24/19
Set in war-torn times, a poor lumberjack and his wife live in a large forest. One day, the wife finds and saves a little girl, irrevocably changing the lives of the couple and those whose path the child will cross. This is Michel Hazanavicius’ first animated film. This is the best release of 2024 that I’ve seen so far this year, and we’re in mid-December 2024. It tells a story that takes place in Poland during World War II, almost like a folk tale. The majority of the action takes place in a forest, as is so typical of the aforementioned folk tales, and revolves around a lumberjack couple who adopt a Jewish little girl who was thrown out of a deportation train passing through their forest. She was thrown out by her father to save her from certain death in Auschwitz. I won’t go into the details of the plot any further so you can see it for yourself. I would just like to add that the film will come to a deeply philosophical conclusion. On the technical side, too, everything is done perfectly. The film’s visual effects are superbly done. The drawing style is just right, neither too detailed nor too crude. Most of the scenes are shown in dim lighting with dominant shades of grey, highlighting the horrors of the most notorious war and mass destruction event in human history. And then the soundtrack, which is sublime: the score, the sound effects, the narration and the voice acting (I saw the original version in French), all absolutely appropriate to present this gem of a film. In conclusion, it is one of the best films to tackle the issue of racism and the Shoah in particular, due to its artistic process and the story it wants to tell.
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