An Oscar nominee in the best animated feature category, “The Illusionist” presents a very different look and feel from the other two nominees, “Toy Story 3” and “How to Train Your Dragon.”
It comes from the director of that quirky animated hit “The Tr
iplets of Belleville,” Sylvain Chomet. He acquired the rights to an old, unfilmed screenplay — like, 50 years old — by the filmmaker-comedian Jacques Tati, a true master of visual comedy.
Adapting it to suit his own purposes, Chomet has turned “The Illusionist” into a blend of his style and Tati’s. He’s increased the gambit by drawing his main character, a magician, as Tati himself.
For fans of Jacques Tati, this will surely be a welcome sight; it’s like seeing a well-defined star in a new movie 30 years after his death. Chomet has the body language down: Tati’s tall frame, perpetually leaning forward, his arms thrust out straight by his sides. The voice is no problem. Except for a few multi-lingual mutterings, this movie has almost no dialogue anyway.
In fact, according to some evidence, Tati did not intend to play the lead role in “The Illusionist” himself. You can understand Chomet’s desire to revive this character, just the same.
The very slim story line follows a magician called Tatischeff as he endures a series of small-time gigs in a declining career. The music-hall tradition is dying out, and he’s relegated to a circuit that takes him to Scotland, where he performs in a farflung pub somewhere in the Highlands.
A girl follows him to his next stop, in Edinburgh, where the remainder of the movie takes place. She stirs some paternal feeling in him, but also raises the idea that illusions may not be the way to happiness.
The movie is very gentle, with a delicate style of animation that does especially well at creating the many levels of life in Edinburgh. Chomet earns the bittersweet ending with his quiet layering of character bits and magic tricks.
(According to some theories, Tati wrote the script out of guilty feelings he had over walking out on a domestic situation involving a daughter he’d fathered when a young man.)
There aren’t as many visual gags as you might expect from a Tati project, even a quasi-Tati project. One scene, somewhat disconnected from the rest of the film, has the magician in an auto shop, figuring out a useful way of cleaning a car.
Another sequence has the magician stumbling into a movie theater, where Tati’s 1958 film “Mon Oncle” is playing onscreen (that’s the time period we seem to be in). Sort of a cute moment, although it rather mixes up the movie’s levels of reality: Why would a humble vaudevillian bear a resemblance to the man on the screen?
This film itself is pretty humble, which is a large part of its appeal. Its old-fashioned style of animation and its quiet manner are a pleasant change from most cartoons.
Of course, it won’t beat “Toy Story 3.” But it’s very nice to have it nominated.
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