This nearly silent gem—nothing to do with the 2006 Illusionist starring Edward Norton—goes into the Oscars as the biggest of underdogs in the animated feature category, where it’s competing with Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon. But it’s a lovely, gentle reminder that the format is not merely the province of talking toys and flying lizards.
The filmmaker, Sylvain Chomet, is best known for the kooky Triplets of Belleville, also animated. But Chomet adapted a script cowritten by the late Jacques Tati, and those familiar with Tati classics like Mon Oncle and Mr. Hulot’s Holiday will recognize the nearly wordless style of storytelling. I confess I’ve always found the notion of a story without dialogue charming, perhaps first in Mad Magazine’s old Spy vs. Spy cartoons. More recently, Mr. Bean’s Holiday owed an obvious debt to Tati.
The hero of the story is indeed a magician, modeled after Tati himself and given his birth name, Tatischeff. Unlike Norton’s character, however, he is no longer young, and merely competent rather than brilliant. He plays for audiences that are often meager or indifferent. But on a visit to a Scottish island so poor that electric light—in the late 1950s—seems like a gift, he finds an appreciative crowd as well as a poor maid whom he takes away. They live in Edinburgh and there make new lives. (His relationship with the girl is fatherly rather than romantic.)
Chomet does take advantage of the animation form. The Edinburgh here is beautiful to look at, and the exaggerated body shapes of the minor characters provide some of the humor. However, the story is much more character-driven than in most “cartoon” films. Tatischeff is a loner, his kindness mixed with a certain diffidence. Only a photograph he carries hints at a different sort of past. The movie is no tragedy, but it is melancholy at times. Chomet’s lovely piano score sets an elegant mood in both the comic and the sentimental moments.
IMDB link
viewed 1/30/11 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/31–2/3/11
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