It was not the firsttime Bazil’s life was changed by the deadly products of the armaments industry.When he was a child, his father, a French soldier, was killed by a land mine inthe Martian landscape of the Western Sahara.Homeless and jobless after his discharge from the hospital, coincidence leadsBazil to the street where two of the world’s largest weapon-makers are located.The orchestral soundtrack swells, just like a Max Steiner score from golden-ageHollywood. Anorchestra even appears briefly on the steps of the Art Deco edifice housing oneof the companies. His imaginative landscape shaped by the movies, theapparition is a signal to Bazil. Like the hard-pressed heroes of old, he mustembark on a vengeance quest against powerful villains who have caused so muchharm.
Micmacs,the latest film by French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is in keeping with theretro-now fantasy worlds he created in the astonishing City of Lost Childrenand the delightful Amélie. Thesetting is a palimpsest where artifacts of the past bleed without comment intoa present day with little cultural direction beyond the latest high-tech toys.Most of the Parisian apartments are furnished in the style of Europebetween the world wars. The three-wheeled vehicles of postwar France sharethe streets with sleek, contemporary light rail. The good people of the castlook as if they shop in the funkiest resale shops on the continent.
Those good peopleare the merry band of misfits who accept Bazil as one of their own. They haveestablished a subterranean society in the catacombs below a junkyard, acluttered twilight filled with objects salvaged and recycled from what passesfor civilization above. With a female contortionist who can curl up inside arefrigerator and a dwarf who once worked as a human cannonball, they resemble ahappier version of the subculture in the 1930s film classic Freaks. References to other old moviesabound. Before his adoption into the society of scavengers, Bazil, silentlywandering the streets in shoes coming apart, recalls Charlie Chaplin’s tramp.The many pantomime scenes suggest the droll comedy of French director JacquesTati. There is even a finger-poking nod to the Three Stooges and anuncomfortably quiet dinner table scene out of Citizen Kane.
The principalvillains in Micmacs are a pair ofrival armaments tycoons. De Fenouillet, an old-school plutocrat, keeps acollection of body parts from famous people, including the molar of MarilynMonroe and the eye of Mussolini, under glass bell jars. The younger Marconi,part of the pseudo-hipster generation of Hollywoodtitans and venture philanthropists, lives in sleek plasma-screen luxury. Themorality of their enterprises can be summed up by a corporate presentationwhose speaker boasts of being “the world leader in the field of fragmentationbombs.” Kosovo, Afghanistan,Somalia, Iraq, the diamond wars of AfricadeFenouillet and Marconi have profited from them all. Bazil and his new friendsare determined to bring them down.
The schemes they hatchare Rube Goldberg in their hilarious complexity as Bazil and company, a band ofworking-class outcasts, struggle against the cold rationality of giantcorporations. The brilliance of Micmacsis that it turns a revolution of the little people into two hours of engagingentertainment.n
