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Copernicus From TIFF: Jeunet's MICMACS A TIRE-LARIGOT
Merrick here...
Copernicus saw MICMACS at TIFF and sent in his thoughts. This one's from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who brought us DELICATESSEN, AMELIE, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, ALIEN RESURRECTION, and...of course...CITY OF LOST CHILDREN.
Here's Copernicus:
The best Jean-Pierre Jeunet films are tinted, ornate fantasylands
inhabited by eccentric dreamers. In these surreal playgrounds,
characters will often have a series of thoughts or even an obsession,
about some minute and easily overlooked piece of the world, such as
discarded booth photos, a sweetly savored taste, or the wear pattern
in a stairway. They use overwrought contraptions to achieve simple
tasks. Jeunet uses these moments to coax magic from the mundane, and
each detail becomes another quirk that fleshes out heartbreakingly
human characters. From these little threads of merriment he weaves a
magic carpet and takes you on a ride straight into his brain. MICMACS
A TIRE-LARIGOT, which just had the world premiere in Toronto, is in
just this AMELIE and CITY OF LOST CHILDREN style, and it is another
masterpiece. Jeunet and star Dany Boon were at the premiere and got a
standing ovation from the huge Roy Thompson Hall Gala crowd.
The story starts with a prologue involving the wartime dismantling of
a landmine with explosive results. Cut to modern-day Bazil (Dany
Boon), a video store clerk whose father was the unlucky blast
recipient. In a freak accident, Bazil takes a bullet to the brain.
It doesn’t kill him but it does make him have fits the he can only
quell by remembering strange lists or recalling Jeunet-esque
obsessions. As a result of his long recovery, he soon finds himself
homeless and unemployed, but survives by giving street performances
that veer dangerously close to mime, but are done so well that you
almost begin to understand the French obsession with it. Before long
Bazil is introduced to a band of misfits living in what amounts to a
cave constructed with cast-off junk that has been repurposed into
whimsical construction material. Each member of the gang has a
special talent -- one is great at math, one is a chef (hey, this is
France!), one is a contortionist, and another is good at building Rube
Goldberg-like contraptions. You’ll recognize some familiar faces,
like Dominique Pinon, from previous Jeunet outings. By chance, Bazil
learns about arms dealers who made the bullet in his skull and the
land mine that killed his father. So he recruits his merry tribe of
eccentrics to pull a series of stunts to infuriate the arms dealers
and play them against one another. And as if taking spiritual
direction from the patron saint of would-be trappers, Wile E. Coyote,
here the elaborate schemes don’t always go off as planned.
Instead of MICMACS, I think they should have called this OCEANS 14 and
doubled the box office. The parallels with the Soderberg franchise
are numerous: there’s the gang, each with specialties, a great
ensemble cast, moustache-twirling villains (metaphorically speaking),
prankster high jinks, and an overarching sense of fun. Of course here
we’re in Jeunet-land where the contortionists are extra-bendy and you
know that any character with human cannonball training is going to
have to use it.
Dany Boon does incredible physical comedy as Bazin, calling to mind
legends like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. In fact, the film as a
whole essentially works as a silent film – there are scenes without
dialog, and Jeunet is a master at visual storytelling. He is
obsessive about detail, color, and composition – no small feat when
you have as many things going on in the background as he does. You
could take almost any frame from his better works and hang it in the
Louvre, and MICMACS is no exception.
Like any great work of art, this isn’t exactly our world, it’s our
world interpreted. And a world filtered through the eyes and
imagination of Jeunet is a world I’d love to live in. While I can't
do that, at least I can visit it for two hours, and that will have to
do until the next one.
inhabited by eccentric dreamers. In these surreal playgrounds,
characters will often have a series of thoughts or even an obsession,
about some minute and easily overlooked piece of the world, such as
discarded booth photos, a sweetly savored taste, or the wear pattern
in a stairway. They use overwrought contraptions to achieve simple
tasks. Jeunet uses these moments to coax magic from the mundane, and
each detail becomes another quirk that fleshes out heartbreakingly
human characters. From these little threads of merriment he weaves a
magic carpet and takes you on a ride straight into his brain. MICMACS
A TIRE-LARIGOT, which just had the world premiere in Toronto, is in
just this AMELIE and CITY OF LOST CHILDREN style, and it is another
masterpiece. Jeunet and star Dany Boon were at the premiere and got a
standing ovation from the huge Roy Thompson Hall Gala crowd.
The story starts with a prologue involving the wartime dismantling of
a landmine with explosive results. Cut to modern-day Bazil (Dany
Boon), a video store clerk whose father was the unlucky blast
recipient. In a freak accident, Bazil takes a bullet to the brain.
