‘Persistence of Vision’: An Incomplete Portrait of an Unfinished Project

The Thief and the Cobbler is the greatest movie never quite made, and the biggest tragedy in the history of animation. As the first major telling of the movie’s sad tale, Persistence of Vision doesn’t measure up like it should. The documentary does a good job of recapping the history of the film, but fails to evoke strong emotion over it.

Granted, circumstance was against director Kevin Schreck and his crew. The movie’s main character, master animator Richard Williams, was never going to talk to them. The subject of his lost masterpiece is still too sore for him to dwell on. And because of the legal tangles over the rights of the Thief, there are a lot more people involved in the project who also could not or would not open up about it. Schreck does the best he can with what he could, utilizing interviews with various animators, some of whom worked on the film for a decade or more. But the doc still feels incomplete.

If you’re a film fan, you should probably be at least somewhat familiar with what happened to The Thief and the Cobbler. From the very beginning of the movie’s production in 1964 Richard Williams intended for it to be his masterpiece. Even in its now unfinished form, it is a massive love letter to the art of animation itself. Just take a look at this clip:

Look at it! All of that was done without CGI. For thirty years, through name changes, script changes, and multiple funders and distributors dropping in and out, Williams and his team painstakingly drew a dizzying number of incredibly detailed images. The result is visual poetry, a movie whose every frame sings with the joy of movement. Several of the greatest artists of the golden age of animation, including Ken Harris and Art Babbitt, contributed their skills, in the process passing on their techniques to a new generation. Imagine if it had made it to the big screen.

It did, of course, but not in a good way. In the 80’s, after the success Williams had with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he finally found solid funding for Thief from Warner Bros, but they imposed a deadline which he failed to meet. In 1991, they backed out, and the film was seized by a bond company, who proceeded to butcher it. Eventually, it was released as Arabian Knight, injected with extraneous musical numbers and turned into a Disney rip-off. The most emotionally powerful moment in the documentary is a trailer for Arabian Knight, which, contrasted against what the viewer has already seen of the film and Williams’s intent for it, is excruciating to behold.

Persistence of Vision is a movie about ambition at both its best and its worst. The dazzling animation of Thief would not have been possible without Williams maniacal attention to detail and stringent standards of quality. But Williams seemed unwilling or unable to grasp Da Vinci’s words about art, that it is never finished – only abandoned. He wanted it to be perfect, but over thirty years, he kept changing his mind about what “perfect” was. And then, of course, just as he was approaching his goal, his baby was cruelly taken away from him.

The doc never quite hits the true gut punch it needed to with this story. It was, perhaps, stifled under its constraints. It’s told mostly through the eyes of a few people, some old interviews with Williams, and clips from Thief. It’s stylistically staid, though it’s probably as good as it could possibly be, given what the filmmakers had to work with. The timeline of events also feels nebulous at best. The movie talks about how Aladdin came out and very clearly ripped off Thief, but before it gets to Williams being forced off the project, whereas the former took place after the latter.

Persistence of Vision is a nice addition to the ranks of animation documentaries, and would make a nice double feature with Waking Sleeping Beauty or The Sweatbox. However, it’s only a must if you’re a die-hard fan of animation or cinema history. It still feels like there’s a better version of this story waiting to be told.

Grade: C