A Magnificent Life is a biopic of French writer, playwright and film director Marcel Pagnol. The film’s lovely 2D animation breathes life into a story that, while niche, is interesting. But this animated movie is not intended for kids. Ruminations on life and death, infrequent but sometimes harsh language, hazy spirituality and suggestive situations and dialogue are all found here.
A good writer knows how to end a story. A good playwright knows when the curtain should fall. A good director knows where to fade to black.
Marcel Pagnol has held all three professions over his acclaimed and influential career. Lately, however, he’s starting to feel that it might be time for him to bow out of the spotlight. After all, it is “the youth that drive the world,” and Monsieur Pagnol is long removed from his youth.
Or perhaps not.
When a friend (who also happens to be the editor-in-chief of the magazine Elle) commissions Marcel to write serialized articles recounting his childhood, Marcel finds himself much closer to his youth than he ever thought possible.
Marcel cherishes his wife and the children they have together. He makes an effort to include his siblings in his success, giving them jobs and a voice in his movie studio. And he’s even willing to destroy his own work to keep it from being weaponized by the Nazis.
Marcel’s mother has a significant and positive impact on her son’s life and outlook. His father is a principled man, and he states that he would rather his son become a poor but honest man than a wealthy and dishonest one. Though Marcel’s relationship with his father grows strained, it’s clear they still love each other.
When an elder Marcel initially struggles to remember the details of his childhood, the “ghost” of his younger self appears to help him. This “Young Marcel” is seen throughout the film and often converses with other people, too.
Other apparitions, generally deceased family and friends, appear to comfort or counsel Marcel—the most prominent of which is his mother. Marcel says that, as a writer, he speaks to both “the living and the dead.” But whether these spirits are truly present or just a mixture of Marcel’s memories and creative imaginings is left open to interpretation.
At the end of his life, Marcel sees a vision of his loved ones in what could be interpreted as a sort of heaven, represented by the countryside near Marseilles.
Marcel remembers his grandfather telling him that “all that is beautiful is true, and all that is true has earned the respect of the divine.” Marcel’s father doesn’t believe in the “divine,” instead putting his faith into science and the French Republic. And Marcel’s mother seems to imply that belief in God is for the “less clever.” Even so, the influence of Catholicism is still present in the family’s life, and reverent mention is made to the “Lady of Marseilles.” (A statue of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus resides atop the city’s Notre-Dame de la Garde.)
For Marcel’s part, he seems to push against both faith and science (at least in his youth), harboring anger towards God for making his mother “so delicate” and towards science for failing to prevent her eventual death.
Marcel explains to his children that a tree is over 2,000 years old, claiming that “Jesus could have tasted its olives.” When his young daughter asks who Jesus is, her brother tells her it’s the “name of the neighbor’s cat.”
When Marcel kisses a woman’s hand in a respectful greeting, the woman laughs at the formality and asks, “Do I look like the Pope?” Someone says to another, “May the Lord hear you.” A cross hangs on the wall of a hospital. A man lying in repose holds rosary beads in his hands—later, we see his grave, upon which rests a crucifix.
Marcel wants to become a filmmaker, in part, to break the limitations of the stage, saying he will film actors from above like the view of a guardian angel or God.
Actors in a play reference their time in a convent. Characters playfully bow to the Paramount Pictures logo on a studio lot.
While A Magnificent Life never ventures into explicit territory, it doesn’t shy away from suggestive situations and dialogue. Marcel has many lovers who flit in and out of his life throughout the film. The film never shows couples doing anything more than kissing or lying next to each other in bed, but plenty is implied.
In one scene, discarded clothes are shown strewn about a hotel room while Marcel and a woman giggle faintly upstairs. The spirit of Young Marcel tells his ghostly mother that the offscreen pair are “doing things I don’t understand, things adults do.” When his mother asks if Marcel is with a particular woman, the young boy says, “Tonight, he is,” implying that Marcel has multiple paramours.
We are told that Marcel has “never been able to say ‘no’ to a woman.” A woman says suggestively that she knows “plenty of ways to relax a man.”
As Marcel ages, a friend encourages him to trade “passionate love affairs” for “modest love that consumes itself slowly.” As a young adult, Marcel’s first wife leaves him when his creative pursuits put a strain on their marriage. Another woman breaks up with him after he destroys the film that she starred in.
Someone tells her husband that she is pregnant, and the pair celebrate the news. Marcel’s father remarries a few years after Marcel’s mother dies.
A man in a film calls his cat a “whore, a trollop, a dirty wench.” There are a few mentions of “cuckolds” in Marcel’s works. Someone says the theater crowd is full of “hussies.”
Men dress in drag for a comedic play. A joke is made about a woman’s breasts by one of the performers.
Some live-action film clips woven into this animated feature depict women in revealing clothing. We also see some animated advertisements with similarly clothed women.
In one of Marcel’s plays, a character says, “Great passions only last one night … the nicest breasts only come in pairs.”
There is a lot of death in this film, though much of it is displayed offscreen. Marcel endures the death of family and friends, including the loss of his mother, brother and even his young daughter.
