Do you want to see what I have been up to in school this summer? Here is an essay I wrote for Film Appreciation class taught by Stacy Barton.

“A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.” —Jean Genet.
To describe City Of Lost Children as dark, sinister or “sick-and-twisted” (Hicks, Deseret News 1996) in the most rudimentary convention is to fly instead of taking a ship, camp in a trailer instead of under the stars or watch a movie when (in some cases) the book proves more insightful. In every visual way possible, this movie is indeed dark. The darkness is not that of formulaic bogeymen and monsters. It is an apocalyptic darkness. Pervading time and underscoring the injustices of violence that average people are quick to utilize with out repercussion, the darkness is barely recognizable as what follows day, which is something that is so easily taken for granted in the here and now. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro created the depth needed to explain, like a book, the story in it’s entirety. Very few movies are capable of rivaling their printed counterparts. Fewer movies can boast that they epitomize reading between the lines, but as some state “[City of Lost Children] …too rarely engages deeper emotions to score much of a bonus”, the “collection of weirdos” and “in-your-face imagery”(Variety Staff, 1995) is too much for some to go looking for them. Perhaps it is what it is and we should have all peed our pants over it and gone home by now. Or perhaps the message, drenched in the romanticism of newfound friends and a happy ending is so much darker than ghoulish antagonists and rusted metal shrouded in fog.

At the fault of my own ‘judging a book by it’s cover’ method of choosing movies, my first viewing of this film, about five years after its release came at the insistence of many artistic friends. I also can thank my husbands love of sci-fi, as I essentially watched it by proxy. At first glance I was impressed by the quality of it’s aesthetic. The engaging look of an apocalyptic city soaked in an almost silent trickle of water was like looking through goggles in the night to an encrusted coral reef, soaking in each color like a massive sponge. Each orange-red and blue-green, a mesmerizing trademark of the Jeunet-Caro partnership, was blinding me to some of the takes that eventually became poignant in the second and third viewings. Maturity may have also shown me the ability to see what I was blind to before. As a child fast food was like a candy dish. Maybe the sun-bleached drive through menus are as now as old as I am, but I only see brown, orange and yellow. Even the salads are an inedible shade of chartreuse. I’ve opened my eyes. Hamburgers are great every now and again, but sometimes I like my movies to be like a copper fillet of baked salmon with a huckleberry sauce deeper than merlot contrasted with an emerald spinach salad topped with julienned carrots and cabbage that makes a plum blush with envy. The recipe of French cinema is more complex, more natural and consequentially more honest. It’s cause and effect montage sequences, unexpected camera jumps and emphasis on normalcy in lieu of ideology play on the conventions of Hollywood and gives City of Lost Children a classic yet complicated visceral patina that is felt through out the film and echoed in the costume and sets.

If costume is a statement in the this film, then the lack of costume is certainly as well. I found it amusing and ironic at best that the film was given an R rating, to the dismay of the directors(von Busack, Metroactive Movies 1995). The climax was set up with a series of events including a pre-climactic aforementioned montage sequence. A long overhead shot of screeching topless women is given insignificance by filming it from the eye-line match to the delight of a repair man shown at a high angle. This scene is darkened and almost spot-lighted by yellow hued street light and very fast. Blink and you will miss it. Elevated attention to detail such as this is sampled through out the film. Coupled with that of the earlier drinking scene leads me to safely assume that sex, in it’s most blatant form is not a concern of this film. The bulky protagonist, One(Ron Pearlman), is just too infantile to process the complexities of sex. Ultimately Jeunet and Caro have foreshadowed, with their micro-version of sexuality, that there will be no all-too-often obligatory sex among the steam.

A militant, religiously fanatical(Gomez, Quirkee 2007) cult of blind men abduct children for trade for their ability to see. Mirroring the Santa Clause’s at the beginning of the movie and the duplicity of “le scaphandrier”(Dominique Pinon) one could draw that the intention of multiplying the enemy implies that hegemony is difficult for one to overcome. The cult members have a mechanic eye, provided by the clones and their housemates, who live on—of all things, an oil rig. The cult stacks themselves in a narrow corridor, as if they were and army, to listen to the gospel of their leader who spews “our great superior race shall reign once more!” I believe this is a direct response to George H. W. Bush and his pre-presidency oil career that blended into the end-goal of his leadership. Draped in olive oilcloth jackets, the cult turns themselves into cyclops, equipped with the eye that renders their vision to an eerie, oily green color. As if they were siting an enemy telescopically, their mechanical eye is similar to military arms and may be reminiscent to the Persian Gulf War and how it was depicted in the media in the early nineties. The emotion of simply seeing that color & the hand-held camera shaking while one of the cult members watches himself die at the control of another member was prophetic. Weary opposition of foreign oil dependence in the early 90’s could garner the idea that the loss of lives was not worth what the military perceived to be our gain.

