A great man once said that art uncovers the truth and that therefore the truth is art. Though simplistic and easy to say I do believe that there is much more to great art than revealing honesty. In fact I believe it goes without saying that art can reveal anything it wants to whether it is factual or not. Its basis in truth doesn’t diminish the art itself ( As films such as Birth of a Nation and Amadeus have shown us ) but it does offer interesting questions. Amelie raises us this questions, and in my opinion no film raises them in a more beautiful manner.
The story is simple. A shy, cute, Parisian girl sets out to help the people around her. Each person she helps brings her another opportunity to help someone else. Yet we can see that the only person she seems incapable of helping is herself. The surprisingly powerful message of the film is only heightened by its aesthetic beauty.
“I didn’t want to create a real life version of Paris-” said director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, “I wanted to recreate a postcard of it”. That he does beautifully. Though Amelie like most films spends its screen time pushing it’s narrative forward, the real allure of the film comes not only from its charming story and characters but in the world Jeunet creates. Jeunet had already built up a reputation for this with Delicatessen and City of Lost Children but its in Amelie that he perfects it. His visual style is breathtakingly beautiful and more immersive than diving into quicksand.
Each scene is marked by the consistent color palette of red,gold, and green. Jeunet never lets this visual effect lighten up. He is smart enough to let in just enough shades of black and blue to add even more vibrancy and staying power to his otherwise consistent color scheme. If the cinematography wasn’t already impressive enough, incredible performances by Audrey Tatou and Mathieu Kassovitz take the film into a place very few have ever reached.
The dialogue is light but substantial enough to fit in with the rest of the bright aspects of the film and the thematic questions presented in it become surprisingly dark on further delving. Yet its overall message is as beautiful in its simplicity as this film is in its entirety. An equally moving score by Yann Tiersen underscores this masterpiece of a film.
Though my praise may seem superficial and disingenous it is this film that I have to thank for giving me so much in my life.
Prior to it I didn’t really understand why art was said to “move” people in a certain way. Yet this film truly moved me. It moved me thousands of miles away from home, to fall in love with film, and see the beauty in the world around me.
As the famed film critic Roger Ebert said ( and I’m paraphrasing but the real quote comes his biography Life Itself )”In my life I have seen thousands upon thousands of movies, and I have surely forgotten most of them as soon as I was done writing about them. But the great ones, the ones that really move you, those will always stay with you.”
Amelie will always stay with me.