Review: 'A Magnificent Life' shows the life of a French literary lion, sweetly rendered in animation by 'Triplets of Belleville's' master
The French animator Sylvain Chomet has become something of a legend in certain film circles, off the strength of his 2003 masterpiece “The Triplets of Belleville” and his 2010 Jacques Tati-inspired “The Illusionist” — so it makes sense that his first movie in more than a decade, “A Magnificent Life,” is a fond biopic of another French film icon, Marcel Pagnol.
For those unfamiliar with the name, Pagnol was a playwright and poet whose plays were popular in Paris in the late 1920s and early 1930s — and he switched to film just as the talkies were developing. He built a studio in his home town of Marseilles, which lasted until the Nazis invaded France and he refused to make movies for them. After the war, he mostly wrote novels that were semi-autobiographical works, including “My Father’s Glory,” “My Mother’s Castle” and his masterpieces, “Jean de Florette” and “Manon of the Spring.”
That last paragraph is the condensed, Wikipedia version of Pagnol’s history. As devised by Chomet, who adapted Pagnol’s memoirs for the script, the story becomes a lovely tribute to the art of memory.
Chomet’s framing device has an aged Pagnol (voiced in English by Matthew Gravelle) rushes to make a deadline for a serialized memoir he’s promised to write for Elle magazine. As he writes, he’s joined by his constant companion: Marcel, the spirit of himself as a child.
That child hangs around as Pagnol leaves Marseilles with his wife, Sophie, trading in the respectable life his father demanded of him for a cramped, freezing garret in Paris. He befriends artists and actors — “hussies and degenerates,” Sophie calls them — and starts writing his plays. Within a couple of years, he becomes a success, but at the cost of his marriage.
Through the episodes of Pagnol’s life, people come and go — and the ones who go via the grave join the spirit of the young Marcel. This parade of spirits becomes a metaphor for Pagnol’s work, in which his memories are never far away, a constant source of inspiration for his storytelling.
Another interesting conceit Chomet deploys in “A Magnificent Life” is that any time we see one of Pagnol’s movies on a screen, it’s actual footage rather than animated versions. It’s a clever, and poignant, way to connect the reality of Pagnol’s life with the charmingly fanciful animated version we get from Chomet.
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‘A Magnificent Life’
★★★
Opens Friday, March 27, at the AMC West Jordan 12. Rated PG-13 for language, smoking, some suggestive material and brief violent content. Running time: 91 minutes.