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Cannes 2014 review: The Search - silence may be best policy on followup to The Artist Cannes 2014 review: The Search - silence may be best policy on followup to The Artist
(4 months later)
Michel Hazanavicius's desperately well-meaning movie is about an EU human rights observer who rescues a refugee boy during the 1999 Chechen war. It has its powerful scenes and heartfelt moments, and all avowedly inspired by Fred Zinneman's Oscar-winning 1948 film of the same name with Montgomery Clift as the GI in ruined Berlin who chances across a lost Jewish boy and sets out to find the child's mother.Michel Hazanavicius's desperately well-meaning movie is about an EU human rights observer who rescues a refugee boy during the 1999 Chechen war. It has its powerful scenes and heartfelt moments, and all avowedly inspired by Fred Zinneman's Oscar-winning 1948 film of the same name with Montgomery Clift as the GI in ruined Berlin who chances across a lost Jewish boy and sets out to find the child's mother.
It could be that Hazanavicius wanted, once again, to channel some of that Old Hollywood big-hearted sincerity — just as he did with his silent-movie triumph The Artist. But the outcome here is naive and misjudged; Hazavicius can't help turning his boy into a sort of Chaplinesque Kid, and there's a very disappointing central performance from Bérénice Bejo who goes into full Juliette Binoche mode as the caringly concerned westerner, berating callous officials on the phone about how little care and concern they are showing. The role is dull and complacently conceived, and Annette Bening is frankly even more exasperating, playing Helen, the frowningly troubled Red Cross official.The whole movie ends with a questionable and plangent montage — to Benjamin Britten's song Cuckoo — showing rescued children and then dead bodies. Hazanavicius's final narrative twist is ingenious, but it sets the seal of glibness on the whole movie.There is no doubt about the power of the opening scenes. Drunk, cruel Russian soldiers taunt and terrorise Chechen civilians and execute a couple right in the front of their daughter Raissa (Zukhra Duishvili). Their 9-year-old son Hadji (an honest, if somewhat doe-eyed performance from Abdul-Khalim Mamatsuiev) is hiding, and manages to scramble away with his baby brother, succeeding later in leaving the infant with a local family. Then he begins his long march to the refugee camp where he encounters stressed, distracted Carole (Bejo) who offers the starving boy some of her sandwich. Things progress from there. She lets him stay with her and (apparently) leaves him alone in her apartment during the day while she's at work, with the door unlocked so that he doesn't feel like a prisoner.Meanwhile, Hazanavicius tracks the destiny of another lost boy of a different sort. Kolia (Maxim Emelianov) is an ordinary Russian teen who likes girls, rock music and weed — he's picked up by cops on a drugs charge which is effectively a pretext for press-ganging him. Kolia is offered a choice: prison or the army and of course he chooses the army, and we see how he is brutalised by conditions in training and then in action. This rather sensitive and idealistic boy is being turned into a monster and taught how to turn others into monsters as well — because only monsters can prosecute this war effectively.The Search is certainly a valid reminder of how little the west and the EU cared about the Chechen wars — and also a reminder of how Boris Yeltsin was indulged and ignored by a succession of US Presidents and British Prime Ministers as the lovably boozy hero who rescued Russia from the attempted Soviet counter-coup in the early 90s, and in so doing preserved the ideological triumph of our liberal democracy. If Russia wanted to attack Chechenya, it was no concern of ours, and then after 9/11, the idea of attacking perceived Islamic terrorists was even more understandable. So The Search has something to say about that.But the central relationship and the problems involved in a Westerner rescuing, or adopting, or appropriating a child — these are left untouched. There were comparable cases in real life: compassionate ITN reporter Michael Nicholson famously brought home a Bosnian orphan — an experience which became the starting point for Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). In 1975, the Daily Mail's legendary editor Sir David English chartered a plane to rescue Vietnamese orphans — some hailed his imaginative compassion, others called it a compassion-kidnap. Either way, it is a complex issue, but Hazavicius never engaged with its difficulty or really looks into Carole's mind and heart.The Search is a film with sincerity and commitment, and an earnest rejection of the horror of war. But sentimentality is at its core. It could be that Hazanavicius wanted, once again, to channel some of that Old Hollywood big-hearted sincerity — just as he did with his silent-movie triumph The Artist. But the outcome here is naive and misjudged; Hazavicius can't help turning his boy into a sort of Chaplinesque Kid, and there's a very disappointing central performance from Bérénice Bejo who goes into full Juliette Binoche mode as the caringly concerned westerner, berating callous officials on the phone about how little care and concern they are showing. The role is dull and complacently conceived, and Annette Bening is frankly even more exasperating, playing Helen, the frowningly troubled Red Cross official. The whole movie ends with a questionable and plangent montage — to Benjamin Britten's song Cuckoo — showing rescued children and then dead bodies. Hazanavicius's final narrative twist is ingenious, but it sets the seal of glibness on the whole movie.
There is no doubt about the power of the opening scenes. Drunk, cruel Russian soldiers taunt and terrorise Chechen civilians and execute a couple right in the front of their daughter Raissa (Zukhra Duishvili). Their 9-year-old son Hadji (an honest, if somewhat doe-eyed performance from Abdul-Khalim Mamatsuiev) is hiding, and manages to scramble away with his baby brother, succeeding later in leaving the infant with a local family. Then he begins his long march to the refugee camp where he encounters stressed, distracted Carole (Bejo) who offers the starving boy some of her sandwich. Things progress from there. She lets him stay with her and (apparently) leaves him alone in her apartment during the day while she's at work, with the door unlocked so that he doesn't feel like a prisoner. Meanwhile, Hazanavicius tracks the destiny of another lost boy of a different sort. Kolia (Maxim Emelianov) is an ordinary Russian teen who likes girls, rock music and weed — he's picked up by cops on a drugs charge which is effectively a pretext for press-ganging him. Kolia is offered a choice: prison or the army and of course he chooses the army, and we see how he is brutalised by conditions in training and then in action. This rather sensitive and idealistic boy is being turned into a monster and taught how to turn others into monsters as well — because only monsters can prosecute this war effectively. The Search is certainly a valid reminder of how little the west and the EU cared about the Chechen wars — and also a reminder of how Boris Yeltsin was indulged and ignored by a succession of US Presidents and British Prime Ministers as the lovably boozy hero who rescued Russia from the attempted Soviet counter-coup in the early 90s, and in so doing preserved the ideological triumph of our liberal democracy. If Russia wanted to attack Chechenya, it was no concern of ours, and then after 9/11, the idea of attacking perceived Islamic terrorists was even more understandable. So The Search has something to say about that. But the central relationship and the problems involved in a Westerner rescuing, or adopting, or appropriating a child — these are left untouched. There were comparable cases in real life: compassionate ITN reporter Michael Nicholson famously brought home a Bosnian orphan — an experience which became the starting point for Michael Winterbottom's Welcome to Sarajevo (1997). In 1975, the Daily Mail's legendary editor Sir David English chartered a plane to rescue Vietnamese orphans — some hailed his imaginative compassion, others called it a compassion-kidnap. Either way, it is a complex issue, but Hazavicius never engaged with its difficulty or really looks into Carole's mind and heart. The Search is a film with sincerity and commitment, and an earnest rejection of the horror of war. But sentimentality is at its core.