WORLD TOUR Day 33 - Scotland
BEFORE: Moving north again, but I'll be headed south again to warmer climes soon enough. I got really excited last night when I looked up the filmography for Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who played John Lennon in "Nowhere Boy", and it said that he had a small role in "The Illusionist", so I figured he provided a voice for this film. No such luck - he appeared in the 2006 live-action film with the same title, which I watched back in July 2010. Given that there are only a few voices in this film, I now don't really see a way to link to it.
THE PLOT: A French illusionist finds himself out of work and travels to Scotland, where he meets a young woman. Their ensuing adventure changes both their lives forever.
AFTER: This is a semi-silent animated film from Sylvain Chomet, who also directed "The Triplettes of Belleville" in a similar style. A little research told me that it's based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, and then a little more research was needed for me to figure out who Jacques Tati was. Turns out he was a noted French mime, later an actor and film star, famous for films like "Mr Hulot's Holiday" and "Mon Oncle". It sort of sounds like he was the French "missing link" between the old silent films of Buster Keaton and the modern slapstick of, say, Mr. Bean.
But since his fame peaked around 1959, when this film is set, the question rises as to how autobiographical this is. It's possible that he felt that his form of comedy was on the way out, and that the future of entertainment belonged to television and rock and roll, and he saw his career being marginalized. The magician character here is drawn as a stand-in for/tribute to Tati/Hulot - and fortunately for the flow of my movie chain, he's dogged throughout the film by an almost Beatle-esque rock band, named Billy Boy and the Britoons (sorry, it seems to be more of a poke at Cliff Richards and the Shadows, my bad).
The magician travels from France to London and then Scotland, playing smaller and smaller venues and also being forced to take various odd jobs to make ends meet - which is what reminds me of Mr. Bean, or perhaps Jerry Lewis, since these little asides provide most of the slapstick as he fails at different tasks. At one venue, while living over a pub, he meets a young woman who believes his tricks are real (so says the synopsis, but I didn't see how that was conveyed without dialogue...) and travels with him to Edinburgh.
They seem to fall quite quickly and naturally into a sort of father-daughter relationship, which leads to some speculation as to whether she may actually BE his daughter (again, no dialogue to confirm this non-fact). Here's where knowing that Jacques Tati abandoned his first daughter and felt guilty about never having time for his second daughter comes in handy - but why should I have to do so much background research to fully understand the events on the screen?
Sylvain Chomet has expressed some similar regret over his lack of relationship with his own teenage daughter, since separating from her mother. I did get very lucky, though, as the theme of absent parents did carry over from "Nowhere Boy".
The general consensus seems to be that Edinburgh is well represented here, in the scenery and the color pallette and the drunken nature of some of its citizens. I'll take the reviewers at their word -
DISTANCE TRAVELED TODAY: 175 miles / 282 km (Liverpool to Edinburgh)
DISTANCE TRAVELED SO FAR: 9,610 miles / 15,469 km
RATING: 4 out of 10 sausage links
No comments:
Post a Comment