I put most of my faith, whatever there is, into film. Even though film is not real and I know it is not real, it moves me, when it is used well, and so I believe in it.
Yet, that faith is being tested.
More and more films seem, to borrow Chuck Palahniuk's potent and prescient phrase, like 'a copy of a copy of a copy'. News of them (pictures, trailers, adverts, reviews...) gives me the feeling that I am trapped inside some insomniac daze, tripping round through half-formed dreams, unable to connect with the visions that I see before me. Fills me with an inexplicable rage that some people, somewhere, are killing one of the things I love, one of the things that helps me get by, trying to take it away from me. They pile old story upon old story upon old story and they do not even try to make it fresh or vital, these nameless, faceless persecutors of my peace and quiet content.
As ridiculous as this may or may not sound, such a line of thought often sends me on small downward spirals, renders me inconsolable on odd evenings, left staring at my own work on a screen and not being sure there is a space for it in this cowardly new world, typing occasional words, untyping them straight after. Because, you see, my faith in film is tied up with my faith in fiction full stop. And, well, that faith is tied up with everything I find myself doing and thinking and dreaming about. It almost goes without saying that to lose belief in one's own dreams is a terrible thing.
And so that is why I am immensely grateful that, alongside the triumphs of Inception and Toy Story 3, I have recently seen another new film that went counter to that spiral, even as it seemed to feel the same as me. Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist is an animated film, hand-drawn, which deals, in essence, with the death and closing down of the Vaudeville era. Its hero is an old stage magician, the kind who pulls a rabbit out of a hat and whips bouquets of flowers from out of nowhere, from out of his sleeve. Watching his act in the opening scenes, one does not find it hard to explain his ever-diminishing audience. His rabbit is a mad one, near-impossible for him to control, and there seems little passion left on his old face to suggest that he cares much that he is one stage anymore. He travels to a few theatres, showing off the poster he carries round with him, so that he might get some money. That is all. He wants to entertain, of course, but only now, one gets the uneasy feeling, because he won't get paid if he does not.
So far, this itself may well sound like a copy. Maybe even a copy of a copy. It is not the most startling and fresh premise, I'll admit. But then, it is based on an old script by the late French comic Jacques Tati, and so to expect something bang up to date, on Inception’s level, for example, would be perhaps expecting too much.
Perhaps you could say that I went in, then, on the basis of these first scenes, expecting too much. And yet I was enraptured, captivated by every detail up there on the screen. Even though most of the scenes and scenarios were closed-in, small-scale affairs, there was always something kicking at the walls in them, opening the windows and reaching outside. The film was beginning to seem itself like the magician’s mad rabbit trapped inside his old hat…
Which, of course, is exactly how it is meant to feel.
Because this film seems to be not just a story but a mission statement. Where did the magic in the movies go? Chomet seems, at least in part, to be asking. And he seems also to be asking, more deeply, more furiously: Was there ever any to start with? This is the work of a director frustrated with how things are, angered that the things most filmmakers seem to have chosen to copy are not the best aspects of the truly great films that have come before, but are instead the cheapest, easiest tricks from films that have simply sold well, without challenging anyone. Films that don’t finally awe the audience with whatever they’ve been hiding up their sleeve because, quite simply, they have nothing there.
Unlike Chomet’s first film, Belleville Rendez-Vous, a wild and brilliant film about human endurance and about making the best of bad situations. Unlike this one, which pulls off the greatest trick of all, which shows it hand, and all its sorrow, and yet still somehow gives you hope, just through its very being.
There are several unshakeable images in the film, of such incredible power and suggestion that it is impossible to think that they are not copies. Or rather, that they do not feel like copies, to the point that you do not wish to question if they are. One of these in particular, involving the moving of a book's pages means so much, both within the film and outside of it, that I will not say more about it, except that it is worth watching the film for that moment alone.
Indeed, that there are other, even more enchanting moments is all that I will add. Because, well, this is a film that should be seen rather than heard about. It is, after all, bad form to talk too much about magic tricks, especially ones that have you believing them, in spite of yourself.
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