Simple, colorful and haunting, “The Illusionist” is a brief animated film that delivers a heavy emotional impact.

Directed by Sylvain Chomet and adapted from a screenplay by the late Jacques Tati, “The Illusionist” (or “L’illusioniste” in its original French), tells the tale of a French stage magician in the late 1950s. With the onset of television and rock music, he finds himself performing for increasingly smaller and more disinterested crowds. His career in steep decline, the performer is forced to travel across Europe in search of patrons and finds warm reception only on an isolated Scottish island. With the introduction of electricity and the jukebox, however, everyone quickly forgets the magician except Alice, a small girl who becomes his traveling companion and something of a surrogate daughter. The film focuses on their relationship as the girl becomes a woman and the man grows old, exploring the disenchantment that comes naturally with the passage of time.

The most striking feature of the film, which has received an Oscar nomination this year for Best Animated Feature, is its minimal use of dialogue. With the exception of an occasional murmur in French – which is left without subtitles – the film relies largely on the primal sounds of cheers, sighs, laughter and weeping to convey emotion onscreen. This tactic does create a certain amount of distance between the audience and the characters, as it is difficult even to ascertain the characters’ names before the credits roll. However, it is a testament to the strength and creativity of the piece as a whole that, even without dialogue, it still manages to be at turns comic, poignant and tragic.

Much of the thanks should go to the film’s inviting style of animation. Animation as we know it today has come to mean computer generated imagery and computerization, as evidenced by this film’s two Oscar rivals, “Toy Story 3” and “How to Train Your Dragon.” Unlike those films, “The Illusionist” is drawn in ink. This throwback to a fading art form is appropriate here, as it echoes the magician’s struggle against new forms of entertainment in the film itself. The movie is visually lovely, like a watercolor painting in motion. Particularly strong are its landscapes, presenting scenes of sunny Scottish hillsides and blustery seas in vivid, sometimes breathtaking detail. The film’s simple piano score also serves it well, underscoring the quiet melancholy of the aging magician’s plight.

Just as beautiful, if not more somber, are the themes explored in the film. The magician progresses through a string of increasingly more pathetic venues, beginning by playing at an enormous concert hall and ending by conducting his act in the window of a clothing store. His incapacity to perform even menial day jobs only heightens the tragic arc of a character that cannot make himself fit in the modern world. Several smaller characters share similarly depressing fates, including a clown intent on suicide and a ventriloquist who continues to go through the motions of his act long after he has sold his dummy to a pawn shop. These three characters become increasingly aimless, provoking the major question of the film: what is the artist to do when his art becomes irrelevant? “The Illusionist” also explores what is lost in the passage to adulthood, as Alice, like the magician’s audiences, becomes less interested in her companion’s stagecraft and more concerned with fashion and romance. The tragedy of the magician is thus twofold, as he is rendered personally and professionally unimportant.

A melancholy rumination on what it’s like to be washed away by the wave of modernity, “The Illusionist” is certainly not a typical child-friendly cartoon. But, with its stunning imagery and somber reflection, the film is well worth a viewing. It only runs for 80 minutes and actually feels much shorter, but with its bittersweet conclusion, it still manages to convey an emotional depth, which will linger long after you leave the theater.

Ian Opolski can be reached at [email protected].