Micmacs

After I saw Micmacs I read the reviews by Rob Thomas in 77 Square and Kenneth Burns in Isthmus and was surprised to find that they both criticized the film on the same grounds. Indeed, it was almost as if they had called one another to make sure their critiques were the same. Burns chastises the film for "tastelessly combines whimsy and horror" while Thomas does the same with "quirkiness" and "serious". However, it should be noted that he uses "whimsy" as well in his first sentence: "If whimsy were a source of energy, the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet would keep Paris lit for decades."

Thomas liked the film more than Burns and I enjoyed more than either of them.

They both labor under the notion that, if you use landmines in your story, you are obligated to be dreadfully serious and denounce them at every turn. Indeed, for Burns, the movie's primary failing is that it proves not to be politically correct.

But many decades have passed since the heyday of the Little Tramp, and along with domestic violence, homelessness isn't something we laugh at in movies anymore.

Jeez. Does Burns want to just get rid of humor altogether?

I don't remember the film taking aim at the homeless but rather the humor is found in the antics of a man who happens to be homeless. Besides, human beings have this capacity to be able to laugh at a comedic character that is homeless on the one hand and be very concerned about homelessness in, you know, real life. One can laugh at a homeless character without subscribing to a bias against the homeless generally. Should I destroy DVDs of Trading Places, Blazing Saddles, and Bamboozled? Anything else the humor police want to admonish me against?

Furthermore he says of the home of some of the characters in the movie:

But there actually isn't anything remotely charming or funny about living in a trash heap, as the inhabitants of the Philippines' massive and dangerous Payatas dump would tell Jeunet, if he asked.

As Mel Brooks once said, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die." I don't understand Burns' insistence that bad things in the real world are off limits for comedy.

Micmacs opens with a French bomb squad in the Morocco of 1979. One of the men attempts to disarm a landmine but it explodes in his face killing him. We then jump to a video store clerk who rushes to the doorway of the store to check out the commotion outside. A gun is dropped and goes off after hitting the pavement and the clerk, named Bazil, takes a bullet to the head. At the hospital we find the bullet to be lodged in Bazil's cranium very deep. Removing it could be as harmful as leaving it in. The surgeon then flips a coin to determine the course of treatment.

Losing his job, Bazil is homeless and turns out that his father was the man killed by the mine. He wanders the streets until one day he finds himself between the corporate offices of two companies. One makes bullets, including the one that he was shot with, and the other made the landmine that killed his father. His attempts at confronting the CEOs directly end with him getting tossed out on the street.

Bazil then meets up with Placard who makes art out of junk. He lives in a scrap yard with a group of unusual friends including a mathematician, a human cannonball, and a contortionist who all take Bazil in and welcome him as family. This group of new-found friends is enlisted to help Bazil get revenge on the arms dealers whose products have so tormented his life. The ensuing shenanigans pit each company against the other with plots that get ever more complex.

Like much of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet's work, Micmacs uses a lot of earth tones. It's not as dark as The City of Lost Children or Alien: Resurrection but it's nowhere near as bright and colorful as Amélie. The film takes place in a fantasy world that's rough around the edges. Not only do loveable misfits live in junkyard bunkers but an orchestra appears on the steps behind Bazil when he hears a burst of strings.

That's the key here for me. Micmacs is like a fairy tale – just not a Disney one. It appeals to the grimness of reality but it doesn’t dwell there. The film is satire and comedy but it occasionally lapses into the serious and I think it balances all these well. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a very serious film – it’s too fantastic and, dare I say, whimsical – but the shenanigans are punctuated with more serious bits. For instance, when Bazil is at a corporate rally and he hears the CEO talking about how good business has been and a tear runs down Bazil’s cheek. Jeunet keeps things on the light-hearted side but he gives the viewer reality checks.