Michel Hazanavicius, the Oscar-winning director of the 2011 silent film ‘The Artist’, has mounted a passionate defense of his unconventional choice to depict the horrors of the Holocaust through animation in his latest Cannes competition entry ‘The Most Precious Of Cargoes‘. The film, adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s novel, utilizes striking visuals to recount the story of a woodcutter’s wife who rescues an abandoned baby amid the unfolding atrocities of World War II.
While the film earned a rousing 10-minute standing ovation following its Cannes premiere, some critics have taken issue with Hazanavicius’s stylized approach to such grave subject matter. The Screen Daily review decried “crassly coercive” attempts to elicit horror through animated depictions of the dead at Auschwitz.
However, Hazanavicius remained steadfast in his creative decision. “The question didn’t even arise when it came to making it animated. I would never want to make a live film on this,” the director asserted during the film’s Cannes press conference.
He argued that animation lends an essential “dignity” when grappling with history’s darkest chapters. “You don’t have to ask people to pretend that they are departees, that they are going to die,” Hazanavicius explained.
The filmmaker also emphasized the challenges of attempting to accurately represent events stating, “It’s impossible to show what really happens — if you don’t show what really happened, there’s a big risk you end up telling a lie.”
Throughout the project, Hazanavicius adhered closely to the source material and its author’s perspective, admitting, “I drank his words, he was a fantastic guide and a real authority in these matters.”
While ‘The Most Precious Of Cargoes’ has sparked debate, the audacious application of animation to this weighty topic has proven another bold creative swing for Hazanavicius. As he simply stated regarding the backlash, “Movies that rise to huge polemics — it shows how you burn your fingers with this subject.”
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