We are in an idyllic place, the superb Château de Chambord, on the banks of the Loire, under the sun. But the period does not encourage pleasure, far from it, since the film takes place in 1942. And it presents us with a group of six Jewish children, most of them orphans, who go to hide in the castle, and later will try to join Free France through the forest, in which they will live for a time.
The horrors of war and the Holocaust confronted by the recklessness of this band of children. This is the project of Valiant Heartsin partnership with franceinfo, and produced by Mona Achache:
“How to tell the war, the Shoah, to children, through their eyes, by placing themselves at their height? To also discover all their light, their height of spirit, and to put it in parallel with the terror of war, but make it a movie for them.”
Mona Achache, directorat franceinfo
“My grandmother was also a hidden child, continues the filmmaker, and when she told me all about her journey, when I was a child, I was marked by the ambivalence of her feelings. She restored to me the horror of war, but I also saw her innocence and surges of freedom spring forth. Me, it was my ground of attachment in fact, before barbarism, before the discovery of the broader historical context, it was its little history.
Tll the young actors in the film are very fair and endearing, a performance when you know that getting children to play well, which is moreover together, is often a challenge:
“We shot the film in chronological order, which is quite rare, and I constantly tried to inspire myself, to bounce back, and to let what they could experience, feel, spontaneously spring up. All our projections of adults to the writing of the screenplay were essential anchor points to advance the story, the narrative, the threat, the hunt and their escape.
But then, what came to be built in the group, the way they had to react to fear, but also these moments of freedom and carelessness, their wild life in the forest, it was impossible not to let themselves be carried away by their spontaneous momentum.”
And the actress Camille Cottin, the main role of the film, is also amazing from start to finish.
In a completely different style, we are now interested in another fillm, Nitram, which takes us to Australia. A feature film directed by Justin Kurzel, which was in competition at Cannes last year, based on the story of Martin (“Nitaram” backwards) Bryant, a young terrorist who in 1996 killed 35 people in an attack in Port Arthur in Tasmania, an island state off the southern Australian coast.
His act will not be filmed, the film ends just before, and precisely he is interested in the life of the killer before the tragedy: a young solitary, abused, psychotic under treatment, who according to the meetings will accentuate his anger.
In the title role, the American actor Caleb Landry Jones, who won an interpretation award at Cannes, is remarkable:
“At first I didn’t know if I could do it. I was apprehensive, I was afraid of failing. But after meeting Justin and Shaun, the screenwriter, I said: ‘It’s well, let’s go.’
And if the film does not avoid a bit of complacency, or certain clumsiness, the approach is not uninteresting and, at least visually, Nitram is quite successful.
And since we decided to mix styles this week, so that there is something for everyone, the third and last tip of the week is The Northman directed by the British Robert Eggers, who had already signed the strange and noticed films The Witch and The Lightouseand which here adapts a Scandinavian legend, which later inspired Shakespeare.
Or the story of a Viking in the 11th century, son of a king, who witnesses the assassination of his father and escapes to sea promising to avenge him, and who returns 20 years later, having become a bloodthirsty warrior .
You will have understood, we are in revenge and a barbaric imagery, the film is very violent, spectacular, often remarkable on the aesthetic level, even if we have a little headache after two hours. In the cast, we find Alexander Sasgard, Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe, Anya Taylor-Joy or the Icelandic singer Björk.