Green is seen as a motif through out the film, in the water and the poison that is injected by a CGI flea. Before the flea’s final injection, we see “la Pieuvre”(Geneviéve Brunet, Odile Mallet) or the Octopus from a high angle, denoting their self created power with a hose. The camera, positioned below the spilling oil while it splashes onto the lens, is an important piece of the water and oil motif. The supposed doom of Miette(Judith Vittet) and One is mildly foreshadowed in the scene where we see the green gas creep into the original clone scientist’s(Dominique Pinon) sleep. Before the dream of the oil rig and his life before scuba diving, the camera pans down through his belongings and right above his head are a collection of many modern looking key-chains. Vehicles are seen briefly throughout the film, but they aren’t deemed an important mode of transportation of the films time frame. I suspect that the key-chains are a prop used as a sign that is telling of a world before this time.

Many editing techniques are imperative to the emotions drawn by City of Lost Children. The Octopus is seen many times through an eye-line match from a low angle. As they obtain the riches of the street urchin children, and again when the cyclops brings them even more. The source of their power over everyone is revealed slowly and is difficult to understand. I’ve likened them to the grim reaper or evil itself, their evilness at full capacity when the camera rises high above for an extreme long shot of the pier on which they stand as they laugh maniacally at the thought of cheating death, only to be reminded that through the flea’s poison they are human as well. The poison, which seems to let people verbalize their innermost demons pits the women against each other with out a way to escape, unraveling their precise control demonstrated in their earlier cooking scene. The only saviors of the plot, Marcello(Jean-Claude Dreyfuss) and the killer in the introduction, are the two who undermine the Octopus and fatefully fulfill her demise.

Jump-cuts, in classic alignment with the birth of French New Wave cinema, are used in many scenes in collaboration with color and shot length variation. Yellow is used in a sparing but directly poignant way. First in the moon that framed the oil rig, then as a beacon of light while jumping back into scenes of Miette and One, then finally in the climax on the platform that all characters meet, when the clones examine sticks of dynamite and the platform gives way beneath Miette’s feet. I believe that this color, as a warning of danger to come, is perfectly placed throughout the film.

Intensity is a theme of the third prominent editing technique. The eyes, teeth and bulging veins of Krank’s(Daniel Emilefork) head are all aesthetic clues to his saturated and spit flecked vehemence. Some of Krank’s dialog is almost self-reflexive as he speaks to Uncle Irvin(Jean-Louis Trintignant), who the audience takes a viewpoint of through his fish-eye circular view-port made even more realistic by a slight shaking of the hand-held camera. With out these almost tangible extreme close-ups, Krank might seem a little crazy and cantankerous at worst. Only until the climax do we see a close up shot of Krank’s snake ring and snake-noose servant pull. His death was highlighted by an extreme close up so intimate that I could feel the sweat and slobber. As a motif paralleling the idea that if the human race continues to burn fossil fuels, the earth as we know it will flood, wetness and water played a significant role throughout the film. Buildings were contrived of dampened bricks, tears flowed from the misery of nightmares and the city itself was best maneuvered by boat. The sound of water can be heard through the film creating a sense of place, but to elevate the intense editing style, we often hear dramatic classical music.

Near the introduction Krank is heard arguing with Irvin “but there’s one thing you’ll never have.” his brothers chime in “What? A soul.” Irvin responds, “Because you believe you have one?” Referring to a soul as “one” is interesting to me because the reason for naming the protagonist ‘One’ is never really revealed. Surely with a strong alpha name such as ‘One’, this character is intended to be the hero. He is goal oriented and yet, as with the failures of any one man, he fails the test of his own grief. Instead of making One the ideal die hard avenger, the honest representation of men with a real soul is characterized in One—who finds his shortcomings paralyzing. His helplessness is amplified in many mis-en-scénes. Once appearing in an extreme long shot, with a beautiful yet desolate painting mimicking the expanse of the city in muted tones, One is alone with his gried before Jeunet and Caro re-introduce Miette, pulling One out of his immobilization. One is susceptible to quite literally drowning himself in sorrow and essentially forgetting his goal altogether—to rescue his adopted brother, Denree(Joseph Lucien). During this scene in the bar, you can hear Russian music playing, and before Miette intervenes, One does a drunken jig that could be interpreted as Russian influenced. Since One explains to Miette that he is a retired sailor, he could be from anywhere. One could be Russian(Jeunet, DVD commentary) because he sometimes takes on a Russian accent, or because Pearlman’s French accent is inexcusably unauthentic. However the character of One developed, the idea that One as a Russian, submerged in a nameless French city, could be attributed to the recent fall of the Berlin Wall, only six years before the film’s release.

