The Illusionist
[The Ilusionist] Directed by Sylvain Chomet Runtime: 90 min.
Fantasia (Walt Disney DVD)
The new DVD re-release of Disney's 1940 Fantasia blesses what has been a great year for animated movies, the forms creativity expanding in many directions: From nearly photographic CGI ([Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Gahoole]) and drawn/photographed hybrids (How to Train Your Dragon) to uncommonly witty 3D ([Despicable Me](http://www.nypress.com/article-21414-despicable-me.html)) and refined traditional animation ([The Secret of Kells](http://www.nypress.com/article-20975-grim-illumination.html), [My Dog Tulip](http://www.nypress.com/article-21579-my-dog-tulip.html)). Sylvain Chomets [The Illusionist ](http://www.sonyclassics.com/theillusionist/)climaxes this productive run with its updated recreation of classic animated style: a return to the possibilities of animation as Fantasia, with its multiple tones, varied episodes and restless invention, timelessly realized.
However, fine as The Illusionist is, its too delicate and languorous for commercial success in the coarse, shallow Pixar era. French animator Chomets illustration of an unproduced screenplay by the late auteur Jacques Tati (1907-1982) confirms that, like all great cinema, Tatis films (Jour de Fete, Monsieur Hulots Holiday, Mon Oncle, Playtime, Traffic) were about the visual representation of physical and imaginary experience. As rescue jobs of never-filmed auteur scripts go, The Illusionist is movingly faithful, not a botch like Lars Von Triers disgrace of Carl Dreyers Medea. Tati, always his own protagonist, is represented in a Chomet caricature that captures the loping slant, high-water pants and anomie. This Tatischeff figure (based on Tatis family name) who performs magic in small, sparsely attended theaters from France to Scotland, is an old-school artist and chivalrous knight who helps a young girl realize her social and romantic dreamswhich take an ideal form in animated atmospheric studies of natural and citified existence.
As Chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle, I dreaded that the group would vote its annual animation award to that consumers pacifier Toy Story 3. Happily, the vote went to The Illusionistsanity, taste and critical regard for cinema history prevailed.
The Illusionist is no substitute for the life-likeness of a Tati film (his best contained both best Chaplin sentiment and Altman community) but it restores gracefulness to the animated forms recently crude manipulations ([Shrek] dreck). Chomet keeps Tatis sense of frame spacenot his unique visual tension, but Tatis insistence that the screen image make the world readable. That same rule keeps Fantasia remarkable. Its readable world is in the minds eye always mutating narratives that first unleashed the artists imaginationand opens up audiences forever. Its standard of color and motion are evident even in The Illusionists soft pastels and humid neutrals. Fantasia is still a work of art to learn from and aim toward.