The Man Who Cried

Saw The Man Who Cried, a film about a Eastern European girl whose father leaves for America just as the Nazis are gaining power. Soon her village is overridden and she must flee through Europe, her name changed, her language forgotten, hunting for some way to America and her father. This is a morbid, dark sort of film. The girl is played by Christina Ricci of Addams Family fame and also stars Johnny Depp. There's a lot of sullen stares and meaningful sidelong glances. The sets are free of decoration, featuring blank walls and wooden panelling, the costumes are all shades of black and brown. The pallet is so muted, it feels like a Tim Burton claymation film. The focus is squarely on the characters to the point of having no establishing shots, only close-ups of actors speaking solo or in pairs.

It's very stylish and pretty to look at but (as usual with stylish films,) the story itself is not amazing. The slow, morbid quality of the film prevents it from having a very intricate plot, or dealing with great detail with anything. The film is focussed on the iconic pathos of the girl hunting for her father. When the Germans invade and we only get a change in the background characters. The protagonists seem largely unphased by the bombings and raids.

The protagonist girl works in an opera company for a while so perhaps this is supposed to be operatic and overblown. This is fine but it is a touch tacky to treat WW2 with self-conscious melodrama. It actually spends much more time sympathizing with the gypsies that were caught up in the concentration camps than it does sympathizing with the Jews. It's not a great film, but it's very pretty. A sort of look-book for Eastern European vampires.