25/05/2024 - CANNES 2024: Michel Hazanavicius delivers a jewel of animation, modest, poignant and profound, about the topic of the death camps always extremely delicate to represent

“God of trains, deliver me from hunger and misery, give me a very small cargo”. An extraordinarily versatile filmmaker with a surprising ability to recreate very different worlds by diverting genres (from the Oscar-winning The Artist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile] to the offbeat zombi shoot in Final Cut [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile], as well as the revisited Godard in Redoubtable [+see also:
film review
trailer
Q&A: Michel Hazanavicius
film profile]), Michel Hazanavicius has turned this time to animation, by not only directing but also taking care of the graphic design of an accomplished feature film about a particularly sensitive subject: the deportation and extermination of Jewish people during the Second World War. With The Most Precious of Cargoes [+see also:
trailer
film profile], an adaptation of the eponymous novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg unveiled in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival, the director tells a wonderful and tragically luminous story, that it remains essential to share (beyond the toxic jolts of the present) with all generations, since in the most terrible darkness, love and solidarity have all the more reasons to exist.

“Once upon a time, in a great wood, there was a poor lumberjack and his wife.” It all begins like a fairytale, in a snowstorm where a woman picking up wood in the forest finds a baby thrown off a train. Childless despite all her prayers to the “celestial, earthly and fairy powers”, she is determined to cherish this one, but her massive and silent lumberjack husband is of an entirely different opinion, since they are both well aware of what the trains carry: “the Heartless have no heart, they’re the offspring of a cursed race, they killed Christ, they’re thieves, Satan's henchmen”, “stray dogs who throw their children out of train windows and us, the poor idiots, we have to feed them.” All that without forgetting the fear of denunciation. But his wife doesn’t budge: this baby who is lucky to be a girl is “an angel.” A fight between silent wills fed by furtive glances is established between them, with the wife and the baby setting up in the shed adjoining the small isolated house hidden in the forest. But as time goes by, the man’s heart will melt and he will become fully aware of the horror experience by the child’s real father, trying to survive not far from there, at the other end of the rails…

Weaving his film like a delicate and minimalist fabric in an omnipresent nature that sees the seasons change, Michel Hazanavicius subtly pulls the thread of the idea of a silver lining. Yet this trip from the darkness to the light, dotted with a few light touches, remains nevertheless upsetting. Placed at an ideal distance from the crushing potential of its subject without ever betraying its essence, The Most Precious of Cargoes communicates with an original, kind hearted and moving restraint its humanist message and the memory of the Shoah with a visual style at once simple and very expressive, inspired by engravings (with Julien Grande as the film’s artistic director), the music by Alexandre Desplat wrapping it all in a very creative virtuosity. A film therefore masterfully humble which also has the great merit of being able to reach all audiences.

The Most Precious of Cargoes was produced by Ex Nihilo and Les Compagnons de Cinéma, and co-produced by StudioCanal (who is also handling international sales), France 3 Cinéma and Belgian outfits Les Films du Fleuve, RTBF, Voo and Be TV.

(Translated from French)

Photogallery 24/05/2024: Cannes 2024 - The Most Precious of Cargoes

13 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.

{0} of {1}

Michel Hazanavicius, Grégory Gadebois, Serge Hazanavicius, Alexandre Desplat
© 2024 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it