Paris. 1959. The vaudeville theatres of France find themselves in the middle of a losing battle against the proliferation of television, showy rock stars, and other new forms of entertainment. In such a fast-changing scenario, an elderly illusionist, Jacques Tatischeff, finds himself and his quaint art form as difficult to fit in, as he finds it hard to manage his mischievous little pet rabbit while pulling it out of the hat in front of an ever-diminishing audience.
Undeterred, he decides to shift base and comes to London, where he takes up assignments at garden parties to make ends meet. But here, too, the only appreciation he gets while conjuring wine glasses out of thin air is from a Scottish guest, who is as full of liquor as the glasses in Tatischeff’s hand. On this inebriated individual’s invitation, Tatischeff arrives at a remote Gaelic-speaking island that has only recently been electrified. No wonder then, the villagers find switching a light bulb on and off and crowding around the jukebox as enthralling as any magic trick.
In the same inn where Tatischeff is lodged works Alice, a young girl entrusted with doing laundry and keeping the premises clean. To her impressionable mind, the illusionist’s performances in the pub are not sleight of hand, but true magic and Tatischeff, a mystical magician in the flesh. And when the elderly illusionist buys her a pair of new red shoes, to replace her old, tattered ones, Alice, like Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz decides to go on what she believes will be an equally magical journey. Only this time, rather than taking the yellow brick road, she follows Tatischeff and convinces him to pay Edinburgh, a land famous for its street performers and magicians, a visit.
Once in Edinburgh, the two of them put up at Little Joe’s Hotel—a rundown establishment, whose residents include a triplet of trapeze artists (an oblique reference to the same director’s equally adorable 2003 film The Triplets of Belleville), a down-on-his-luck anorexic mime, and an out-of-job ventriloquist—all of whom represent the microcosm of the slowly-dying traditional forms of entertainment.
As the young Alice slowly gives in to the lures of a big-city life, Tatischeff, egged on by the opportunity to redeem a missing piece in his own life, and unwilling to let go of the only audience he has who still seems to believe in magic, decides not to break the spell. He starts showering her with increasingly expensive gifts, while hiding from her his own struggles that force him to take up obscure jobs like working in a garage, painting billboards, and even working as a live demonstrator at a shop selling women’s perfume and undergarments. While Tatischeff regales the passersby from the store’s window, one day Alice finds love across the street, while peeking out of the window of her hotel room. The last vestige of magic seems to come to an abrupt halt in Tatischeff’s life, as he confronts the reality that life so stone-heartedly shoves in our faces.
Based on an unproduced script by the acclaimed French director and actor Jacques Tati (whose full-name was, in fact, Jacques Tatischeff) L’illusioniste (2010) is a double ode. Tati’s script, which he wrote in 1956, but never got around to depict on celluloid, was a thinly-veiled dedication to his daughter, who he had abandoned early in her life. In his L’illusioniste, director Sylvain Chomet has, in turn, paid his homage to the French master. In this sublime hand-drawn full-length animation film, which, incidentally was nominated at the recently-concluded 83rd Annual Academy Awards in the Best Animated Feature Film of the Year category, Chomet, while staying true in depicting Tatischeff in the physical likeness of Tati, has also carried forward Tati’s signature approach to film making that is known for being sparse in dialogue but rife in emotion.
Think of the dialogue-less but heart-wrenching initial sequence of Pixar’s Up (2009) extended to an eighty-minute run time that is buoyed by beatifically drawn characters who speak volumes through body language and a lilting musical score composed by Chomet himself, and one can have a preliminary idea of L’illusioniste. At the same time, it offers a sharp criticism of the consumerist society we live in and our preponderance to discard the old without so much as batting an eyelid. A tale of relationship that has shades of Chaplin’s brilliant Limelight (1952), it shows how all of us are in constant pursuit of one illusion or the other, while ironically, those who pursue conjuring illusions as a trade lie long-forgotten.
When all of us hanker after a little magic in our lives, it is indeed tragic that circumstances can compel a professional illusionist to forsake his art in the face of cold reality. That the curtain has fallen, in particular, on the kind of magic that Tatischeff and his compatriots once plied, and in general, on vaudeville music halls is immaculately depicted by Chomet in the penultimate sequence of L’illusioniste. One by one all the lights outside of a ‘variety theatre’ are turned off, with ‘Music Hall’ being the last two words to fade.
However, true to his master Tati, whose characters always exhibited an immense joie-de-vivre in times of external adversity, one little firefly fleets across the screen, while the lights breathe their last. That tiny insect is a harbinger of hope—hope for hand-drawn animators, who find themselves relegated to the background when computer-generated animation is the preferred option; optimism that human emotions will succeed in eking out a place in a world succumbing to materialism; and faith, that no matter how much we progress, there will always be space for magic in our lives.
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