31/28
In war-ravaged times, a poor woodcutter and his wife live in a large forest. One day the woman finds and rescues a baby girl, bringing an irreversible change in the lives of the couple and those whose paths the child will cross… This is Michelle Hazanavicius' the first cartoon.. This is the best 2024 release I’ve seen this year so far and we’re in the middle of December 2024. It tells a story set in Poland during World War II, almost like a folktale. Most of the plot takes place in a forest so typical of the aforementioned popular tales, telling how two loggers adopt a Jewish girl who has been thrown off a deportation train crossing their forest. She was thrown out by her father to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into plot details so you can see them for yourself, I just want to add that the film will come to a deep philosophical conclusion. On the technical side, everything is also done perfectly. The visuals of the film are exceptionally done. The drawing style is just right, not too detailed nor too harsh, showing mostly low-light scenes with dominant shades of gray, thus highlighting the horrors of the most infamous war and occurrence of mass extermination 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) are all perfectly suited to present this gem of a film. In conclusion, this is one of the best films dealing with the subject of racism and the Shoah in particular, because of its artistic procedure and the story it wants to tell.