One’s relationship with Miette can be summed up as the reverse of innocence. Of course children would become jaded if their dreams were stolen. Wearing a heavily pocket red jumper, Miette assists One in the rescue of the many abducted children. One’s red clad tag-along is like a miniature version of a nurse during war, the strength behind the bulk. The present taboo of relationships between grown men and little girls could also detour the common person who is conditioned to Hollywood standards. It appeared that it was intended for this relationship to cause the viewer to question innocence, particularly their own, instead of writing it off as overachieving technologically(Ebert, Suntimes 1995). After Marcello helps Miette in the bar, and she says goodbye to her little boy gang, it is clear that Miette is adored and even put on a pedestal. She and One talk about marriage then head to the tattoo parlor where One receives a tattoo of “Miette Forever” with a heart, edited in with a jump-cut and an extreme close-up. Afterwards we only see Miette trying on an earring while riding on One’s back. These scenes are highly suggestive and could offend someone, though Jeunet and Caro sway the audience back to the story when the montage sequence that follows declares that the stories purpose is much more than what Hollywood would have intended for the couple. Only until the end of the movie does the audience get to see Miette in One’s arms—as they row into what is sure to be a better future.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Even the title of City of Lost Children establishes the real protagonist. It is quickly pointed out that stealing the dreams of children does not work because they are altered by the antagonists taunting. The only child who is capable of ignoring their malevolent situation is Denree, who is sidetracked by his appetite, a paralleled quality that American’s have been infamous for since the onslaught of industrialization. Consumerism bloated everything until it became bigger, supply and demand made everything faster and the laziness that ensued jeopardized the quality of goods for a cheaper alternative. Children cannot believe in the beauty of their dreams if they their survival depends on ignorance and malevolence.

The reason Jeunet and Caro made a movie about stealing children’s dreams was not because they loved working with children(Jeunet, DVD commentary). A greater story was to be told, and they were the visionaries who would assemble the pieces of what is an extraordinary jigsaw puzzle. They have told the story of history—from a city of fantasy that epitomizes our futures while mocking our past. On the surface there is awe inducing beauty found in the contrast of colors and the inordinate use of wreckage, but to only see this is to lose a few pieces under the coffee table. Like the idea that people only mobilize their efforts when the chips are down, only until we see that we are missing pieces can we commence dreaming.

Works Cited

Movie & Director Commentary

City of Lost Children. Dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. Perf. Ron Pearlman, Dominique Pinon, Judith Vittet. Sony, 1995. DVD.

Print News Media Articles

Staff, Variety. “Variety’s Review | The City of Lost Children.” Variety. 1 Jan. 1995. Web. 24 July 2009. <http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117789922.html?categoryid=31&cs=1>.

Hicks, Chris. “Deseret News | Movie review: City of Lost Children, The.” Deseret News. 13 Feb. 1996. Web. 24 July 2009. <http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700000325/City-of-Lost-Children-The.html>.

Ebert, Roger. “City Of Lost Children :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews.” Rogerebert.com :: Movie reviews, essays and the Movie Answer Man from film critic Roger Ebert. Chicago Sun-Times, 15 Dec. 1995. Web. 26 July 2009. <http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19951215/REVIEWS/512150301/1023>.

Internet Media Articles

von Busack, Richard. “Metroactive Movies | The City of Lost Children.” Metroactive | Music, Clubs, Movies, Events, News | San Jose, CA. Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc., 27 Dec. 1995. Web. 24 July 2009. <http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/12.21.95/lostchild-9551.html>.

Gomez, Enrique. “Quirkee.com | The City of Lost Children.” Quirkee.com - Home. Quirkee Media, 07 Feb. 2007. Web. 24 July 2009. <http://www.quirkee.com/content/view/605/320/>.