Hollywood again dominates the Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature with Cars,
Happy Feet and Monster Housevying for glory this year. But a
future contender may be taking shape far away from the CGI world of gabby
gas guzzlers, dancing penguins and menacing buildings. Sylvain Chomet, the
French animator of the Oscar-nominated Belleville Rendezvous, is
making his next film in Scotland.
The Illusionist is based on an unmade 1956 script by the French
comedian Jacques Tati, who charmed cinemagoers in the 1950s and 1960s as the
gangly near-silent figure in a smashed hat and crumpled raincoat who was
bemused and tripped up by daily life. He was the forefather of Mr Bean, so
it’s no surprise to find Rowan Atkinson currently filming a Bean sequel on
the French Riviera, causing holiday-resort havoc as Tati did in M.
Hulot’s Holiday.
Now the late Tati is again walking with his loping stride, albeit in animated
form. In The Illusionist, he’s a magician thrown by rock’n’roll and a
Scottish girl who believes his magic is real. “Tati wanted to move from
purely visual comedy and try an emotionally deeper story,” Chomet explains
as he shows me round his studio — several rooms in a terraced building on
George Street in Edinburgh.
Halfway through its four-year production, the film now has a storyboard of
completed scenes filling up a corridor wall. In one room, illustrators are
sketching characters ranging from a quizzical Tati to a Hebridean drunk. In
another, smoke is digitally added to a train’s arrival in 1959 Edinburgh.
Like Belleville Rendezvous, this revels in its quirky, hand-drawn
detail and characterisation. It couldn’t be more different from the
Hollywood formula of family-friendly plots, fuzzy animal characters and
starry voices that are still prevalent in such forthcoming films as Surf’s
Up (moreperky penguins), Ratatouille (more rats, after Flushed
Away) and Shrek the Third (more fairytale spoofs).
“Animation can be mature but too many cartoons have the same shiny bigeyes
style so kids only know one taste and can’t tell the difference between good
food and junk food any more,” says an exasperated Chomet. “Look at Pixar’s Cars.
It makes cars look cute when they’re destroying the planet. It’s awful.
The company’s now a corporation and everything they do looks the same.”
Chomet and his business partners, his wife Sally and Bob Last, have recently
been trawling Europe to expand their 30-strong team as The Illusioniststeps
up production. “There’s a lot of talent but it’s hard to find the right
people,” says Sally Chomet. “Students come with this almost
institutionalised preconception of animation so show us Disneyesque drawings
when what we need to see is their take on the world.” (To be fair, this is a
problem even Disney is aware of; see overleaf.)
The Illusionist is budgeted at about £10 million. For Last that means
“it allows for an auteur’s vision like Sylvain’s but the film is also aiming
to be more than just a critical success”. Last sees European animated
features currently split between low-budget, edgy work and large-scale
productions that need a broad appeal.
You can see the extremes of this budgetary scale in the Animated Exeter
festival, which offers a range of workshops, talks, exhibitions and
screenings. At one end is The Chris-ties, an award-winning film of
minimalist, psychopathic family vignettes by Phil Mulloy. At the other end
is Luc Besson’s Arthur and the Invisibles, a £48 million French
production combining live action and busyCG sequences (and also currently on
general release) for the tale of a boy looking for treasure in a punky
Lilliputian world. With its American setting and starry vocal cast (David
Bowie, Madonna, Robert De Niro), it seems determined to challenge
Hollywood’s domination.
“Pixar and Disney have shown what’s possible, so why not?” asks a bullish
Besson, whose CV of moderately eccentric, safely generic films includes La
Femme Nikita, The Fifth Element and, as a producer, countless action
B-movies. “I’m not trying to better anyone else, I’m just doing what feels
right,” he says of Arthur, which offers Norman Rockwell-like
1950s Americana and a darker animated palette than Pixar. “I don’tthink the
film is particularly American or particularly French, it’s just me,” he
maintains.
So far, Arthurhas done decent business in Europe but hasn’t lit up the
US box-office. Along with another disappointing US performer, the
German-made fairytale spoof Happily N’Ever After,it suggests
that blending in with Hollywood product isn’t the way forward.
