This moving animated film is one of the must-sees of the week, it is at the cinema that you will shed a little tear!
Cinema is one of the best ways to escape from everyday life. Whether we are looking for laughter or tears, films allow us to escape and sometimes to better understand the world around us, past or present. This week, moviegoers can discover a powerful and moving animated film that evokes one of the darkest periods in history. You can already take out your tissues.
Directed by Michel Hazanavicius, this tale follows a couple of Polish lumberjacks, elderly and childless, in the middle of World War II. They live near a railway line which crosses the forest, and which transports deportees to the concentration camps. One day, a “goods item”, a baby wrapped in a shawl, is thrown from the train by her father who tries to save her before arriving at the camps. The woodcutter takes in the child against the advice of her husband, who has anti-Semitic prejudices.
The most valuable commodity is the adaptation of the novel of the same name, written by Jean-Claude Grumberg and published in 2019. This animated film offers a new look at the Shoah by highlighting the Righteous who were able to save Jews during the Second War worldwide. In the casting, we can recognize the voices of Dominique Blanc, Grégory Gadebois and Denis Podalydès. It is also the last film by Jean-Louis Trintignant, who recorded the narrator’s voice before his death on June 17, 2022.
Served by sensitive and sublime designs, The most valuable commodity turns out to be a moving tale that uses the figurative and evocative power of animation to show the worst of humanity, but also the best. It’s difficult to restrain one’s emotion in the face of the extremely touching characters, the scenes which eloquently evoke the horror of the camps, the (de)humanization, or even one of the final scenes, when death and life face each other. After a first screening at the Cannes Film Festival, the feature film can be discovered in France this Wednesday, November 20, 2024.