A Magnificent Life

In depicting both Pagnol and Chomet’s search for authentic truths within their stylized works, it’s a perfect marriage of subject and form.

It feels like a gorgeous, decidedly dewy-eyed heritage hagiography.

There are times when A Magnificent Life gets too heavily into the weeds, attempting to cover so many biographical bases that it loses narrative momentum. But the stylistic imagination and beautiful, hand-drawn animation on display more than make up for its awkward storytelling, and it ultimately emerges as a loving tribute to an important figure in French culture

As those familiar with Chomet's work would expect, A Magnificent Life is an exquisitely animated film to watch, even if the narrative is a bit rote. But it also makes one think that maybe the original concept for this as a documentary of Pagnol’s life could’ve been more effective and illuminating of what made him such a great artist.

The film runs on an engine at the altar of memory, itself a facile idea since prolific writers who produce feted work don’t wholly rely on retroactive synthesis. The film is then only memorable in some sequences. Magical, it is not.

Magnificent as Pagnol’s achievements may have been, it’s a pity that the decades-spanning account of one of France’s greatest storytellers didn’t make for a better story unto itself.

Sylvain Chomet provides only a scant sense of Marcel Pagnol’s creative inklings, such as the ideas and themes that fuel the films that he fights so vehemently to make.