‘A Magnificent Life’ Review: Sylvain Chomet’s Beautifully Animated but Clumsily Scripted Love Letter to Marcel Pagnol

A magnificent life (Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol), A biographical film of the French playwright Marcel Pagnol, clearly represents a work of love for the writer and director Sylvain Chomet. Your first animated feature since 2010 THE ILLUSIONISTpresents the beautiful style exhibited for the first time on the 2003 award The Trillizos of Belleville. If your story narrative is more rudimentary, it is closely with the endemic stylistic formula of the genre, the wide visual pleasures demonstrate their own reward. When premiere in Cannes, the film should find appreciative audiences in its native France, where its theme is better known.

The story, told in Flashback, begins in 1956 Paris, where Pagnol, 61 (with the voice of Matthew Gravlale, in the English version) is desperate that his work has gone out of fashion. Although he intends to stop writing to pursue his hobby of inventing (he is working on a perpetual movement machine), an editor of a magazine asks him to present a memory.

«Memories? Would you need a memory for that,» replies a doubtful pagnol.

However, helped by his younger self, who magically seems to run his memories, Pagnol begins to tell his life, starting his early years in Marseille and his mother’s death when he was still a teenager. He moves to Paris when he was young to follow a race as a playwright, the decision indicated in a fun way by a promotional travel video for the city of lights («just 15 hours from Marseille» by train, promises).

Although its first efforts are failures, it finally finds success with plays such as Jazz and AbundantThe latter, resulting in his disapproval father finally accepting his career choice. He listens back to his hometown with another blow, Mariowhich becomes the first of his works to be adapted for the screen.

Pagnol initially resists the idea of ​​making films, which Chomet skilfully dramatizes in the form of a simulated simulated film. But the advent of the talkies and a trip to London where he is captivated by a projection of Broadway’s melodyconvince it otherwise. Soon it is rapsodizing about the stylistic freedom offered by cinema, in another magnificently designed sequence that illustrates those visual devices.

More images are followed, including successes such as 1932 Pussy, with clips of several of them woven in animated procedures. A magnificent life He also deepens the patriotism and love of Pagnol for French cinema, illustrating episodes such as his refusal to work for Nazis during the German occupation and his subsequent defense to tax American films to prevent local culture from dominating.

Pagnol’s personal life is also explored, including his marriage to actress Jacqueline Bouvier, for whom he wrote Spring manonand the tragic death of his little daughter. He also shows the death of his close friend Raimu, who starred in several of his works.

Chomet’s script is not successful in its combination of surreal fantasy, such as speaking animals, and a detailed description of its subject’s life and career. There are times when A magnificent life He gets too weeding, trying to cover so many biographical bases that loses the narrative impulse. But the stylistic imagination and the beautiful animation drawn by hand on display that compensate for their awkward narration, and finally arises as a love tribute to an important figure in the French culture.