The last time I watched an animated movie at TIFF, it became my favourite movie of the year. I had no illusions though that Charlotte or any other animated film premiering this year would be another Wolfwalkers -that film is a pretty damn hard act to follow. But I felt like I ought to watch an animated film from the festival anyways -especially considering how difficult it may be to catch such non-studio backed animated movies otherwise (I’m nearing two years waiting on that Calamity Jane movie out of France from the company that made Long Way North).
Charlotte looked to be an interesting one, or at the very least a particularly pretty one. It’s an international co-production primarily between Canada, France, and Belgium, with a pair of Canadian directors in Eric Warin and Tahir Rana. The movie is an adaptation of the story of Charlotte Salomon, a German-Jewish painter during the height of the Third Reich who fled Germany for France, where she produced a series of over seven hundred works telling the story of her life, before her capture, deportation, and death in Auschwitz in 1943. The filmmakers emphasize that her project called Life? Or Theatre?: A Song-play is considered by some to be a precursor to the graphic novel -or the very first one. Charlotte is interestingly one of two animated movies at TIFF this year about a well-known victim of the Holocaust -the other being Where is Anne Frank from Waltz with Bashir director Ari Folman -and I might give that a watch too before the festival is over, it looks like the more interesting and stylish of the two.
Also perhaps because I still would like to see an animated film at this festival that astounds me. Because Charlotte is the first instance of a TIFF selection that has generally disappointed me. It’s got a lot of potential in the story and a solid voice cast -and the animation is indeed largely quite pretty, but it’s also a touch hollow, insubstantially plotted, and fails to adequately capture the importance of who this woman was, what she did, and why it mattered. So devoted is this movie to telling her life story in an accurate fashion that it at multiple junctures neglects the needs of narrative or character, coming off as merely summations of facts -a wikipedia article. But we get many hints to the idea that Charlotte Salomon’s story is deserving of much more than that.
This is a life story that includes a whirlwind romance with an older and affirming but ultimately unfaithful poet, an exemption of her Jewish heritage to art school based solely on her talents, a later flight from Germany motivated by that same thing, and even the poisoning of her own grandfather -the last of which casts her as a particularly complex figure to put at the centre of an uplifting story of artistry and determination in the face of oppressive fascism. It’s a major note of her biography, though one never reckoned with in the film after that point. None of these facts are rendered especially interestingly in Warin and Rana’s film, where such plot points may have a mild curiosity to them, but aren’t much explored with satisfying perseverance. Charlotte remains through much of the movie a kind of flat character, not substantively different from any other passionate artist type from another era. And her romances, which constitute her major emotional storyline, have little life to them either -this in spite of them too having a compelling quality on paper. There’s something more as well to her friendship with a well-off American woman that doesn’t fully manifest into something. Her other relationships are executed somewhat better however: though Charlotte’s parents disappear from the story relatively early, her grandparents stick around and the difficult dynamic between them is quite aptly translated -a grandmother who may be mentally ill and a couple times attempts suicide and a grandfather with nothing but utter contempt for Charlotte.
They are voiced appropriately by Brenda Blethyn and Jim Broadbent. Charlotte herself is voiced by Keira Knightley, who to her credit does a fine job with the performance. There is genuine conviction to be sensed there, in addition to that encompassing romantic eloquence that Knightley seems to exude naturally and makes her so attractive to historical roles. Unfortunately the writing just isn’t there to compliment her. The cast also includes Sam Claflin, Sophie Okonedo, Eddie Marsan, a particularly good Mark Strong as Charlotte’s first lover, and in her final movie appearance, the late Helen McCrory as Charlotte’s mother. It’s a shame, this was in fact also McCrory’s first movie appearance in four years following a supporting role in another animated movie about an artist: Loving Vincent.
The animation on Charlotte may be a far cry from the masterful ambition and sheer incredible craftsmanship that went into that film, but it does diffuse to some extent the movies’ prominent shortcomings. As I said, it’s nice to look at -though that in itself doesn’t necessarily make for great animation. Competent sure, and the designs have a certain sharpness to them, but it’s not quite as distinctive as it might be for a film about a very distinctive painter. Though it mimics a hand-drawn style, it often feels artificial, the motions and line-work being perhaps a touch too precise and giving the game away. A traditionally dimensional animated film being done with CG is in itself no problem of course, but Charlotte doesn’t work to disguise that fact very well, to the point it distracts every now and again. Also, though it’s aesthetically much more gratifying, the animation has a kind of flow and a pace occasionally reminiscent of mediocre Canadian cartoon shows. That said, there is profound artistry that seeps through, and the paintings themselves are replicated very nicely.
The end of Charlotte’s story is left unseen. The Nazis taking her away is only heard off-screen as the film closes on the image of the road that could have taken her and her lover to freedom. The sentiment is noble, and the desire to not want to show that last part of her story, but it does come off as kind of awkward in presentation. There was a better way to allude to what happens to her. Still, it’s grim for a movie that is largely family-oriented -in spite of its’ inclusion of troublesome moments and acknowledgement of sexuality. It could be what those who see it remember of the piece though, there isn’t a whole lot else memorable about the movie after all. Maybe it’s greatest triumph is at least getting this story out, which is a fascinating one worth telling. I might like to see the live-action version someday.
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