It’s common for a successful artist to be asked about advice they’d give their younger self; one film from this year’s Cannes Specials selection does the opposite. In Sylvain Chomet’s animation A Magnificent Life, French playwright, filmmaker, and inventor Marcel Pagnol is 61 years old and very close to giving up on his career, so a younger Marcel comes to the rescue. When asked to write a memoir column for Elle magazine, Pagnol simply can’t do it––not without the help of hope and optimism personified in the figure of young Marcel.
Chomet has brought us two of the 21st century’s significant animations, The Triplets of Belleville and The Illusionist––both stylistically and narratively daring enough to build anticipation for this biopic celebrating a beloved French auteur. While the initial idea was for Chomet to make a straightforward documentary, animated sequences that stood in for missing archival footage left a big impression on the producers and financiers. An unlikely success story indeed, the project was initiated and supported by Marcel Pagnol’s grandson, Nicolas. The opening title card reads: “a true story.”
Still, Chomet and his team make use of magical, comical, formally inventive techniques to represent the dialogue between Pagnol and his childhood self. Though Marcel first appears ghostly and blends with the background, his mission is to “take” the older Pagnol “back” into his past, demanding more and more involvement on his part. Eventually the young boy intervenes and facilitates chance encounters that, in the eyes of his older self, appears miraculous. Pagnol’s own books (like My Mother’s Castle or My Father’s Glory) have chronicled much of his own childhood, but a newcomer to his work and life may be surprised how much tragedy and death plagued his life. As a small boy, his mother dies; his father barely talks to him; when he moves to Paris, his wife leaves him; rejections and ridicule wound his spirits; friends and colleagues die of illnesses, old age, and war. But Marcel Pagnol is too excited by the wonders of art to simply surrender, faithful to the advice inherited from his mother: life is not tragedy.
Like most biopics, A Magnificent Life pays tribute to its subject, but this film particularly makes Pagnol a man in with the times, embracing the medium of cinema when his theatre colleagues were too skeptical to try. Chronologically and thematically, the second part concerns cinema and Pagnol’s cinephilia––his collaboration with Hollywood and Paramount Studios told in sober, likely accurate ways. At this point the more fairytale-like elements governing the narrative arc make room for serious business talks, the joys and the stress of making cinema. As a treat, some films Pagnol directed appear amidst the animated world as a live-action clip shown on a TV set.
A Magnificent Life, of course, reveres Pagnol as a visionary, and fittingly leaves out any criticism that could be voiced against, for example, the many actresses he had as lovers throughout his life. At least the animation features some (if not all) of them, testifying to its truthfulness. Chomet’s film is finally an edifying, educating piece of work, beautifully drawn and composed; having versions of it dubbed in both French and in English will surely help it reach a wider audience. Most commendable is that it stands on its own two feet: instead of asking the viewer for any prior knowledge, it makes a fine starting point for those who want to familiarize themselves with Pagnol.
A Magnificent Life premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and will be released by Sony Pictures Classics.