“Hollywood does not need other regions of the world trying to copy or imitate
it, just as there would be no point in Hollywood copying Europe,” says Serge
Bromberg, the director of the annual Annecy International Animation
Festival. “Independent European productions will never find their market in
the USA or Japan, but are successful in most European countries.” He cites
the forthcoming Persepolis, based on a memoir ofgrowing up in Iran
during the Islamic revolution, as an example of distinctive storytelling
that retains a strong local identity. He also admires Christian Volckman’s
French sci-fi thriller Renaissance, which strikingly combines the
retro noir of Sin City, the future shock of Blade Runner and
the motion-capture software that propelled The Polar Express.It looks
like a graphic novel come to life.
“Americans come along with their big films that cost a lot of money, and
invade everyone,” Volckman says. “But it’s very good that they exist. [The
French] cannot do it like the Americans. We have no choice — we have to find
a way of being different.”
The European quest to be different includes Max & Co, a
Franco-Swissadventure about a half-boy, half-fox, that’s using stop-frame
animation. Based in a Swiss box factory, it boasts 27 sets, 70 puppet
characters and an international team of animators whose credits include Toy
Story, Chicken Run and Corpse Bride. “Switzerland is a small
market but a lot of money is available for the right project,” notes Benoit
Dreyer, the film’s Swiss producer, “so it’s a good place to launch
productions.”
Increased computer power and cheaper software also means that it’s now viable
to make animation for niche audiences. That’s why we’re getting such
productions as the British-Norwegian Free Jimmy, about a stoned
circus elephant, and Princess, a brutal Danish story about a lapsed
priest avenging the death of his porn-star sister. As Sarita Christensen,
the producer of Princess,says:“We can’t make films which tell heavy
stories any more because nobody will watch them, that’s why animation has
become so interesting.”
Bromberg wonders if European animation might benefit from its need for
international finance: “Let’s hope globalisation will be positive in this
matter. Each country interacts with the other as it draws on technical
skills, experience and training from all parts of the world.” But not all
collaborations work out. Witness the recent split between Aardman Animation
and DreamWorks after the box-office failures of Wallace and Gromit: The
Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Flushed Away. Arthur Sheriff, a
spokesman for Aardman, declares it “fantastic news” as it frees the company
from the pressures of making only big-budget blockbusters.
Chomet gave up adapting a children’s book for Universal under such pressure.
“As the budget got bigger, the studio wanted a less dark, more commercial
story and it wasn’t what I wanted to make,” he says. Adds Sally: “We had
barely finished a character sketch and its potential as a plastic toy was
being assessed.”
Chomet is far happier with The Illusionist.As he shows me a sequence in
which Tati is performing his magic act, Chomet gazes at it with the
affectionate enthusiasm of a proud father. He leaves me with the impression
that European animation can pull something magical out of the hat.
Animated Exeter (www.animatedexeter.co.uk 08707 551238), until Feb 24
Chomet complains about the lack of originality from within Hollywood yet for only his second full length project he turns to a fifty year old script that even its creator, Jaq Tati, abandoned. I would suggest that before Chomet criticises successful projects which have been put together by hundreds of highly talented individuals he should first use his huge ego to write something of his own. Trawling the animation forums it is often repeated that Chomet did little of the work on Belleville but took all the credit. Pixar and Disney are full of incredibly talented individuals who remain in those studios out of necessity. Not everyone can raise a multi million dollar budget by attaching themselves to a part of history that they admire.
Paul Robinson, Bristol,
This has always been the case with the field of animation. Everyone forgets that animation is NOT the invention of Americans. Usually people only think of Disney, and forget that animation is in fact a good deal older than Disney, and Snow White was not actually the first animation feature. Europe, and countries all around the world, have been making animation since about the beginning of cinema. European animation has usually differed stylistically from Disney since its inception. And independent animation has too, and continues to. It is truly tragic that people equate animation with Disney.
Tamar Shaham, Los Angeles , CA
And the Japanese? They've been flying arcs around American animation for DECADES now, taking up themes and subjects that would make indie filmmakers qual with fear. If you've only seen the robot animation or the naked women with tentacles hentai, or to go the classy route, if you've only seen Hayao Miyazaki, you've seen a miniscule percentage of the entire art form.
Quentin Tarantado, Quezon City, Phils.
I agree with Chomet in that American films lean too heavily on box office potential then remaining true to the written source behind the film's story. Many films are edited down to fit a PG-13 mold with the idea being it will help insure a bigger box office draw. In fact, it shows a lack of faith in the material. If the studio has such little faith in the project they're producing, why are they making it in the first place? American film production companies have to climb out of the current remake fettish and start looking towards more original fare. I'm still wondering when "Towering Inferno" will be remade. Or when the next popular Japanese horror film will be remade into an American one.
Todd Groves, Santa Monica,