Review of The Illusionist (2009) by Garry T — 31 Mar 2011

I wish I could come into this review saying that I knew a lot about Sylvain Chomet and his previous work (apparently of acclaim-worthy mentions) 'The Triplets of Belleville', but I cannot. Now, hold on! That's NOT a bad thing at all! Instead, I walked into 'The Illusionist' (L'illusionniste) with no range of expectation and very little demand of a glorious, hand-drawn masterpiece, and a story which carried me through all sorts of wonderful emotion.

'The Illusionist' tells the story about an Illusionist performer from Paris in post-WWII Europe who finds work in abstract locations -- specifically the UK and rural Scotland -- only to come across a slew of changing times and less interest in his profession. However, a young girl sees him and believes that by the illusions he creates, he is a Magician and that he can grant her whatever she wants.

As the film progresses, the girl abandons home to follow the Illusionist to Edinburgh where he looks for work and she becomes used to the lavish lifestyle of the big city. We see how the Illusionist struggles to find work in his profession in a time where the world has moved onto film and has steered away from stage performance and tricks (or illusions). It is noticeable in similar performers who dwell with the same confines as the main characters: a trio of acrobats, a ventriloquist and a sad clown resembling Pierrot. Both end up in dire circumstances at some point, amplifying the concern for the secondary characters and their futures.

'The Illusionist' did not have a dialogue script; characters communicated in mime-ish gestures and small, quick verbal replies. This made the film easy for a global audience to understand, but there were tiny tidbits that probably could have been described a little more clearly.

The story is beautifully and, at times, comically told in a level fashion which didn't teeter to far to either side. Instead, we get a healthy dose chuckles and reality to form a common understanding with the characters.

It's sad to think that at a point in our lives we were as naïve as the girl -- that we believed in some sort of miracle, or magic, to take us out of the whole in which we live in and bring us to the golden gates of affluence. Not to sound horribly negative but, what we're left with is reality: things change, but life goes on.