QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM CANNES

This is a movie in stark contrast to Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which won the Grand Prix in Cannes just last year (the event’s second highest prize). Both movies deal with the Holocaust, and both are based on a novel (in this case, one written by Jean-Claude Grumberg). Glazer’s film is a bleak and tragic endeavour, without any possibility of hope and redemption, and also without any visual representations of the horrors that the Nazies carried out (the focus is on sound instead). This optimistic French-Belgian animation portrays characters bursting with love and solidarity, and the representations are very graphic. The horrifying consequences of genocide and gingerly hand drawn.

A Jewish man throws his baby out of the window of his Auschwitz-bound train, in the hope that the tiny human being will have a fate better than his. The woodcutter and his wife esxperience a life of hardship, not so much due to the ongoing conflict but instead because they barely have enough to eat. She prays that the gods will throw them something from their cargo, but she never expected that her prayers would be answered with yet another mouth to feed. She rescues the crying baby from the snow, still neatly wrapped in a yellow and blue shroud. It is suggested that the couple once had their own offspring, however it is never revealed how they lost it. Motherly instinct immediately sets in, and she decides to vouch for the security of the peculiar “cargo” as if it was a child of her own.

She has to confront the pragmatic husband, who is far more concerned about their own survival, plus he holds very negative views of the “chosen people”. He demands that his spouse returns the undesired delivery to the forest. His heart begins to change after he sees the baby chuckle and gurgle. Humanity triumphs above bigotry.

The Most Precious of Cargoes boasts a message of hope and resilience, and an ending that’s both beautiful and disturbing, if a little muddled. The strongest drawings – horribly distorted black-and-white faces screaming in agony as they perish in the concentration camps – are saved to the final part of this 80-minute feature film. This is a clumsy attempt to elicit horror that’s entirely dissonant with the rest of the film. A peak into the future a few decades later in Czechoslovakia marks the film with the opposite sentiment, as the director Michel Hazanavicius (who also wrote the screenplay) struggles to find the right balance between terror and optimism.

The exact location of the story is never revealed, but it’s very strange that the characters should speak French. Auschwitz-Birkenau was very far from France and Belgium, and the majority of those who perished in Hitloer’s biggest concentration camptcame from Eastern Europe. Some of the developments narrated by Jean-Louis Trintignant, who died two years ago at the age of 91. His voice is still firm and potent, helping to anchor the film into reality. On the other hand, the characters are strangely laconic and stoical. Pastel colours and bright lighting prevail, giving the story a gentle aura of melancholia, hope and even beauty. The animation technique isn’t very innovative, and the drawings aren’t particularly inspiring. The characters look dispassionate, and often devoid of facial expressions. These creative choices are very peculiar; they cause estrangement and alienation. This is the first animated feature competing for the Palme d’Or since Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical, highly politically- and emotionally-charged Persepolis (2007). This is a far less innovative, audacious and engaging entry.

The Most Precious of Cargoes just premiered in the Official Competition of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival.