Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Clémence Poésy, Matthias Schweighöfer, Bella Ramsey, Ed Harris, Felix Moati, Geza Rohrig, Karl Markovics
Distributor: Rialto Films
Runtime: 120 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2020
This international movie is an English-speaking, biographical drama inspired by the life of famed mime artist, Marcel Marceau. The movie tells the story of Marceau, who joined the French Jewish Resistance as a young man to save the lives of children orphaned at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. The film’s Director is Jonathan Jakubowicz, a Venezuelan Director of Polish-Jewish descent. At the time of his death in 2007, Marcel Marceau was the world’s most famous mime.
Marceau’s personal resolve to resist was cemented emotionally when Emma (Clémence Poésy), the woman he loved, inspired him to help children whose parents had been killed by the Nazis. Marceau entertained the children while looking after them at the same time. In encountering the vicious barbarity of Klaus Barbie (Matthias Schweighöfer), the “Butcher of Lyon”, he knew that he had a special mission to help as many Jewish children as possible to survive.
“Tragic comedy” is a difficult genre to do well, because the depth of genuine tragedy nearly always overtakes any attempt to be comic. The Holocaust and persecution of the Jewish people are tragic happenings that lie shamefully in universal conscience. The film conveys the tragedies forcibly, especially in the scenes of Jewish prisoners being executed by gunfire in an empty, swimming pool; and when a young Jewish girl, Elspeth (Bella Ramsey), is orphaned after being comforted by her loving parents who are killed before her eyes in the opening scenes of the film.
Comedy in this film rests almost completely in the miming performances of Marceau, and in the obvious delight of young children in them. The mix of tragedy and comedy is a difficult one to handle. The film, “Life is Beautiful” by Roberto Benigni managed to do that in 1997, and most recently in 2019, Taika Waititi achieved a different kind of balance between comedy and tragedy in “JoJo Rabbit.” In this film, the joy engendered by Marceau’s clever miming is totally and movingly integrated into the dramatic portrayal of the terrible persecution of the Jewish People.
The mix in this film is successful in two ways. First, the film is genuinely biographical in showing how a talented mime-artist brought humour into the lives of desperate people, trapped by appalling circumstances. Second, the mix of tragedy and comedy is brilliantly captured in the strength of the acting performance by Jesse Eisenberg, who inhabits the personality of Marceau.
As Marcel Marceau, Jesse Eisenberg distracts the children with amusing routines, that he creates. A special highlight of the film is when Marceau, wearing white makeup as “Bip the Clown”,
silently mimes the atrocities of war that he has experienced in his first Official Public Performance – for General Patton (Ed Harris) on a theatre stage, in 1945. For the General and his soldiers, Marceau mimes the tragedy of war and injects pathos, humanity and hope into his performance.
The movie communicates effectively that revenge is never the solution to injustice. When events are traumatic or inhumane, as in those the film depicts, saving life is what is important, and that is what Marcel Marceau resolved to do. Marceau decided he needed to save the lives of children orphaned at the hands of the Nazis. In recording Marceau’s extraordinary life on film, Jonathan Jakubowicz, the movie’s Director and Creator, has impressively embraced the challenging task of finding the remnants of humanity in atrocity that energise the will to survive.
The film contains intense violence and scenes of brutality which clearly make it unsuitable for viewing by children, who are very likely to be the persons most enthusiastically delighted by Marceau’s style of miming in the film. This is a bitter-sweet film of brave heroism in which “resistance” is projected with hope and personal courage. The movie tugs at the heart, but Eisenberg’s charismatic performance lies very firmly, and rather beautifully, at its core.
Peter W Sheehan is Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting
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