The Span of Marcel Pagnol

There’s no subject of biopics more dull than an artist, because their life stories tend to be less interesting than their creative works. To the credit of A Magnificent Life, a lyrical biopic of Marcel Pagnol, the film does thoughtfully represent the French artist’s eclectic interest in painting, theater, poetry, memoir and filmmaking. The drawback is that the 90-minute animated film is too brief to examine any of Pagnol’s interests with depth, and is surprisingly conventional for a film about such a radical provocateur.

A Magnificent Life is from animator Sylvain Chomet, who’s no stranger to pastiche; Chomet’s breakout film The Triplets of Belville was an homage to French pantomime, and he gained more traction for The Illusionist, which controversially adapted an unproduced script by the late genius Jacques Tati. A Magnificent Life is a more straightforward biopic that’s introduced by a portrait of an older man called upon to reflect upon his life. It thankfully doesn’t take too long for Chomet to introduce his framing device; the older Pagnol is in conversation with his younger self, who’s strolled through his memories as a child growing up during a turbulent period in world history. The concept of two versions of a person in dialogue with one another may have been lifted from the “nouveau roman” style of French novels that Pagnol was involved with, but it’s best conveyed through the medium of animation that Chomet has already shown mastery in.

The most compelling quality of Pangol’s that Chomet picked up on was the artist’s reverence for evolution, and his apprehension for didacticism. The portion of the film centered on Pagnol’s younger years are formulaic, and touch upon themes of strong maternal connection, social disillusionment and curiosity that drive all artist biopics. However, it’s once Pagnol is placed in a stuffy classroom setting that Chomet’s able to question the nature of his own approach. When Pagnol is inspired to question why a creative field would be dogged by such standardized practices, A Magnificent Life is diverted from its recitation of events to become a kaleidoscopic journey through different fields of study. There’s still title cards used to announce the specific periods of his career, but they’re buttressed by surrealist dream sequences where Pagnol can interact with the literary icons that he drew direct influence from.

The initial theatricality and strong convictions of Pagnol resemble the straightforward motivations of plays in the classicist style, which were popular in the 1920s when he began his career. Since there are essentially three versions of Pagnol that exist in the past, present, and future, there’s a meta conversation about the myth of puritanical aspiration. That this is lined up with the period in Pagnol’s life when he wrote Topaze, a satire about a decent schoolteacher who’s cursed with the ambitions of a tyrant, is no coincidence. There was  enough material in Pagnol’s humble, yet sharp criticism of snooty French high society to dedicate an entire film to, but Chomet’s overwhelmed by the wealth of material needed to properly tribute the man’s life. It’s frustrating that A Magnificent Life isn’t more focused, but Chomet’s rushed habits aren’t ill-intentioned; the filmmaker’s likely aware that for many audience members, A Magnificent Life will be their introduction to Pagnol.

Chomet’s at his most creative in the film’s third act, where Pagnol is established as one of France’s first filmmakers, and elected the first leader of its Academy. Since A Magnificent Life is impressionistic, the film can incorporate live-action clips within animated amphitheaters; the effect is used to embody how the silver screen felt more “real” to early cinema audiences than the tactile world they lived in.

A Magnificent Life is most weighed down by is Chomet’s non-committal approach to drawing from his own experiences. Most directors who’ve made these types of biopics related to their subjects strongly; Oliver Stone saw himself as Jim Morrison, Francis Ford Coppola imagined that he was the next Preston Tucker, and for better or worse, Julian Schnabel’s Jean-Michel Basquiat was cryptically autobiographical. The moments where A Magnificent Life is most alive are when Chomet has used his own experiences with critics, colleagues, and controversy to depict similar challenges in Pagnol’s life; there’s a particularly funny instance where the design for a pretentious theater critic is nearly identical to that of a Nazi commander. The parallels are prominent enough that it’s clear when Chomet doesn’t have interest in the historical context; World War II was a significant factor in Pagnol’s late career, but it’s little more than an afterthought in A Magnificent Life.

What can’t be criticized about A Magnificent Life is the animation itself, which is slightly more grounded and humanistic than the bizarre style of Chomet’s previous films. That a PG-13 animated film was backed by a studio like Sony Pictures Classics is an achievement because of how sparse options are for the medium. The rare instances in which international animated films break into American markets are either fan-driven anime events or child-friendly stories like this year’s Oscar nominees Arco and Little Amélie or the Character of Rain. If animation’s theoretically a form, not a genre, then the industry ought to promote more films like A Magnificent Life for the sake of creative diversity alone.