In terms of cinema, he will have done everything for us: parodies of spy films with OSS177a tribute to the silent era with The Artista comedy about Jean-Luc Godard with The dreaded and another about zombies (Cut, presented at the opening of the festival two years ago.)
Here is Michel Hazanavicius again on the Croisette with a very beautiful Animation Film, The most precious of goods, adapted from the tale of the same name, signed by the writer and screenwriter Jean-Claude Grumberg.
The story is that of a poor Polish lumberjack who finds a baby thrown from a death train, deep in a large wood, “during times when world war was raging”. She decides to keep and protect her “small goods” against all odds: her brave husband first, but especially the haters who call Jews “Heartless”.
“A very intimate relationship to this story”
This story echoes Hazanavicius’ family past. “I actually have a very intimate relationship with this storyhe said. I come from an Eastern European Jewish family. My grandparents and my parents, who were children during the war, are genocide survivors, even though they were not in the camps. »
Jean-Claude Grumberg, is also “their best friend since they were 15. He has been writing on this theme for sixty years and around the age of 80, found a seemingly simple way to tell an extremely profound story. »
“I’ve been drawing since I was 10”
Adapting to cinema what is “already a classic” he judges, was “a big job”. Michel Hazanavicius himself drew the characters in this fable. Their silhouettes and features, outlined in black, recall the prints and illustrations from collections of stories from the 1930s. “I have been drawing since I was 10, for myself. Especially human beings. I had an idea of what I wanted to convey and when I showed my sketches to the animation studio (3.0 Studio, in Angoulême), it was agreed that we would start from them. »
We also think of Russian painting, Japanese prints, and the first Disney in front of the rendering of the settings, extremely elegant in their simplicity, in a reduced range of colors. “With Julien Grande, the artistic director, we arrived at an image that I wanted to be modest. » Evocations of extermination camps, ovens and mass graves were the subject of another form of stylization. The director summoned for her the memory of the genocide in Rwanda.
“ I tried to still have a delicate approach to things. It was also directed by Jean-Claude. He said to me: “You know, it’s a story; we are also aimed at children. We want them to know what happened. But don’t scare them either. »
“The worst can reveal the most beautiful”
“We had to find graphic coherence with the idea that the bottom line of history, beyond the Shoah, is that, even in the worst of situations, what is most beautiful can be revealed in men and women. » It succeeded.
After Dumboby Disney, Best Animated Film Award at Cannes in 1947, Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi, Jury Prize in 2007, The most valuable commodity will she win the prestigious Palme d’Or this evening?
Competition will be tough with Emilia Perezby Jacques Audiard, or The seeds of the wild fig tree, by the Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof, another powerful film presented yesterday, on the last day of the competition. Results of the races this evening, at the Palais des Festivals.
The most precious of goods, to which Dominique Blanc, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Denis Podalydès, Grégory Gadebois lent their voices, will be released in theaters on November 20.