Warplanes drop bombs on Marseilles. We see the ruins of a destroyed schoolhouse. The legs of a deceased schoolchild are seen in the rubble, and a woman weeps over the body.
With dark humor, Marcel describes the dreary life of a writer within the Hollywood studio system. We see a representation of the writer he’s describing putting a gun to his own head and preparing to fire it.
In his youth, Marcel joins a boxing club to exert some of his anger. In one of his bouts, his opponent strikes him in the face—Marcel’s nose gets bruised and bulbous by the blow.
In a play, a character reads a soldier’s letter from the frontlines of World War I, and there is mention of a comrade getting a “bullet through the head.” In another play, a man gets “shot” with a prop gun. (The man abruptly falls to the ground, but the scene is bloodless and the actor gets to his feet moments later.)
A Nazi officer says that many Jewish people have “departed” from France—he does not elaborate further, but we understand the grim context behind the remark.
A car nearly runs over Marcel and his wife when they first arrive in Paris. A sheep eats plaster and dies.
Note: The original version of A Magnificent Life was in French. We reviewed the English dub that will receive a limited theatrical release.
While language is limited, there is still a smattering of profanity and other rude language found in the film. The s-word is used three times. God’s name is abused twice, one paired with “d–n.” The British swears “bloody” and “crikey” are heard.
There are additional uses of “d–n,” “a–” and “b–tard.” Characters say “p-ss,” “whore” and “sod.”
An animal gets its name from a crude term for a part of male anatomy. A Frenchman derisively calls a Hungarian “Attila the Hun,” and labels another man a “fool and imbecile.” Some rude phrases are heard, such as “get stuffed.”
Characters smoke and drink throughout the film. After his girlfriend leaves him, Marcel consoles himself by getting stumbling drunk. People joke about alcoholism. Marcel envisions an American cowboy giving French children chewing tobacco.
A Magnificent Life is full of philosophical musings that are sometimes at odds with one another. A doctor says, “Life is but a tragedy,” referring to the failing health of Marcel’s mother. The mother disagrees, however, saying life is “full of beauty.” Someone else believes “beautiful things are not meant to last.” In the wake of tragedy, another says, “Life can be a monstrosity, but you have to keep on living.”
After the end of World War II, Marcel frets about America’s influence on France. He holds a pretty dim view of American culture, viewing it as full of tobacco-chawing, devil-may-care cowboys and burger-munching gluttons.
Following Paris’ liberation from the Nazis, a woman is shown with her head shaved and a swastika drawn on her ragged head. (Something that happened frequently in France to women who were accused of collaborating and/or sleeping with members of the occupying German forces.)
We see a brief animated clip of Hitler giving a speech, followed by Nazi salutes. Marcel puts a radio address by Philippe Pétain in one of his films, which displeases the French Vichy government during the Nazi occupation. He also intentionally shows a Nazi officer the worst cuts of his films to dissuade the man from using them as part of German propaganda.
Marcel gambles to distract himself from the opening night of one of his plays. Film directors are called liars.
A dog vomits green slime onto a car window. A man vomits after seeing a particularly rough cut of a movie. Someone picks their nose. A young Marcel disrespects his stepmother.
In his old age, Marcel tries to invent a perpetual motion machine (a hypothetical device which we now know is physically impossible). He believes old people, like himself, are “in constant pursuit of their memories.”
A Magnificent Life recounts the life of French auteur Marcel Pagnol with artistic flair. Director Sylvain Chomet renders Pagnol’s life in beautiful 2D animation, capturing both the dry hills of Marseilles and the stately streets of Paris—and filling his characters with a charming, almost caricature-like flair. Marcel Pagnol indeed led an interesting life, full of triumph and tragedy, and much of that is captured here.
In my opinion, there are two types of biopics: those that attempt to present their subject with a bit of nuance—presenting both the good and, if not bad, then at least slightly questionable—and those that hold their subject in a sort of saintly grace. I’d say A Magnificent Life falls in the latter category.
Here, Marcel Pagnol is viewed glowingly, as are his creative pursuits. It’s interesting to contrast this film with Nouvelle Vague, another biopic about a French auteur, Jean-Luc Godard. While Nouvelle Vague at least showed the strain that Godard’s eccentricities put on his friends and peers, the only characters in A Magnificent Life who are not immediately charmed or delighted by Marcel Pagnol are presented as either cartoonishly shrewish or utterly moronic.
If you’ve read this far, you’ll know that, though this film is animated, it’s not for kids. It covers some weighty topics, like the sorrow of death and musings on life. There’s a fair bit of suggestive situations and dialogue. And language, though far from the worst that the PG-13 rating can offer, is still present.
For older teens and adults, those issues may be navigable. Though the film’s topic is fairly niche, for those who are interested, A Magnificent Life will likely be a pleasing watch. Just be aware that there are some content smudges on this page.
Bret loves a good story—be it a movie, show, or video game—and enjoys geeking out about things like plot and story structure. He has a blast reading and writing fiction and has penned several short stories and screenplays. He and his wife love to kayak the many beautiful Colorado lakes with their dog.
