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The film in theaters: The Most Valuable of Goods by Michel Hazanavicius
The Most Valuable of Goods by Jean-Claude Grumberg where, in the heart of the Second World War, a couple of Polish lumberjacks take in a newborn that his Jewish father threw from the train taking his family to the death camps, to give him hope of living . Hazanavicius' great achievement is to have been able to translate the dimension of the tale which contrasts with the horror of this period through the style of his animation and the contrasts he orchestrates between the forest scenes where the lumberjacks live and those from the Auschwitz camp where suddenly the images stop coming to life. A great film about the Righteous, carried by the voice of Jean-Louis Trintignant in the role of the storyteller.
What's new at the cinema this week
The series: Dune: Prophecy
10,000 years before Paul Atreides, what was the state of the imperium? If you liked Denis Villeneuve's films, you will happily immerse yourself again in the world of Frank Herbert, through this derivative series which spectacularly broadens the spectrum of the film saga. In stunning new settings, taking as its starting point the fascinating order of the Bene Gesserit, the immense mythology of Dune is spread out brilliantly in a very political saga, somewhere between the juggernaut Game of Thrones and the improbable success of Foundation.
Watch Dune: Prophecy on Max (one episode every Monday)
The film in streaming: Blitz by Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen ventures into the terrain of child-level war drama, somewhere between Empire of the Sun And Hope and Glory. With also a pinch ofOliver Twist. In 1941, in London, a nine-year-old mixed race child was separated from his mother, an arms factory employee, and sent to the countryside to better escape the Nazi bombings. But he jumps from the moving train and tries to return home, facing a thousand dangers during an initiatory odyssey. Blitz sees McQueen mix registers and reveal himself by turns sentimental and sharp, dry and lyrical, protesting and educational, artsy (when he films the bombs falling on London in an abstract deluge on the edge of the fantastic) and unifying (when everyone takes out the Kleenex as the end credits approach).
Watch Blitz streaming on Apple TV+
The film on VOD: The Boy and the Heron by Hayao Miyazaki
Funny fake last film (The Wind risesa bald testament, did not call for any postscript). Nor recreation at the Ponyonor odyssey to Chihiro : Mahito's bizarre dreamlike quest in the folds of Japan in the middle of war continues to run into dead ends, as if Miyazaki refused to deliver to the public what was expected of him. Nothing kawaii here, no joy of living, no appetite. Cannibal parrots, kami scary heron, multiverse in the shape of embedded tombs. The result looks more like a funeral march (the haunting visual reference to Böcklin) than a standardized Ghibli-movie. Funny film, yes, a little unpleasant, but sufficiently engaging for us to think about it and come back to it.
Watch The Boy and the Heron on VOD on Première Max
The documentary: Witches by Elizabeth Sankey
Exclusively on MUBI, a documentary by English director Elizabeth Sankey on the links between postpartum mental health and the representation of witches in Western history and pop culture. Witches takes the form of a cinephile essay elegantly knitting together dozens of film extracts (from Wizard of Oz has The Witch passing through The Witches of Eastwick), and evoking the documentary on teen movies Beyond Clueless. But it is not so much the discourse on cinema that counts here (the film images mainly have an illustrative purpose) as the very strong words delivered in front of the camera by doctors or patients who have suffered from depression or postpartum psychosis. – starting with Elizabeth Sankey herself, whose personal story serves as a common thread through this enlightening and moving film.
Watch Witches streaming on MUBI
The classic: Napoleon seen by Abel Gance (1927)
This evening from 9:05 p.m. the marathon begins Napoleon seen by Abel Ganceor more than seven hours of non-stop silent cinema. Mute but not silent since symphonic music accompanies the incredible (euphemism!) adventures of young Bonaparte, from his childhood to the Italian countryside. A masterpiece of cinema whose restoration required sixteen years of work, this behemoth astonishes with its plastic beauty, its sense of narrative which knows how to mix the intimate and the epic to convey Gladiator 2 for a film by Emmanuel Mouret. Gance's film, divided into several well-identified chapters, can very well be appreciated in separate blocks (the film will be available for thirty days on France.tv) But those who dare to discover it in one piece will remember it their whole life.
Watch Napoléon seen by Abel Gance Friday at 9 p.m. on France 5 and streaming on France.TV