A Magnificent Life

by Mike McGranaghan

A Magnificent Life is something we don’t get too often: an animated biopic. In this case, the subject is Marcel Pagnol, the French poet, playwright, novelist, and filmmaker. Director Sylvain Chomet, whose The Triplets of Belleville received a 2004 Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Feature category, uses beautiful, old-school 2D animation to recount highlights from Pagnol’s career. The movie delights the eye, but that’s about it.

Laurent Lafitte voices Pagnol, and the story shows how early unexpected success writing plays leads to an offer to enter the newfangled world of cinema. Sensing an ability to visually expand stories beyond what they could be on the stage, he decides to make the jump. His style is defined by an insistence on casting actors from regional parts of France, so their accents will be credible to the stories he wants to tell. Eventually, Pagnol opens his own studio, where he enjoys free creative reign. Through various ups and downs, he strives to produce work with real meaning, even as conventional filmmaking circles fail to appreciate him.

On an optic level, A Magnificent Life is perpetually pleasant to look at. The animation embraces slight caricature in the people, while going for realistic details elsewhere. Seeing animated recreations of vintage film equipment and movie production techniques is especially nice, as there’s palpable love in their depictions. At times, Chomet incorporates actual footage from Pagnol’s cinematic work into the animation, adding to our understanding of what the man sought to accomplish.

The flaw is in the storytelling. With a running time of about 84 minutes (minus end credits), there’s no room to explore the different aspects of its subject’s career in any kind of detail. This is a bullet-point version of Pagnol’s professional life. Scenes are short, with important milestones introduced, then quickly tossed aside. That renders the movie superficial, no matter how gorgeous it looks.

And that’s a shame, because there are plenty of avenues to go down. Pagnol was a true independent voice who bucked the system in many ways. Each time the movie glosses over something potentially interesting, a feeling of disappointment follows. Animation fans may savor the craft; otherwise, A Magnificent Life is shallow and unsatisfying.

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