The Inventor

An independent animation about Leonardo da Vinci has all the creativity of the Renaissance inventor. However, its absence of a story in The Inventor best positions the film as a learning tool for schools rather than as an enjoyable piece of cinema.

Written and directed by Jim Capobianco, a former Oscar nominee for his masterful penmanship in Ratatouille (2007), The Inventor utilises both stop motion and hand-drawn styles to illuminate the unfiltered imagination of Leonardo da Vinci. Audiences follow da Vinci’s transition from working under the Pope’s guidance to France’s King Francis the First, as the script too transitions into a historical musical away from its safer delivery as a comedic recontextualising.

Voiced by Stephen Fry, Leonardo da Vinci has an air of intellectuality, assisted by Fry’s background as a learned wordsmith; however, due to the absence of a credible story, Fry’s charm quickly dissipates, as audiences expect more from the character’s development, and delivery that Fry is unable to provide. Instead, the moments of happiness are few and far between, and when they do appear, they are so suspiciously enjoyable that they may constitute Stockholm Syndrome.

Matt Berry’s performance as Pope Leo X delivers the pompous chauvinistic vocals that the comedian has been fine-tuning since his earlier work in The Toast of London and, more recently, What We Do in the Shadows. One particular delivery, akin to Monty Python, highlighted how proven Berry is, insulting Francis the First (Gauthier Battoue) and all his citizens as “Brie eating nansy-pansies”, receiving the strongest reception from the audience. Suppose the film had an air of credibility; in that case, it may have similarly circulated TikTok like the ‘most devious bastard in New York City’ soundbite, but perhaps it could still be its saving grace, giving it a new life in the future.

Though its story is paper-thin, Leonardo ponders the limitations of humankind and explores his science through dissection against the approval of the Pope and monarch; its animative creativity is evident in abundance. Alternating between traditional, handcrafted stop motion and roughly sketched 2D pencil and watercolours, The Inventor illustrates one of the world’s renowned polymaths with a metaphoric artistic eye as he, too, saw the world. Whilst the ingenuity of the animation in its opening act is the best example of its quality, with the modelling department tinkering with perspective and size to signify authority, the arduous efforts from all the art departments really cannot be understated.

There is a lot thrown at The Inventor: slapstick comedy, musical numbers, a talented voice cast including the aforementioned and Daisy Ridley as Marguerite de Navarre and Marion Cotillard as Louise de Savoy, a history lesson of French and religious interventions, and all the while trying to maintain children’s attention through its traditionalist animation style. Unsurprisingly, not all of it works, but then again, neither did a lot of da Vinci’s inventions. The real art was trying anyway.

The Inventor is showing in limited cinemas from 8 March 2024.