for the eyes with incredibly detailed watercolor backgrounds and distinct, caricature-like character designs. Chomet is clearly the sort of animator that they don’t make anymore, with perhaps the exception of Miyazaki. Every frame feels like a rich, well-constructed illustration, and in tone the movie sticks closely to that of a humorous but sentimental silent film. It may not be as wacky as The Triplets of Belleville, but it more than makes up for it in substance and the slow-build to the ending is well worth the payoff.

Catch The Illusionist at the March 11 through March 17. Check showtimes here.