The Illusionist

The Illusionist is a beautiful traditionally animated film by the same people who gave us The Triplets of Belleville. Based on a 1956 unproduced script by Jacques Tati it was a story he wrote but did not have a chance to make into a film. 

The story is about a magician (played by Tati) who travels around Europe performing in small theaters and night clubs with his rabbit. In a small Scottish village where he is invited to perform in a pub he meets a young girl who befriends him and innocently believes his magic is real. The girl follows him back to Paris where through the course of the film she matures into a woman just as the magician is running out of money to support her.

The movie shows how small town girls are seduced by the big city ways of life and fashion and how the old traditional forms of entertainment have been replaced by new ones. The film is like a typical Jacques Tati film in that it has very little dialogue and relies on visual humor of awkward or unusual situations. The physical humor of Jacques Tati is very accurately recreated here and the film may seem slow to someone not used to Tati’s type of humor. I recommend you see some of Jacques Tati’s classic films first like Jour de Fête, Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Mon Oncle, and Playtime.

The hand drawn animation is very detailed and looks extraordinarily beautiful as it depicts, very realistically, locations in Europe from small coastal villages to big city landscapes. The film is set in an unknown past but it looks to be around 1959 as many old ways were giving way to new ones.

Like all of Jacques Tati’s films it is well worth seeing and has a very intimate old world theatrical feel to it as you get to know the characters only through their actions and expressions.

JP

Moon

Similar to a young George Lucas when he made his first visually innovative feature film THX-1138 (1971) with a minimal budget but a smart, thought provoking story, set in the near future about an individual escaping against all odds from a society exploiting its citizens with mind controlling drugs, a young sci-fi geek of the next generation who grew up with these films from the 70s and 80s has now come out with his own debut, low budget film and the results are just as innovative and thought provoking. 

Duncan Jones will be one to watch as George Lucas was in his time. His first feature film Moon is the child born of such brainy sci-fi films as 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Silent Running (1972), Outland (1981) and the first Alien (1979) movie, which itself was inspired by Star Wars (1977). But it also has other elements from classic dystopian sci-fi films such as Blade Runner (1982), and The Island (2005).

Moon is a gem of a film. Like THX-1138, Alien, Blade Runner and The Island, Moon is about escaping from a predetermined destiny imposed by an oppressive Corporate entity and concerns itself with the exploitation of innocent people and unethical use of clones. A person left for three years to work on the moon for a company that mines an energy resource discovers that he is not alone. After he has an accident and is knocked unconscious there suddenly appears another person that looks and acts just like him. Together they are able to find out the sinister policies of the company they work for. While the company sends out a team to deal with the situation the two clones work together to plan their escape. This visually stark but beautiful and interesting movie is thought provoking, smart and keeps you in suspense to the very end.

Moon is a project of passion made by self-professed, dedicated sci-fi fans Duncan Jones, who is the son of singer/rock star David Bowie, and the star of the film Sam Rockwell from Galaxy Quest (1999) and Conviction (2010). Duncan who is a big fan of Sam Rockwell’s work wanted him in his first feature film and wrote the movie just for him, hoping he would accept the role. The script, the visuals and Sam’s performance were so amazing that Kevin Spacey also came on board to lend his voice as a HAL 9000 type computer assistant robot. 

The movie has a beautiful, retro aesthetic and set design inspired by futurists Syd Mead and Ron Cobb who also worked on Alien, and Blade Runner. The special effects combined the time honored traditional miniature models photography with CGI to get the best visual look for the limited money that was available.

Moon was made with heart and resourcefulness that would not have been possible to do with this kind of visual flare on such a bare-bones budget even 5 years ago. But this team of film makers pulled it off with great success.

Duncan has already made his next film called ‘Source Code’, which opens at the South by South West interactive Music and Film festival in Austin, Texas in March and in theaters April 1, 2011 and stars Jake Gyllenhaal. An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. Let’s hope it has the same heart and innovation that Moon had.

 

Duncan is also working on a sci-fi homage to Blade Runner, one of his favorite films, called Mute which will get a graphic novel treatment to attract investors before it can be made into a movie.

JP