Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist, about an old-fashioned entertainer in Edinburgh who struggles to find his place in the world as his public deserts his act in favour of rock ‘n roll, was described by one member of the audience at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival as a “beautiful” and “affectionate” portrayal of the era.
Chomet, whose last feature Belleville Rendez-Vous was nominated for an Oscar, is based in Edinburgh and spent £8 million on the project.
The reaction in Berlin was that it was money well spent.
Hannah McGill, artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival and former film critic of The Herald, said: “The film is a joy and I think Chomet is a genius. The charm and detail that people loved in Belleville is all there.
“What’s more, I felt incredibly touched and proud to see Scotland presented so beautifully and affectionately.”
The film, animated in hand-drawn 2-D, was primarily made at Chomet’s animation studio Django Films, above a pub on Edinburgh’s George Street.
Adapted from an unproduced script by the legendary French actor and director Jacques Tati, the storyline takes place in Edinburgh and Iona after the lead character arrives from Paris in an attempt to change his luck.
However, the director revealed Edinburgh almost didn’t feature at all – as the original script sent him to Prague.
Chomet said: “The story originally took place between Paris and Prague. And I wanted that changed to Paris and Edinburgh. I fell in love with Edinburgh when I presented Belleville Rendez-Vous there. I found the city a magical place – there’s something about the constantly changing light. And so my wife Sally and I decided to move to the city and set up a studio.
“I had lived in Montreal when making Belleville Rendez-Vous and, as a result, there is a very Canadian feel to that movie. I believe it’s important to live in the same environment you are trying to animate, because your inspiration is then all around.
“There is a story strand that takes place in a remote village, where the community gets electricity for the first time. I thought that isolation would fit one of the Scottish islands. I initially looked at Mull, which led me to the isle of Iona, its small neighbour in the Inner Hebrides.
“When I read the island’s local history I was astounded to discover that at exactly the same period in which the Tati story is set, the islanders had a party to celebrate the arrival of electricity from the mainland. So it was 100% historically accurate. It also made perfect sense for the illusionist to be playing in these last outreaches of vaudeville.”
Chomet’s insistence on hand-drawn 2-D graphics stems, the director said, from his love of the classic Disney movies of the 1960s, such as One Hundred and One Dalmations. Some viewers in Berlin suggest that his film is a fable that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath.
REVIEW: Demetrios Matheou in Berlin
The Illusionist is nothing less than an animated love letter to Edinburgh, a gorgeous evocation of the city in hand-drawn 2-D that captures its beauty, its quirky charm, and the lovely, pulsating glow of its winter light.
The follow-up to Frenchman Sylvain Chomet’s celebrated Belleville Rendez-Vouz is a departure from that film’s bizarre, baroque inventiveness, yet just as perfectly realised. The animation is sublime, and the story a gentle, moving fable about a man whose traditional trade as a magician, even in the late 1950s setting, is becoming anachronistic.
Adapted from a script by Jacques Tati, this starts in Paris, where the illusionist Taticheff is struggling to find an audience. He packs his top hat and tricks and heads to London, only to find that audiences there are more interested in the new rock’n’roll than his rabbit out of a hat. When Billy Boy and the Britoons take the stage, Taticheff heads for Scotland.
Though the magician’s performance in an island pub goes well, the appearance of a juke box prompts another move, to Edinburgh.
It is in these sequences that the film’s pastel-shaded animation soars to amazing heights, Chomet and his team presenting a city at once recognisable and with a period hue that makes it particularly magical.
