33/12
During war-torn times, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a large forest. One day, the woman finds and rescues a little girl, bringing irreversible changes to the couple’s lives and the lives of those whose paths will cross. This is Michel Hazanavicius's first animated film.. This is by far the best 2024 release I’ve seen this year, and we’re in mid-December 2024. It tells a story that took place in Poland during World War II, almost like a folktale. Most of the plot takes place in the forest, so typical of the aforementioned folktales, revolving around a couple of woodcutters who adopt a little Jewish girl who is thrown off a deportation train that passes through their forest. Her father abandoned her to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into the details of the plot so you can see for yourself, I just want to add that the film will reach a deeply philosophical conclusion. From the technical side, everything is also done perfectly. The visuals of the film are superbly crafted. The drawing style is just right, not too detailed, not too rough, mostly showing scenes in low light with dominant gray tones, thus underlining the horrors of the most infamous war and mass destruction in human history. And then the soundtrack, which is sublime: The musical score, the sound effects, the narration and the voice acting (I saw the original version in French), all of it is perfectly suited to showcase this gem of a film. In conclusion, it is one of the best films that deals with the subject of racism and the Shoah in particular, according to its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell.
