The Illusionist

Sean: So what did you think?

Danny: The first time I watched it, I’ll admit I was somewhat disappointed. I found it slight and slow. But the second time, it really opened up and charmed me. It’s a very subtle work.

S: Most of the things we’re looking at, it seems, require a fair amount of focus and attention.

D: This proved minimal to the point of being almost daringly simple. But that slightness I initially disliked was what ultimately won me over. It’s incredible how Sylvain Chomet can render every minor character so instantly striking. In just one illustration or quick scene.

S: The character design is excellent—I especially love that every minor character has their eyes closed. It has a strange way of focusing our attention on the main characters.

D: And yet even those main characters are minor in a way. We still know so little about them after eighty minutes.

S: They’re more formal types than characters. They were left just empty enough for us to fill in the rest ourselves.

D: Though it depends on how much you know about Jacques Tati and Monsieur Hulot going into the movie. I arrived with very weighty expectations, being a huge Tati fan. I’ve seen Mon Oncle and M. Hulot’s Holiday numerous times. That may be why I felt somewhat disappointed at first.

S: I don’t know him so well. A bit.

D: He’s pretty much as he appears in this movie. An old, kindhearted, bumbling naif. In a way, a French analog to Charlie Chaplin. But his movies are much busier than The Illusionist, full of hectic, intricate setpieces. The comedy’s much richer and more constant too. This movie is very low-key and quiet in comparison. The only time it felt like a Tati movie was the auto shop scene. Still, even without all the comic anarchy, I was impressed by how much of Hulot Chomet could evoke. The character’s wide, basset-hound eyes, his kindly but lost stare…

S: Not having those associations made it easier for me to project while watching the movie. It has more of a fairy-tale quality, a mythical quality that way.

D: It really does feel mythical. Which is, in large part, thanks to the real main character of the film. Edinburgh.

S: The Edinburgh in the film was exactly as I remember it. And the animation was so much more vivid than a live-action film would have been. It really captured its spirit. It made me miss the city quite a bit.

D: I have a hard time thinking of a film that pays better tribute to its setting. If I hadn’t recently been to Edinburgh, I would’ve thought this was some highly idealized version. But in fact, the city is just as magical as its portrayal.

S: I’ve always thought of settling down there someday. If anyone ever asks me why, I’ll show them this film.

D: Tati’s script actually has the story set in Prague. Chomet moved it to Edinburgh, because that’s where he’s based. It would’ve been quite a different movie.

S: I’m happy it worked out the way it did. The film paid wonderful tribute to Scotland. The best parts, as I remember them. The island off in Northern Scotland, the countryside, the people. It was a bit romanticized, but those are the things I remember when I think of my two years there.

D: There was a bit of romanticism, but this isn’t neutered Disney fare. In one scene, where Tati parts with Alice, there’s a lingering shot of a wall with the graffiti “Free Scotland.” It’s little details like that that give this movie its subtle power.

S: There’s also the drunken Scotsman at the wedding—charming but totally useless.

D: I like the scene where they’re in the boat, and his kilt is always just on the verge of blowing upward. It’s such a mild but endearing joke.

S: It was mild, but the mildness of the thing just added to the melancholy of the whole story. As did the art style. I loved the texture of the animation—it looked like watercolors on rough paper.

D: There was melancholy everywhere. The drunken Scotsman, the suicidal clown, the illusionist himself.

S: Even the rhythm of the story. It was so sleepy and graceful. If you know the backstory, it only adds to the melancholy.

D: Let’s touch on that backstory and the controversies for a minute.

S: Well, as I understand it, there’s some argument about the reason Tati wrote the script. Some say it was for his daughter Sophie, because he felt guilty that he was always away making films. Others say it was a response to his guilt over abandoning an illegitimate daughter.

D: Right. Chomet himself said he thought it was written as a personal letter to Sophie, to whom the film is dedicated, and who brought the script to Chomet in 2000 before she died. Chomet’s also said he has a 17-year-old daughter who doesn’t live with him and who he also feels some guilt about being away from.

S: Personally, I think Tati was probably motivated by some of both. He was away from his daughter; he knew he had another unrecognized one.

D: I think so too. Still, it’s always risky to try to reduce things to biographical data.

S: Or it can be just plain simplistic.

D: Although the illusionist’s name is Tatischeff, which is Tati’s real name. And thanks to Chomet’s choices, he looks exactly like M. Hulot, and he even stumbles into Mon Oncle at the cinema.

S: That’s true, but Nabokov once wrote a book about a writer who was basically himself just to confound this sort of reading. Fittingly enough, it was his last book before he died. So while the movie’s definitely playing against his backstory, it cannot be simplified to that.

D: Though the response of one of Tati’s grandsons, Richard McDonald, the son of his illegitimate daughter, is still quite bitter and injured. There are clearly a lot of unresolved familial issues swirling around. MacDonald writes: “[H]e unfortunately just made a massive mistake that because of the time and circumstances he was never able to correctly address. I am sure his remorse hung heavy within him and it is for this reason that I believe Chomet’s adaptation of l’Illusionniste does a great discredit to the artist that was Tati.”

S: That is bitter. And a bit unfair, I think.

D: He later sends a pretty elaborate and damning letter to Roger Ebert that’s worth considering as well. It’s ironic that such a gentle and delicate movie could roil this much anger.

S: Motivation aside, what we mostly see onscreen is a knowing old man who gets carried away with himself, swept away in the way the world is advancing. Rock ’n roll bands taking over, TVs, car washes, jukeboxes, light bulbs.

D: It’s impressive that you noticed that, not knowing Tati’s oeuvre. In his later works, namely Trafic and Playtime, the central theme is being adrift in modernity. M. Hulot is basically a man out of time, obsolete and left behind. Not unlike Chaplin in Modern Times.

S: Or our illusionist, clown, and ventriloquist here. The fact that this film was quiet and slow made it something of an ode to that era. The pleasures of the sensual and humane.

D: And Tati himself was a vaudevillian and mime before he turned to film. Coupled with the fact that this was practically a silent movie, an art form that no one, outside of Guy Maddin, seems daring enough to tackle anymore.

S: WALL •E’s first 40 minutes being the only exception I can think of.

D: Which is a very apt comparison, I’d say. Here’s a question for you: at the end, Tatischeff leaves Alice a note that says “Magicians don’t exist.” Is he right?

S: That’s the irony of the end of the film. If you think about it, he really was something of a magician to her. Doing secret things behind the scenes to make her happy.

D: And there’s also the magic of the medium of cinema, of the spell of the city, of newfound love, even the idea of sticking to a dying art against the odds. The magic of Alice saving the clown’s life inadvertently, just with a mere friendly gesture. The quotidian magic of human compassion.

S: That’s what’s so sad about the end—Tatischeff doesn’t believe it, but it’s true.

D: But what do you make of all the compromises the illusionist has to make to buy Alice clothes and keep her happy? Painting advertisements, working in the department store window…

S: I read that as Tati trying to say he wished he’d been able to do those things for his daughter instead.

D: I thought it was sadder and more cynical. The desperate lengths a man must go to survive as an artist, the intrusion of commerce and grim economic reality on dreams. Even the magician is turned into a sad clown in his ridiculous pink suit. Capitalism at its ferocious best. Sell out or we’ll find a new, younger version of you to pack the theaters.

S: There is that element too. It’s equal parts love for the girl and the sadness that he doesn’t have a real place in the world. It’s very rich for such a simple movie.

D: It contains so many hidden keys and secret panels. That’s ultimately its beauty and its greatest trick.