The Oscar-winning director of The Artist An animated film is released this Wednesday which depicts the journey of Righteous in the face of the Shoah. A tough film that aims to be optimistic and humanist.
Telling the untold to children and through animation. This is the challenge of Michel Hazanavicius’ new film, The Most Valuable of Goodspresented last May at the Cannes Film Festival, and in theaters this Wednesday. A “solar and luminous” film, according to its director, who chose to depict the journey of Righteous in the face of the Shoah.
Adaptation of a story by Jean-Claude Grumberg, The Most Valuable of Goods immerses spectators in the story of “poor woodcutter” and “poor woodcutter”, a couple who take in a baby thrown from one of the trains en route to the Nazi extermination camps in Poland.
The story is personal for Michel Hazanavicius. He comes from a Jewish family from Eastern Europe, between Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine. Jean-Claude Grumberg, for his part, is his parents’ best friend. “I took on the mission of carrying his voice,” insists the Oscar-winning filmmaker for The Artist.
“A humanist voice”
From The Grave of the Fireflies (1988), directors are no longer afraid to use the medium of animation to tackle dramatic subjects. “We can suggest more in animation, but I don’t know if we can show more. Animation is only a reinterpretation of reality.”
The director admits to having been influenced by the start of the war in Ukraine. “I went to Ukraine quite early. I organized an auction to send them money. I have had to go there several times since. Perhaps in a conscious way it played a role in certain choices (of scenario or direction).”
The war between Israel and Hamas, on the other hand, did not influence him “at all”. “The story was written about ten years ago. The film is not at all a response to a current situation. It was not designed like that. But I find that the voice it brings into the current situation is right. It is a humanist voice.”
Educational object
Michel Hazanavicius, who had never made an animated film until now, himself drew the faces of the camp survivors. Images inspired by a trip to Rwanda during which he visited mass grave sites. “I wanted to give dignity to these characters. It was important for me to draw them.”
“I wanted characters who were not described by movements, but not their context – the dramatic context of a convoy of deportees. What they have to tell is only in their faces”, he still analyzes the director , who was inspired by the illustrator Gus Bofa but also by Snow White from Disney.
Despite the harshness of its words, the film aims to be optimistic. “There is no fascination with death in this film. The film moves towards life, all the time. That’s what’s soothing. It reminds us that each of us can become a Righteous. It’s very reassuring to know that this voice of morality is a question of choice.”
This message appeals to schools. And will make many children aware of the Shoah. “Many teachers want to show the film to their students and use it as an educational object – precisely because it is calming,” underlines Michel Hazanavicius. “There is no proselytizing.”
Against relativism
An irony, already present in Jean-Claude Grumberg’s work, also runs through the film. “It’s very Jewish,” explains Michel Hazanavicius. “Humour is the last weapon of those who don’t have a weapon. Faced with hatred and aggression, humor and derision remain the best response.”
The film thus ends with a sort of message to the revisionists. The narrator clarifies that everything that has just been told did not exist. “Indeed, the story we told is a fiction, but it is a fiction that tells the truth,” explains the filmmaker. “The film begins as a tale then the historical reality arrives little by little.”
However, the subject of The most valuable commodity is not negationism. “The danger today is no longer someone who says that it didn’t exist. No one says that very seriously anymore. The real danger today is relativism. Making people believe that everything is equal, that all stories are the same.”
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