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.

We can see the character’s angst, happiness and sorrow, but it doesn’t cut through. The film’s emotional life doesn’t quite connect and feels remote.

Chomet’s gift for deftly caricatured faces, expressive movement, and clever compositions hasn’t deserted him, and there are many flat-out beautiful bits scattered throughout, but this is altogether a work that’s best appreciated with the sound off, while blasting a playlist of Django Reinhardt’s greatest hits.

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.

It’s a testament to the beauty of Chomet’s visual style that the picture book images of Paris and Marseille in the mid-20th century are transporting enough to make A Magnificent Life a comfortable sit. But Pagnol deserves better than this limp eulogy.

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.