It doesn’t kill him but it does make him have fits the he can only
quell by remembering strange lists or recalling Jeunet-esque
obsessions. As a result of his long recovery, he soon finds himself
homeless and unemployed, but survives by giving street performances
that veer dangerously close to mime, but are done so well that you
almost begin to understand the French obsession with it. Before long
Bazil is introduced to a band of misfits living in what amounts to a
cave constructed with cast-off junk that has been repurposed into
whimsical construction material. Each member of the gang has a
special talent -- one is great at math, one is a chef (hey, this is
France!), one is a contortionist, and another is good at building Rube
Goldberg-like contraptions. You’ll recognize some familiar faces,
like Dominique Pinon, from previous Jeunet outings. By chance, Bazil
learns about arms dealers who made the bullet in his skull and the
land mine that killed his father. So he recruits his merry tribe of
eccentrics to pull a series of stunts to infuriate the arms dealers
and play them against one another. And as if taking spiritual
direction from the patron saint of would-be trappers, Wile E. Coyote,
here the elaborate schemes don’t always go off as planned.
Instead of MICMACS, I think they should have called this OCEANS 14 and
doubled the box office. The parallels with the Soderberg franchise
are numerous: there’s the gang, each with specialties, a great
ensemble cast, moustache-twirling villains (metaphorically speaking),
prankster high jinks, and an overarching sense of fun. Of course here
we’re in Jeunet-land where the contortionists are extra-bendy and you
know that any character with human cannonball training is going to
have to use it.
Dany Boon does incredible physical comedy as Bazin, calling to mind
legends like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. In fact, the film as a
whole essentially works as a silent film – there are scenes without
dialog, and Jeunet is a master at visual storytelling. He is
obsessive about detail, color, and composition – no small feat when
you have as many things going on in the background as he does. You
could take almost any frame from his better works and hang it in the
Louvre, and MICMACS is no exception.
Like any great work of art, this isn’t exactly our world, it’s our
world interpreted. And a world filtered through the eyes and
imagination of Jeunet is a world I’d love to live in. While I can't
do that, at least I can visit it for two hours, and that will have to
do until the next one.
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+ Expand All
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I like those if the people stealing shit don't get caught, kinda like the government, just less evil.
-
Reads like a foreign language. At first blush, it's almost like a random mishmosh of words. "Jupiter Plato at GOFF: Franz Triangle Watermelon Adverb!"
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.. but I'd be embarrassed as hell trying to correctly pronounce that title at the box office.
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you know, the shit that counts!
-
Together they are both at their most awesome....
-
But I love everything he's done, A4 included so I can't wait.
-
Sounds like it, you got a bunch of handicaped people. Yeah that is the Ocean's movies.
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I love his movies (except A4)! but what that title? is "micmac" an actual word? Ah yeah, it means "jiggery-pokery".
-
And they got worse the more cast was added.
Reminded me of 70's megabands populated by bad talent. Sounds good on paper, but comes across as dogshit when realized. -
Maybe this year will end with some really good movies, after all.
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...at YouTube.com!!
It is a rather quirky affair, to be frank. -
Jack Sparrow makes an appearence for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Solomon Kane Trailer! Spidey 4 on IMAX!
-
leans more toward Delicatessen and City of Lost Children and less toward Amelie.
-
Dominique Pinion = Riddler
Feel free to comment my fellow fanboys. -
Good call on Pinon as Riddler -- but I don't see how Nolan and Co. will handle Riddler in the more believable Gotham universe they set up in Dark Knight.
Short of using the actual riddles, doesn't Joker sort of behave like a more feasible version of the Riddler? -
Dante was reasonable enough looking but the story went from bad to worse. Jeunet definately bought the talent to that relationship.
-
But even if Jeunet brings a better balance to films, Caro seems to bring a much welcome crazy edginess that is missing from Jeunets solo efforts.
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but the end looks like they ran out of cash
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That actually made me "LOL" that headline made me vomit just trying to read it. haha
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loved him in the Blues Brothers although I still hate Illinois Nazis!
-
Sounds like a plan! Honk honk screeech *crunch* Die Marcel Marceau!
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Mary Travers of Peter Paul and Mary passed away today too. "Without his lifelong friend, Puff could not be brave...so Puff that mighty dragon slowly slunk into his cave..."
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I like Jeunet, but A Very Long Engagement left me cold. And way to fucking yellow, leave the colorist alone.
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Annoying heroine, not THAT imaginative story equals crappy movie.
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Into, you know, English? The only MicMacs I've ever heard of were the Indian tribe who built that crazy "Pet Sematary" in Stephen King's book. You know the one they made a movie about wherein Herman Munster warned, in his best Pepperidge Farm accent, "Dahn't go up theh-ah, the ground's sow-whah!"
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It sort of means "Dodgy dealings by the dozens" though that's a rough translation as it's an old French slang expression that no one in France actually uses anymore. It can also mean, very roughly, "A big mess" although that's not very accurate. The "Micmacs" term has nothing to do with the Canadian and northern Maine American Indian tribe, who prefer their name to be spelled "Mi'kmaq". It's, like I said, an old French slang word, originally supposedly taken from Dutch, as far as anyone can tell, which means "dodgy dealings." So that's today's linguistics lesson anyway.
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Sep 17, 2009 7:51:47 PM CDT
Also, it's still up in the air about the English title
by asimovdiedofaids
... Although my fave would be, "Assloads of Trouble". But then, that's probably not even an option.
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