44/19
Set in war-torn times, a poor lumberjack and his wife live in a large forest. One day, the wife finds and saves a little girl, irrevocably changing the lives of the couple and those whose path the child crosses. This is Michel Hazanavicius’ first animated film. This is the best release of 2024 that I’ve seen so far this year, and we’re in mid-December 2024. It tells a story that takes place in Poland during World War II, almost like a folk tale. Most of the action takes place in a forest, as is so typical of the folk tales mentioned above. It’s about a lumberjack couple who adopt a Jewish girl who was thrown out of a deportation train that passed through their forest. She was thrown out by her father to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into the plot here so you can make up your own mind. I would just like to add that the film will come to a deeply philosophical conclusion. Technically, everything is also perfectly done. The film’s visual effects are superbly done. The drawing style is just right, neither too detailed nor too crude, and mostly shows scenes with dim lighting and dominant shades of grey, thus underlining the horrors of the most notorious war and mass destruction event in human history. And then the soundtrack, which is sublime: the score, the sound effects, the narration and the dubbing (I saw the original version in French), all absolutely appropriate to present this gem of a film. In summary, it is one of the best films that tackles the subject of racism and in particular the Shoah through its artistic process and the story it wants to tell.