The dis-illusionist

The Illusionist faces the end of illusion.

Like a lot of grown-ups, I felt Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville was the best cartoon I'd seen in years (if you haven't seen it, do), and briefly Choment was the "it" boy of high-brow animation. Since then, however, his career has been plagued by controversy - there were charges of plagiarism from a former colleague; Hollywood threw a big project his way (The Tale of Despereaux) but then replaced him; the funding for another movie fell through; and even The Illusionist (above), released seven years after Triplets, has arrived trailing a kerfuffle over its dedication to one of Tati's daughters (it's a long story). Given these travails, perhaps it's surprising that The Illusionist has arrived at all, and I advise you to see it while you can; it's perhaps not in the same edgy, original league as Triplets, but it's nevertheless one of the best movies of the year.

Drawn from a screenplay by Jacques Tati, The Illusionist finds Chomet in a nostalgic mood; he clearly identifies with the silent, subversive wit of the great filmmaker, and not only makes his star, a stage magician facing declining fortunes, a dead ringer for Tati but bequeaths to him the Frenchman's birth name as well ("Tatischeff").  The comedian even makes an appearance on a movie screen halfway through the picture (in a clip from Mon Oncle, I think).  Of course beneath the frisky grotesquerie of Triplets many of the same themes resonated: in Belleville, real joy was only found among loyal old ladies who loved dogs, frog legs and jazz.  It seems that to Chomet, modern pleasures are by way of contrast false and destructive, and driven by egoistic delusion - he ridicules the rock band ("Billy Boy and the Britoons") that pushes poor Tatischeff off-stage as phony poofters, for instance, and their screaming teen-age fans are portrayed as deluded children (Tati, who relentlessly parodied modernism in movies like Playtime, would no doubt have agreed).  Still, the times (the 50's) they were a'changin', and charming as his act may be, the Illusionist finds himself playing to little old ladies at deserted matinees (above), or to the occasional drunk (if hearty) Scotsman - who, in the best Chomet manner, at least knows how to have a good time.

When invited up to a gig at that pickled Scotsman's pub, Tatischeff picks up another admirer - Alice, a simple chambermaid who seems to believe she has passed through the looking glass, and that the magician's tricks are actual magic.  She trails after him as he moves on to another date in Edinburgh (below), and the film develops into a quaint, nearly-silent May-December romance - only without the romance (Tatischeff sleeps on the couch in his forlorn little room, while Alice gets the bed).

The film's vision of Edinburgh - a fantasy that's also an accurate geography.

What action remains in the movie is all indirectly stated: Tatischeff takes up odd jobs to sustain Alice's illusions, and keep his innocently selfish new ward in style - while she (inevitably) finds a different kind of magic in the handsome guy next door (and slowly leaves her protector behind).  I have to admit this poignant arc is never actually as pointed as Tati himself might have made it - because I'm not sure the unspoken courtliness that Chomet admires in his idol is truly his own forte.  The film is instead liveliest in the side gallery of grotesques who fill out Tatischeff's vaudeville programs - the clown who's so sad he's suicidal, the ventriloquist who gets drunk with his dummy - even the testy rabbit that, once out of the hat, always bites the hand that feeds it.  These characters have the eccentric, individual edge the crew from Triplets had, and we come to care for them far more than we do for sweet, blank Alice.  Indeed, the most devastating moment in the movie comes when Tatischeff closes down his act and lets that recalcitrant rabbit go free in the hills above town.  Suddenly he's alone, just like any other bunny; the dream is over.

One dream, however, remains - Chomet's wistful dedication to hand-drawn animation.  The evocative watercolors that make up the backgrounds of The Illusionist (with okay, the occasional digital flourish) supply the haunting atmosphere (below) that the foreground story sometimes lacks.  And I must recommend the film to anyone who loves Edinburgh as I do; Chomet captures Scotland's answer to Florence (where he actually made much of this movie) with a hand so loving, and so accurate, that I almost went and bought a plane ticket as soon as I left the theatre. Those familiar with that wonderful town will recognize many of its locations (even down to the street addresses on the buildings); at last this great location has found its cinematic apotheosis (as London and Paris have so many times before).  Something about Edinburgh's gaunt architectural romance I'm sure spoke to Chomet, just as Tati's courtliness did.  Perhaps the greatest praise one could give him is to acknowledge that he has brought both these profound sensibilities together onscreen.

Not just a city, but a sensibility - Edinburgh in The Illusionist.

Beyond the Fringe

The startling power and grace of Circa.

The thing you must understand about the Edinburgh Fringe is that it is impossible. You tell yourself there cannot really be over 300 venues. There cannot be over 1,000 performances a day. There cannot be hundreds of thousands of visitors. All that is impossible.

And yet there are, there are, and there are.

And so it's appropriate that this impossibility takes place in a fantasy of turrets and towers, a kind of stone coral grown from the ridge running from the crags of Edinburgh Castle to the lawn of Holyrood Palace (the Queen's crib when she's in town), with hundreds of buskers and performers swimming through the arches and "closes" and "wynds" like so many pilot fish in a gothic barrier reef.

You must also understand that this is all addictive. I was scheduling myself for four shows a day (things get going around 10 am and don't stop till after midnight). But still I found myself thinking, "I have two hours and a half hours between Merrily We Roll Along and Death of a Samurai - if I hustle, maybe I can squeeze in Faust!"

But what you must realize is that everywhere you go in Edinburgh, you will encounter stairs. Everywhere. And they all go uphill. So dashing from one venue to the next is the equivalent of a turn on a Stairmaster. With a mime by your side. Thus exhaustion begins to track you like a phantom, no matter how much you really want to see that rap version of Origin of Species. You must eventually rest.


The witches from an unconventional production of Macbeth take to the streets.

And, of course, eat. Which brings us to what you must also understand about Edinburgh: the Scots do not view food the same way we do. Not for them the four basic food groups, or the nutrition pyramid, or your average daily requirement of those effeminate abstractions known as vitamins. This is, after all, a land where men go commando in wool skirts, god bless'em, despite daily high wind. So it's no surprise the Scots do not have a diet; they have an attitude. There are six things available to eat, and these things are: 1) Haggis; 2) Whiskey; 3) The local stout, but no other; 4) Scones with butter; 5) Smoked Salmon; and 6) Haggis. What more could you want? If you do not like these things, simply do not go to Scotland (as you won't last long). Although even if you do like them, you may sense a growing vitamin deficiency over the time of your stay. So pack your 1-a-Days, girly-man.

Although there may be a full complement of iron, at least, in some of the single malts available, due to the "peaty notes" one constantly hears they conceal. Yes, peat = dirt, but never you mind. Aren't you used by now to wine that tastes "grassy"? So drink up.

And btw, you have until dawn to do so. During the Fringe, the pubs stay open till 5 AM. (Normally that cruel last call is at 3!) In Boston, of course, this would be a recipe for overturned cars, smashed windows, dead students, and other mayhem. In Edinburgh, it leads to college boys, arm in arm, slurrily singing in the street at 2 AM. Perhaps they save their aggression for soccer matches; or perhaps they're just more good-natured than we are - certainly in Edinburgh I sensed that the level of distrust and paranoia that is all but constant in the States had mysteriously lifted. Strangers chatted in the street; when I was caught in a sudden downpour, a lady offered me her extra "brelly"; when a friend was jostled in a pub and spilled his drink, the guilty party happily bought him a new one.


Jane Austen's Guide to Pornography, a show I wish I'd seen!

I suppose it may be silly to link this sociability to a habit of theatregoing, but it's a tempting thesis, particularly when one perceives that at the Fringe, audience participation - even of the ribald sort (!) - was an eagerly indulged constant. People expect to make contact, they expect a forgiving spotlight may be turned their way, they don't want to have a mediated experience, they'd rather have an actual one. They don't want to relate to a screen or a site or a brand or a fucking rock band, they want to relate with other people in a communal fashion. And I immediately understood why the A.R.T. was famously booed at their one Edinburgh Festival appearance ("a torrent of jeering, derisive, mocking laughter issued from the stalls" - ah, if only that could happen here!). There is some seriousness at the Fringe and Festival (though more comedy); but there is very little pretension.

Perhaps because there's just no time for it; or perhaps because of the overwhelming atmosphere of practicality. Seeing a show at the Fringe goes something like this: first you find the venue on your tattered map of Edinburgh, with its 300 different little markers; sometimes you discover it is one of several tucked under the arches of an ancient bridge (as at the Underbelly, at left), or at the end of a back alley. Then you find your queue and get in it, grabbing a beer first if you have time (the Fringe runs on alcohol as well as adrenaline). At the last minute, the door to the venue suddenly swings open, and the previous audience files out. Then you file in - filling the seats up row by row. When the last person is seated, the door to the venue closes, and the house lights dim. And another show starts.

