Adapted from an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, Sylvain Chromet's The Illusionist is a moving homage to the late mime artist and the beautiful city of Edinburgh during the late 1950s. The magician (an animated version of Tati himself) leaves Paris for the UK in an attempt to revitalise his fading career. Passing through a small and very lively Scottish community, he attracts the attention of a young girl who then follows him on to Edinburgh. Taking a room in a small hotel full of entertainers and creative outcasts, the unlikely pair pursue their separate dreams; The Illusionist in search of an audience and the young girl who desperately wants to grow into a 'modern' woman. What is beautiful about this film is that although both characters respond very differently to the onset of post-WW2 consumerism, neither approaches are depicted as right. We are simply told a story of two lost souls seeking human connection.
With virtually no dialogue, it is The Illusionist's nuanced animation and attention to detail that makes it so evocative. An expression, a pause... a grunt or a sigh. The trembling of a rustic motorcar, personified as if it had the loose and brittle bones of an old man. Whilst some seem to believe that the film was 'missing something', I truly believe it is the symptom of what I call 'slow film fatigue'- the fatigue associated with having to concentrate on the smallest of details in order to follow a quiet and slow-moving film- something we're not so accustomed to in this day and age! I think if anything more were to be added to The Illusionist, the alchemy would be ruined, for it is truly magic!
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