Taxandria (1994)

Directed by: Raoul Servais | 82 minutes | animation, adventure, fantasy | Actors: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Elliott Spiers, Katja Studt, Richard Kattan, Julien Schoenaerts, Andrew Sachs, Daniel Emilfork, Cris Campion, Robert Lemaire, Joris Van Ransbeeck, Ferenc Dávid Kiss, Zsuzsa Holl, John Truscott

Ever heard of the Magician of Ostend? If you now get visions of illusionists performing on smoky stages, you are looking in the wrong direction: Raoul Servais, because the nickname belongs to him, is indeed someone who conjures beautiful things, but he does so on the silver screen. The Belgian-born filmmaker became fascinated by animation films in the 1950s and immediately knew that this was where his calling lay. With no obvious means to master this technique – the studios still kept the animation theories firmly under lock and key at the time – he managed to make a cartoon with some fellow enthusiast friends.

It didn’t stop there: due to his unbridled ambition he not only got a job as a decorative art teacher at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, he also formed the basis of the ‘Animation Film’ training at the same university. This training still exists and is considered to be one of the best courses in the world in this field. His self-study has done Raoul Servais no harm: he received international recognition all the time and the prize cabinet was regularly replenished. The filmmaker constantly reinvents himself, so that his oeuvre consists solely of a series of unique productions. One of his most ambitious projects was ‘Taxandria’, a film on which Servais worked for no less than fifteen years. A project that has been in the works for so long points to two things: boundless perseverance, but also problems; whether of a financial or artistic nature. And that all applies to ‘Taxandria’. Because Servais appealed to various channels to get the financial picture conclusive, too many people got a finger in the pie. So too many captains on a ship, and that resulted in a film that doesn’t quite convey what Servais had in mind. From a combination of animation with live action, ‘Taxandria’ eventually became a live action film with partly animated backgrounds. Because the financial resources were insufficient, the film also had to be rushed, resulting in a frame story. Sin!

In ‘Taxandria’ we meet Jan, a young prince, who comes to stay with his teacher at a remote hotel somewhere on the coast. The teen has to study for his exams, but is distracted by the mysterious lighthouse nearby. What plays a part is of course the fact that he is forbidden to visit it. Yet Jan makes friends with the lighthouse keeper, and when he looks into the light of the lighthouse, the wonderful world of Taxandria awaits him. Taxandria is a dystopia: there is a totalitarian regime that has banned the notion of time. Related to this are memories and progress. Clocks have been confiscated, photography is prohibited because you can record the past with a camera, but drawing and painting must also be done illegally. Men are imposed from above on what their profession will be; women only appear in a pleasure garden; so they perform no other function as harlots and means of procreating mankind. When we are in Taxandria, the focus of the film shifts from Jan to Aimee, a young office worker who in his innocence causes a huge revolution.

The world of Taxandria is without a doubt the film’s biggest draw. The story surrounding the prince is filmed with a real – and not always very strong acting – cast, in a realistic environment. The residents of Taxandria are also real actors (Armin Mueller-Stahl even plays a double role and can be seen in both worlds), but much of the environment is drawn in a special style. The animation technique is somewhat reminiscent of Monty Python. Servais was eager to use Paul Delvaux’s drawings in his film, but that turned out to be unfeasible. Finally, François Schuiten was recruited to shape Taxandria. There was a great click between the filmmaker and the cartoonist, resulting in eye-pleasing images. The atmosphere of life in Taxandria is portrayed in an excellent way, and as soon as the viewer ends up in the ‘present’ again, and has to make do with the story about the prince again, the desire for images of Taxandria rears its head again. . As a result, the film continues to intrigue. There are so many wonderful finds in the film, such as the Chinese whispering by the little men in the water, that you will be happy to forgive Servais the weak story about Prince Jan. Because the Magic of Ostend has created such a convincing world, ‘Taxandria’ is a film to remember.