Slowing down to appreciate simple beauty
Posted By Admin on February 28, 2011
The Academy Awards air Sunday, and among the popular and widely seen nominated films lies the obscure gem, The Illusionist, which is up for an award in the Best Animation category. Other entries in this category include Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon.
The story, set in 1950s Scotland, follows an old, traveling illusionist on his journey across Europe, looking for stages to perform his dated act. On one of the stops, he encounters a teenage girl, Alice, who becomes fascinated with his acts, believing in their magic. Alice joins him on his travels, and the two develop a father-daughter relationship. What follows is an interesting reflection on how newer generations are less inclined to find beauty or fascination in simplicity, instead favoring glitzy, loud and commercial entertainment. This is reflective of the film itself, as some raised in todays fast-paced culture will not be able to connect with this slow, contemplative film.
In the film, the illusionist and his fellow performers, a clown and a puppeteer, become less wanted. A pop rock band, Billy Boy and the Britoons, is shown performing to a wild and excited young crowd as they perform silly and over-the-top antics such as rolling around on the floor as they sing, while the crowd eggs them on to several encores. All of this occurs as the illusionist watches, waiting to perform his simple act, having to prepare himself several times, as the band plays well into his scheduled time. He eventually performs to a lone grandmother and child.
Throughout the film, the cultural value of the illusionist and his fellow performers declines as the clown toys with suicide and the puppeteer is later shown as a beggar on the street. The puppeteers mannequin is shown in a pawn shop interspersed throughout a few scenes, first labeled at a low price, and eventually advertised as freesymbolic of these simple characters and their traditional crafts becoming obsolete in their advancing society.
The father-daughter dynamic between the illusionist and Alice emphasizes the loss of appreciation for simple beauty. Enraptured with the illusionists magic, Alice becomes attached to him on his journey, but when she gets to the big city, she is exposed to the greater culture and commercialism. Soon, she desires the latest fashion trends and begins to spend most of her time in the city and the big-name stores, searching for the next thing to purchase. This ultimately creates a rift between the two, as the illusionist rejects this culture, even refusing a job in the commercial industry that hoped to use his talents as a gimmick to sell products. The animation on this film is beautiful. The depictions of the landscapes shown in the illusionists travels are stunning. There was a large team of animators dedicated to the animation, and the emphasis on getting it right clearly paid off. It is no large leap to tie the stylistic choice of using this traditional animation to the films greater defiance of modern culture and its need of elaborate and gimmicky methods to fascinate.
There is little dialogue in the film, but the score did a beautiful job of bringing out the emotion of the story. It embodies the magical feeling and the charm with which the loving illusionist performs his acts. The music succeeds in communicating the emotions of these characters in lieu of dialogue, supplementing their actions and the greater environments in which they act, to create beautiful and emotionally striking scenes.
The Illusionist truly embodies the French idea of the filmmaker as an artist. Sylvain Chomet is the director, the scriptwriter (adaptation), the editor and the composer of the films score. This kind of creative involvement in all facets of the filmmaking process is rather uncommon in filmmaking, past and present, particularly in Hollywood. Chomet, through his extensive work, has made a piece that is entirely his own. He previously received critical acclaim for his film The Triplets of Belleville, which was nominated for Best Animation in 2003, and with The Illusionist has created another valuable piece of art, one that is rightly receiving acclaim. With an Academy Award nomination, perhaps it will receive more audience attention as well.
Although this film lacks the fast-paced nature of common modern films, it is a film worth seeing, if only to reflect on a beauty in this world that might have been lost.
m.allam@chronicle.utah.edu
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