Film review: The Illusionist

The Illusionist (dir. Sylvain Chomet, 2010). Chomet's second feature film, animated in a dazzling ligne claire style, uses an unproduced script from the great filmmaker Jacques Tati as its starting point to meditate on the intersection of art and life. The heartbreaking slowness of the narrative and the likewise ponderous movement of the accompanying musical score plunge the viewer into nostalgia for an innocence and simplicity that never existed. Though undoubtedly much more sentimental than Tati would have made it, ending up more like Chaplin than Keaton, The Illusionist nevertheless evokes the painful ache of loss and regret that only art can articulate and make sense of, even if art, like magic, is incapable of curing it. A