I think the best description of the film is as follows “An 80-minute, hand-drawn animated French film without dialogue and with one of the most depressing finale acts ever committed to celluloid: this is The Illusionist. It’s also some sort of divine masterpiece.”
Set initially in Paris, through London, Scotland and eventually settling in Edinburgh this film follows the life of a magician and his dying art. No one is interested in his work and as he travels he finds that less and less people are coming to his shows. Along the way his magic entices a young girl, bored of her humdrum life, naïvely she latches onto him and being unworldly does not quite understand the value of money, the magician does nothing to discourage that, and produces gifts and treasures as if by magic, working extra hard to keep the illusion up.