Under these conditions, it's true, I saw a lot of crap - that Merrily We Roll Along quickly ran aground, Faust in a Box should never have been opened, and there were other disappointments. In general I learned not to check out the weird classics-with-wild-new-angles, as the texts often had to be trimmed mercilessly to fit into the hour-and-a-half slots at most venues. I likewise learned to sniff out collegiate groups masquerading as professional ones.

Not that the local papers (or the Web) were much help: many of the Fringe reviewers turned out to be untrustworthy (just like the ones here!), although it was fun to become re-acquainted with purple pronouncements like "I don't think I could ever love someone who missed this show!" Word of mouth, however, was generally trustworthy, particularly about comics and physical theatre (so if you go, ask around in the line for tickets). And the powers-that-be were straightforward about content: "warning: extreme nudity" meant two naked people (above left) bumping uglies inches from your nose; "some nudity," by way of contrast, meant the occasional bare bum or boob safely up on stage. "Adult language" meant blueness deeper than the deep blue sea; the average f- or c-bomb didn't rate a mention. The only real surprise was the overweight Greek dude in skin-tight swim trunks (and wing-tips) who did some impromptu crowd-surfing and tried to kiss the guy in front of me.


The Royal Holloway Theatre production of Crave.

There were a few triumphs. The Australian troupe Circa (at top and left) took Cirque-du-Soleil-style gymnastics into genuinely troubling emotional territory, and climaxed with a squirm-inducing sequence in which a woman climbed over her near-naked paramour in spike heels. The Fall of Man, from Red Shift Theatre Company, smashed the banality of a squalid affair against Satan's rhetoric from Paradise Lost, to often unsettling effect. A one-man version of The Odyssey was a dazzling display of Lecoq training, even if it didn't quite limn the depths of Homer's masterpiece. Likewise a worthy production of Sarah Kane's Crave (promo above) opted for a too-too solid set (a diner, in fact) which in the end didn't illuminate much of this goth classic's darkness. Meanwhile Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen's "dark" cabaret act, "Dead Men Tell a Thousand Tales" was a macabre hoot - sample "dark" lyric: "Sodomy ain't just for animals, and human flesh ain't just for cannibals." (As an added bonus, these "Transylvanian troubadours" donned Mexican hats and deftly skewered the doomy whistling that always accompanies Quentin Tarantino's Taco Bell existentialism.) John Hinton's folk-rock take on The Origin of Species (Darwin's a local hero) was likewise charming - I'm still humming the number about the sex lives of barnacles, in fact. So what's that, six hits out of twenty tries? Not too shabby, I'd say. And will I be back next year? God willing.

A note from Edinburgh

I have a few hours between shows this evening, so I thought I would post some lines to my half-forgotten blog. I've been seeing four shows a day since my arrival - and in between dashing to different sights in Edinburgh - so I'm fairly exhausted, if happy. The Fringe Festival is, indeed, like no other theatre festival I've ever attended - even if, to tell true, there's no quality control (anyone with the chutzpah and determination to snag a venue is officially on the list). But then again, did I really expect that the hand-puppet Much Ado About Nothing or the lip-synched Faust in a Box was going to work? In short, at the Fringe there are a few major, well-funded productions (which quickly sell out), and then zillions - and I mean zillions - of no-scenery, collegiate or amateur pet projects that are strictly hit or miss. Sometimes, it's true, they do hit the mark (both the rap and the folk-rock versions of Darwin's "Descent of Man" were, believe it or not, a riot), but I've been enduring a fair number of misses, too. Every time you step back out onto the Royal Mile, however, and find it teeming with thousands of theatregoers, and buskers, and live performers (within yards you'll find an African choir, a group of acrobats, and the cast of Sweeney Todd), you immediately find a weary smile has returned to your face. It's just incredible to be in a city in which it seems everyone is living and breathing theatre or music or dance. And then there's Edinburgh itself - a gothic fantasy of towers and turrets and dungeons and dark passages that feels like some sort of theatrical character in its own right. More when I return - I have to get ready to check out some sort of "Black Sea Cabaret" in a few minutes. That is if I return. I may just stay on till the money runs out.