L'illusionniste - The Illusionist (2010)

Ah! Such a city is Paris, such a woman. In its people there is romance, and in its lights there is magic. But magic is being snuffed out like the many cigarettes stomped into the floor of the stages where M. Tatischeff performs as a magician. As he travels from city to city, playing to theatres filled with nobody, or garden parties filled with apathy, he earns a living big enough for train tickets, board for the night and food for his rabbit. What a life to lead, making enough to keep yourself alive long enough to watch your world die, killed by the wailings of the new rock band, Billy Boy and the Britoons.

What a happy day when the illusionist meets his greatest fan, a young Scottish woman who washes the floors of a dirty little pub where Tatischeff has made himself a celebrity. The girl is Alice, who is only here because she is not all there, and doesn't doubt for a moment that his magic is real. The two embark on an adventure which brings them to Edinburgh, and which will change them both forever.

For all intents and purposes Jacques Tati has not made a film in over forty years, excepting one documentary short. Even at his prime, the man only ever directed four movies, all starring himself as the character M. Hulot. I have seen these movies and he is one of my favorite directors. The reason I watched "The Illusionist" was because he wrote it and I wanted to see what brought someone with such a beautiful vision of life back to the cinema after so long.

Tati is a comic and a brilliant one. In this gorgeously animated film he has written his bumbling, lovable Hulot into the story as the main character, which you will immediately recognize if you have seen his live action features. But this is not the comedy that he could have made, and bless him for it.

Like his old work this is a charming observation of life and the little idiocies by which we live day to day. What has always drawn me to his work is his fascination with everyday men and women, the sexy and the ugly, rich and poor, young and old, fantastic and nondescript. He is the quiet observer who softly points out the absurdities which make life worth living. His movies are a celebration, and I love them.

I learned why he has come back to the cinema and it made quite emotional. Tati has always seemed to fear modernization. He is a romantic at heart which oozes obviously from this little film. He has come back to the cinema after all this time to say that that he sees the death of film making looming in the all too near future. Gone is the magic, replaced by flashing lights and loud noises. I watched Alice and Tatischeff and fell in love with the illusionists eagerness to please and bring a smile, and the girl's innocence and wonderment in the world. Tati wrote a farewell poem to his great love and it moved me deeply.

With smiling wit and looking like a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, this delicate, careful, and loving look at the life of the simple man and his simple art is a quiet sendoff from a great, unappreciated master.

4/4