Day 55: Laemmle's Royal Theater

Mark and Aidan were invited to a Laker game tonight, so Beckett asked if we could go to the movies.  I was not in the mood to deal with crowds and massive parking structures, so we decided to go see the Illusionist at Laemmle's Royal Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A.  This is a huge screen and a nice old theater that I have not been to in years.  There were probably fewer than 30 people in there.  The film, by Sylvain Chomet, the same filmmaker who made the Triplets of Belleville, worked from a screenplay originally written by the great Jacques Tati, about a character who he could probably identify with.  I found this synopsis of the film online, which I liked:  "The Illusionist" is a story about two paths that cross. An outdated, aging magician, forced to wander from country to country, city to city and station to station in search of a stage to perform his act meets a young girl at the start of her life?s journey. Alice is a teenage girl with all her capacity for childish wonder still intact. She plays at being a woman without realizing the day to stop pretending is fast approaching. She doesn't know yet that she loves The Illusionist like she would a father; he already knows that he loves her as he would a daughter. Their destinies will collide, but nothing -- not even magic or the power of illusion -- can stop the voyage of discovery. 

The combination of the melancholy story and the intricate, original animation of French train stations and remote Scottish seaside towns reminded me of the Madeleine books I loved as a child.  Beckett loved it -- he wants to see it again with dad.  He asked me who my favorite character was in the movie, and we both agreed it was definitely the Illusionist himself -- a dying breed of showmen with a big heart, who would give away his last dollar and end up pawning his precious magician's kit to put a smile on a little girl's face and buy her things that he thought would make her happy.  It was light on plot, and at the same time a beautiful story.