The Garden of Everything

Last week I saw two movies. One was the just released Sweeney Todd from Tim Burton and his gang (minus Danny Elfman) and the other was La Cité des enfants perdus, a 1995 french movie that I had already seen some years ago. To some, maybe, these two productions may have something in common: they both are without any dobut strongly visual experiences.

However, the relation doesn’t go beyond that, as The City of Lost Children is a substantial, heart-warming tale filled with poetic scenery and personas, while Tim Burton seems to be more and more determined to become a self-parody of his already self-parodied self with a movie that cannot be saved even by Johnny Depp, who seems stiff, plain and ultimately boring. Performing uninspiring one-note songs with convoluted and needless counterpoints doesn’t help him or the movie that much either.

Anyway, let’s focus on La Cité des enfants perdus. That will ease the pain in my liver.

Like stated before, the first thing that pops up about this movie is its artistic direction. From the very first scene where many terrifying Santa Clauses turn a little kid’s dream into a nightmare we are warned that we’re about to be immersed in a fary tale gone wrong. Part fantasy, part cyberpunk, part surrealims, the story is wraped in a visually appealing package that is better seen from afar. But not only the walls, clothing or lights are extreme. The cast is also part of this world with actors like Ron Pearlman or Dominique Pinon who have very unique face shapes, or Judith Vittet whose beauty is almost unrealistic. But what good is it a fantastic world without a equally fantastic tale?

In it, Krank, a mad scientist without the ability to dream tries to extract dreams from little kids that he and his assistans (a group of clones with narcolepsy issues and a very petit woman) kidnap. Unfortunately, the overall experience and the machine used for this is very traumatic for the children, who can only have nightmares, transmiting them to the desperate scientist.

A group of “enhanced” humans with Termintaor-like vision (only in green) and a very sensitive hearing named cyclops take care of the kidnapping. One night, they managed to take a little kid named Denreé, who was taken care of by a man called One (Ron Perlman), a powerful but somewhat limited in intelligence street performer. One then sets out to find his “little brother” with the help of Miette, a 9-year old orphan who abandon his old gang to follow One.

It is interesting to see how the One/Miette relationship develops throughout the film. While we’ve seen many old man/little female kid combinations in fiction before (The Professional or that awful annoying kid they added in the Devil May Cry anime, for example), in most of those cases the strong personality comes from the old man, while the kid is cheerful, careless and, well, childish. However, in The City of Lost Children, Miette is the strong, calm and collected one, while One is the not-so-clever, act first think later character. She is the one who is used to have control of every situation, but who will have to learn to follow her heart by making odd choices because of One, without knowing exactly why.

Yes, there are many lost children in the movie, but the story is not about missing kids as much as it is about missing childhood. From Krank who never had one to Miette who is perhaps the more mature girl of the whole movie in spite of being one of the youngest, the story centers around how these characters deal with their own past, childish dreams, aspirations and needs. They all have to recognize what is it that makes them whole and try to find it.

The City of Lost Children is definitely not for everyone. I saw it with a bunch of friends and half of them fell asleep and even mocked my taste in movies. I didn’t care, as I already knew this would happen and at least two of them were genuinely interested in the film and watched the whole thing. Its a slow-paced movie, yes, but every second of it is filled with force and passion and poetry and is hard not to recommend it. Is a world of magic and fantasy, where amazing things can happen. Things like one single tear of a little girl making a giant ship crash in a harbor.

Yes, is that kind of movie.

Not much to read. I couldn’t find enough pics so I decided to add the trailer. Enjoy.