29/19
In war-torn times, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a vast forest. One day, the woman finds and saves a girl, bringing an irreversible change to the couple’s lives, and the child crosses paths with those who… This is Michel Hazanavicius’ first animated film. This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen so far this year and we’re in mid-December 2024. It tells a story set in Poland during WWII, like a folktale. Much of the plot takes place, as is typical for the aforementioned folktales, as a pair of woodcutters turn to adopt a Jewish girl who is thrown off a deportation train through their forest. She was thrown away by her father to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into the details of the plot any further, so you can see them for yourself, I just want the film to come to a deeply philosophical conclusion. Everything is well done on the technical side too. The visuals of the film are excellently done. The style of drawing is very precise, not too detailed or harsh, showing scenes in mostly poor lighting with dominant gray tones, which emphasizes the horror of the most infamous war and genocide in human history. Then the soundtrack is sublime: the musical score, the sound effects, the narration and the voice acting (I saw the original in French), all of which are perfectly suited to presenting this gem. The film. Finally, it is one of the best films on the subject of racism and the Shoah in particular, both in terms of its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell.