Micmacs: Grade C

C
Micmacs (2009)
Dany Boon, André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié, Yolande Moreau; Co-writer & Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. (French, subtitled).

This is a very strange film and probably worth seeing for that reason. A bomb squad member is blown up by a land mine, and his son notes the manufacturer of the weapon. As an adult, the man (Boon) is accidentally shot in the head by a handgun but survives. He becomes childlike and goofy (if he was not already), a homeless beggar and street performer. He finds his way to a family of trashpickers living in a scrap metal dump. They’re all as goofily eccentric as he is. When he decides to attack the weapons manufacturer (conveniently located nearby), he enlists their aid and they mount a sort of Mission Impossible set of tricks and operations to wreak havoc. The revenge story is somewhat fun because the team uses gizmos they found or made from their scrapyard pile, and their unique talents (they have a former circus performer who was a human cannonball and a woman contortionist who can fit herself inside a small box, etc.).

There isn’t much dialog and most of the humor is visual, giving the film a flavor of the old silent movies, like Charlie Chaplin or Keystone Cops. There are other visual allusions to film history as well. There is a slight, but trite political theme: Weapons manufacturers are evil. Sets are amazingly complex and clever, and cinematography is inventive – perhaps distractingly so. The characters are eccentric and aggressively whimsical. In fact the whole movie adds up to whimsy for the sake of whimsy. Neither the characters nor the story are coherent enough to engage the viewer so you are left with just sheer goofiness, which is not LOL funny, but you say to yourself, “that’s cute,” or “that’s charming.” But overall it’s like eating birthday cake: there is no food value.

The Last Circus: Grade B

The Last Circus (Balada Triste de Trompeta) (2010)

Carlos Areces, Antonio de la Torre, Carolina Bang; Writer-director Álex de la Iglesia.(Spanish, subtitled).

This is one of the strangest movies I have seen in a long time; a dark, violent, horror movie; a bloody splatter picture; also a farce, a cutting political satire, and a sweet romantic comedy. It is so mind-blowingly, creatively original that I have to give it high marks. Its 107 minutes grind on too long however and the story degenerates into meaningless chaos as it comes to its prolonged, tragic finale, so it gets graded down for that.

Set in the 1930’s and the Spanish civil war, a group of circus performers is forcibly drafted into Franco’s army, but the head clown refuses and ridicules the nasty officer. For his efforts he is imprisoned, tortured, and killed, but not before he advises his confused young son to be a sad clown, not a happy clown, because life is no longer happy. The son grows up and joins a circus as an incredibly incompetent sad clown. He is so bad that he actually makes people laugh. Ironically, the circus’s happy clown is actually a psychotic woman-beater who lords it over him just as the fascist soldier humiliated his father. The pathetic, dumpy and weak sad clown naively falls in love with the happy clown’s girl, the beautiful trapeze artist, and is consequently beaten to a pulp. Retaliating, he attacks the happy clown, ripping his face apart with a farrier’s hook, in one of several extremely violent, bloody scenes, that are yet somehow squirmingly comedic because of the costumes and sets.

The sad clown escapes the police by running into the forest and living naked in a cave like an animal. A hunter finds him and takes him home as a curiosity, and you’ll never guess, the hunter is the very army officer who killed his father. The sad clown plots his revenge, but first he improvises a fantastic clown costume out of draperies and props suggestive of papal garb.

But suddenly the happy clown reappears, not dead after all, but horribly disfigured, in a fantastic makeup job. Further tragicomic-horror clown battles ensue, including a chase up a church steeple reminiscent of the chase up Mount Rushmore in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. There are also visual allusions to Picasso’s Guernica, Puccini’s Pagliacci, and to other historical and cinematic landmarks.

The original title, A Sad Trumpet Ballad, may have some significance that escapes me, but is otherwise just the name of the musical sound track. The cinematography, and especially the lighting, are exceptionally striking throughout the movie. Costumes and makeup are unbelievably creative, as is the writing itself. Directing is excellent and well paced, until the last act. Violence and sexuality are integrated into the allegorical civil war theme and used well. Ultimately, the movie does not present a single, easy to grasp political message, or comedic tone, or horror theme, but is a dizzying pastiche of many of those, engaging the viewer on multiple levels of relentless creative turmoil.