Narrator: With a prompter in every cellar window whispering comebacks, shy people would have the last laugh.
Amelie: At least you could never be a vegetable because even artichokes have hearts!” (and everyone laughs and laughs)
- From Writer/Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s previous movie “Amelie.”
There was a side-plot in Amelie that involved the title heroine’s revenge on a jerk grocer who verbally abused an employee of his. Since Amelie was by nature painfully shy but highly imaginative her revenge took on subversively creative tones. She would sneak into his house and set all his clocks ahead several hours, replace his evening slippers with a smaller size of the same brand, put the local asylum on his speed dial, etc. The jerk grocer would encounter such strange pranks and haven’t the slightest idea of what had happened. Amelie was never suspected or caught. Who would think such a nice quiet person would do such a thing? The writer/director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new movie essentially takes this subplot, broadens the idea to feature length, and works it on a grand scale.
When Bazil (played by Dany Boon) was a child his father was killed by a land mine. Thirty years later Bazil was an innocent bystander in a street gunfight. He was shot in the head. The surgeon didn’t remove the bullet in fear that he would paralyze him in the process. It is still there and it might kill him at any moment. On the mine and the bullet are the trademarks of two rival arms manufacturers. Both of them happen to live in Bazil’s Paris across the street from each other. They are about to be served a cold and creative dish of revenge from a shy, quiet, highly imaginative man and his new friends: a motley crew of eccentric salvage experts.
The crew consists of Buster (Dominique Pinon) who once had the Guiness Record for human cannonball distance, Slammer who survived a guillotine, Remington a man who only speaks in sayings, Mama Chow the hearty cook, Calculator a girl who can size up distances in an extraordinarily precise fashion, Elastic Girl who is a contortionist, and Tiny Pete a very strong little man. They all live underneath a freeway underpass in a hobbit hole made into the junkyard. They recruit a homeless Bazil to work with them recycling junk but quickly turn into his A Team once he tells them of his plans to bring down the warmongers. Much of the movie is the team’s various pranks and escapades played out in extravagant and elaborate ways. There isn’t a great amount of emotional depth to the story because the characters and situations are too unbelievable but there is an awesome amount of imagination and joy in the storytelling. It’s like Jeunet has decided not to go for pulling the old heartstrings and is merely content with putting on a fantastical show, like say a piano player skipping the Beethoven and busting out a Joplin rag. Who says a movie with a serious anti-war message can’t be a delightful frivolity?
It is always a delight to see a Jean-Pierre Jeunet film because they are never lazy. Every shot has been infused with something special, whether it is a specific camera move, an innovative camera angle, an odd piece of set design, or an interesting character tic (see previous examples). Jeunet has also changed the color palette of the movie, infusing more green and red into the scenery. (He went for the same look in Amelie. Odd how it naturally feels more French.) I also love how he uses wide-angle lenses. This gives the picture greater depth by keeping much more of the frame in focus. It comes in handy when a director wants to put interesting stuff in the background of a scene as an added bonus for anyone who wants to pay attention. In a Jeunet film it always pays to pay attention. Other filmmakers that consistently do this are the Coen Brothers and Orson Welles. Citizen Kane, among other things, is praised for being completely in focus for the entire movie. This is a hard thing to do. It takes more work to go the extra mile, more creativity to fill the screen and make it worth it, and more confidence to know the audience will notice and appreciate it. You can sort of tell it took Jeunet several years to make this one film. I hope it doesn’t take Jeunet another five years to make his next.
The “R” rating that this movie was given is a travesty. It should be PG. Like Amelie, which was also given an extremely unfair R rating, there is some sex that could fairly be described as comic groping. It isn’t provocative and is meant primarily as a joke. Alas this is the sort of thing that the American Rating system does not find funny. Thus an ingenious anti-war satire with no violence, no language, and about ten seconds of comic groping gets an R. Meanwhile I just saw another movie last week about arms manufacturers called “Iron Man 2.” that glorified weapons and had several long extended sequences in which untold rounds of ammunition were unloaded onto a crowd of thousands in Flushing Park, Queens. The movie didn’t show anybody dying but it was ridiculous to think that nobody did. It just goes to show that you can glorify violence all you want as long as nobody bleeds, has sex, or takes a dump. When it comes to movie ratings, it is bodily secretions that count. Everything else is pure.
A law student’s note:
Did you know that in Schenck v. United States (1917) the Supreme Court held that free speech could be limited if it presented a “Clear and Present Danger.” Ironically, Schenck was arrested for handing out Anti-War pamphlets. The Supreme Court upheld. There has never been a case where a newspaper, radio, or TV outlet that advocated the US enter a war (Spain sunk the Maine!) was found to be a clear and present danger.
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