In Poland during the Second World War the wife of a woodcutter takes in a baby that was thrown from a train going to the concentration camps. She and her husband struggle to raise the child, while the man who threw the baby struggles to survive the camp.
Michel Hazanavicius shifts gears yet again with an animated film about the miracle of survival and the things we will do for the ones we love. It's an odd move for a man who is best known for his comedies and the results are extremely mixed.
There are some great sequences in this film as well as some head scratching moments. Feeling less like an organic tale and more like a very serious, very important novel, the film never quite comes together because the film never fully connects the two halves. The result is a film that feels a bit like sermon.
I was intrigued for a while but the film began to lose me as the film started to tell us about the man who threw the baby from the train. It's not that these sequences, having to do with surviving in the camps, are bad, indeed they include some of the most crushing sequences I've ever seen about the Holocaust, but rather they never fully mesh with the sequences about the baby and the woodcutters wife. a big part of the problem is the style of the images are too dissimilar. The woodcutter sequences are more lyric and realistic where the images of the man are closer to some of the surrealist art that sprang up around the war.
While a wasn't connected from start to finish the film still threw up some staggering pieces such as the post war sequence where the man stumbles on the woman and the child selling cheese on the street. The whole sequence of recognition of finding the now grown child, while also seeing his horrific physical persona is one of the most crushing moments I've ever seen in any film.
Perhaps I would have liked the film more had the ending amounted to something but the film never ties up all the threats ans the 20 year jump ahead didn't amount to much.
Worth a look for those interested in stunning uses of animation or atypical Holocaust stories.
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