Notes on the Illusionist # 2: On tumblr

Consider this a warning, when The Illusionist is released on DVD, should this blog still be alive, I expect to launch a devastating barrage of random screencaps. Because it is a pretty film.

If there’s one satisfaction in the film which is untinged with melancholy it’s the pure satisfaction in Chomet’s attention to detail. He stuffs his work with on screen jokes and rewards, from comic advertising on street walls to ridiculous menu’s, right up to the post-credits easter-egg. Hell, it’s one of those film where you can sit through the credits in a half-empty cinema because you just know the bugger’s going to have left something to reward patience.

Only, in a way, I feel wrong about that aforementioned desire to capture and post every second scene from the film in a blog post. Because as glorious as all those iconic still shots, detailed backgrounds and so on are, the extent to which the film offers them is almost an invitation to misrepresentation.

In a film so full of perfect stills you could fill pages with gorgeous frames and miss the true feeling in the story, which is about more than looking elegant. I think that what I like in tumblr, aside from the fanart and novelties, are screencaps that might otherwise pass you by. Those moments when there’s a moving scene which can be summed up in a captured instant, a moving limb caught in the critical moment, - something suggestive of motion. That’s an over the top way to talk about hitting the S key, but fuck it.

What The Illusionist offers is a world made lovingly, but which exceeds any single frame. To post every one of those scenes (and they are all that good) would constitute a dissection in stead of a celebration. Screencapping is probably some way less distinguished than dancing about architecture, as pleasurable as it can be. In any case, as far as The Illusionist goes, I’m not sure it’s the right language to capture the music.