Review of Le Havre (2011) by Jerry K — 24 Aug 2012

It is difficult to place Aki Kaurismaki's film in a specific genre, since it is neither comedy nor drama, just as it is not entirely real or surreal. What it seems to be is an artistic expression of French culture through rich textures, colours, and anachronistic staging.

Andre Wilms, who plays Marcel Marx, is a man steeped in dignity, though he works as a shoeshine, with a moral compass that seems to have been set during the days which the set designers clearly borrowed their antiques from. There is no hard edge to his character, or any characters in the film for that matter. He is almost a cinematic throwback to an era when the silver screen was a literal expression.

It is difficult to understand why Marx sympathizes so eagerly and effortlessly for the plight of a young African refugee, played by Blondin Miguel. Indeed, we're expected to simply accept the clichà (C) for one of many in the film, as superficial though it may seem. Kaurismaki offers no clues as to Marx's willingness to risk all to help the boy, save the equally clichà (C)d depictions of the police with a rather blunt allegorical reference to Franz Kafka's tales of totalitarianism.

Kaurismaki is the director of several other such low-budget, low-grossing films, such as The Man Without A Past (2002), and Leningrad Cowboys Go To America (1989). That his style is eclectic and esoteric is perhaps understating things. Everything in Le Havre is carefully designed to portray a certain look and feel, but in particular a certain era, both in life and of filmmaking.

If there were an Academy Award for Best Lighting, Le Havre would certainly deserve it. The manner in which the faces of each actor are carefully illuminated in every shot is reminiscent of the techniques used a half-century ago. When a musician and his wife are reunited in one scene, Kaurismaki ensures the man goes from darkness to lightness suddenly, with no apparent concern for realism.

Indeed, realism need not be paid heed in Le Havre. Whether it be anachronistic telephones, offices, clothing, cars, or mannerisms, to the reflection of police lights on a wall to signify the approach of a car which never quite seems to arrive, Le Havre is never in any danger of actualizing the theme of African refugees in France.

And that is perhaps its greatest downfall. That the film does not care to look at the ugly side of illegal immigration, using the theme to illustrate some more abstract point about humanity, it fails to grab the viewer and draw that person into empathy. Perhaps it was to keep the film vaguely apolitical, as silly as that may sound for a plot that offers only virtuous depictions of refugees.

Though the people in the film are poor, their conditions seem more minimalist by choice, presenting poverty as a reductive state of living. Cell phones, computers, and large screen televisions are not needed any more than, apparently, the appalling conditions under which people in poverty actually reside. For a more accurate, but overwhelming depressing, depiction of this, see Alejandro González Iñárritu's Biutiful (2010).

In fact, the ending could not be more antithetical to Biutiful's conclusion if it tried. With enough scenes to pay homage to Casablanca as is, Le Havre's Marx plays out the penultimate scene with a nod to Bogart's "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Much like the romanticized cafes and "Cher Claire" bar, this is less a movie that is focused on finding meaning about its subject, as it is finding beauty in words, colours, looks, movements, sighs, lighting, and antique furniture.

For anyone who has seen Le Havre firsthand, its Norman climate of incessant rain, waterways choked with industry, and decrepit buildings, it's clear that Kaurismaki has put a rose-coloured filter over everything in his film. But perhaps that is the point. It's easy to see what is ugly, what is unjust, what is cruel, but there is beauty to be seen, even if it takes a fairy tale story to depict it.