Michel Hazanavicius closes Cannes 2024 with a bang
After 10 intense days dedicated to the seventh art, the 77th Cannes Film Festival closed yesterday with the last film presented in the official competition: The most precious commodityanimated feature film by Michel Hazanavicius, based on the story of the same name by Jean-Claude Grumberg.
This feature film, scheduled for release in theaters on November 20, 2024, is set during World War II. The plot follows a woodcutter and his wife who take in a child thrown from a deportation train a desperate father who sacrifices his son to give him a chance of survival. This “little commodity” turns their lives and that of anyone who crosses their path upside down, revealing both the worst and the best of humanity.
At the right distance
Michel Hazanavicius approaches his film with immense sensitivity, using modesty in his direction to tackle a heavy subject like the Shoah. Instead of graphically representing the horror of the camps, he chose to stylize the events through animation. This approach allows you to maintain a certain distance. Hazanavicius is aware of the delicate balance needed to depict horror without glorifying it. He uses animation not only to lighten the visual burden of violence, but also to impose a necessary distance.
However, the images deeply mark the retina, like the faces of these men, with their mouths wide open, reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s drawings, symbolizing all the horror of the extermination camps, or the decline of the human body, which bends under the weight of the suffering inflicted on the prisoners, who were nothing but shadows. The faces frozen in an expression of absolute terror capture the essence of the suffering and loss of identity suffered by the prisoners.
Between shadow and light
Nature is also an important element of the film. Indifferent to human suffering, she is represented as a silent witness to events. The seasons pass, bringing bright flowers and cold snow in turn, as the wind blows away the last memories of the prisoners. The trains, omnipresent elements of deportation, become, for their part, almost characters in their own right, and symbolize the relentless mechanism of war.
But far from proposing an austere or heavy story, Michel Hazanavicius makes the courageous bet of guiding his story towards the light, thus showing that even in the deepest darkness, humanity resides in small acts of kindness.
The most precious of possessions is not only a film about survival, but also a tribute to humanity’s ability to transcend the worst horrors through acts of love and kindness. The film pays homage to these Righteous, who offered a chance to those who had been condemned to certain death by Nazi barbarity.
Source: Cine Serie
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