Silver Screen Resolution, Take Two: The City of Lost Children

For my 2018 Resolution Project, I decided to take a page out of Lane’s book and do my own Silver Screen Resolution (hence the Take Two part of the title). There are a lot of movies out there I haven’t seen but feel like I should have, or movies that I’ve simply wanted to see and have yet to get around to it. With a deadline of some kind, now I’ll have to finally make a point to find them, get them, and watch them. My rules for the resolution are slightly different in that:

1. They must be spec fic (this has not changed).
2. The movie will not be one that is in theaters or that would be part of a Sound Off!
3. They don’t have to be popular — or even something folks have heard about.

But I’ve decided to take my resolution to the next level as well, since I had more than 12 movies on my list that I wanted to see. And since we’re in “Take Two” mode, I might as well up the ante: I will instead be seeing two spec fic movies per month rather than just one. And this one has been on my list for a long, long time.

I remember first spotting The City of Lost Children many years ago. The cover image was very strange, so of course I picked it up to find out what the heck was going on. It was in the summary that I discovered this was a French movie and it featured Ron Perlman. This opened up a whole line of questions for me. Was Ron Perlman French? (Nope.) If not, what was he doing in a French movie? And just how weird was this movie? Because the cover was pretty bizarre…

Cut to present day (this seems to be a theme in my life) to where finally I’ve been able to get my hands on it all thanks to the power of the inter-library loan system. And what I saw was…well, sort of what I expected, I guess.

Spoiler-free review below!

Far off on the ocean there exists a place that looks like an oil rig. In fact, it is the lair of the scientist Krank and his group of helper clones. But he is a man who cannot dream, and finds his age accelerating with each day that he cannot find solace or joy in the world of dreams. In the hopes of remedying this, he steals children from the city nearby and attempts to take their dreams for himself instead. But then they kidnap Denree, the little brother of a fairground strongman named One (Perlman). One will stop at nothing to rescue Denree, and with the help of a streetwise orphan named Miette, they might be able to stop Krank and rescue all the missing children.

First off, I really loved the scope of the set that must have been created here. From single rooms to larger areas featuring tall buildings, and the amount of detail in each — rivets in walls, peeling paint, rusted metal — and all the water required for so many shots? It’s pretty magnificent. The number of animals that were real rather than animatronic, and the detail in the props was also extraordinary. After my first viewing, I turned on the commentary for a little while, and Ron Perlman even stated it was the most impressive set he’d ever worked on. That didn’t surprise me at all. Just as with Coraline, how you don’t see that kind of effort placed into a children’s film, everything in this movie isn’t something you’re likely to see today in any movie. Made in 1995, it does have a tiny touch of CGI, but it’s quite good (remember, Jurassic Park was 1993). Honestly, when I didn’t need to pay attention to the characters on the screen, I was ogling the city around them.

The composite shots were also very well-executed. The blending of backgrounds to foregrounds always worked for me, but even more impressive was how seamless the clone scenes were. With five clones but only one actor (Dominique Pinon, who also worked with Ron Perlman and director Jean-Pierre Jeunet on Alien: Resurrection), you’d think it would look obvious or awkward to have so many of them together in one space. Instead, it looks great and easy to forget that it’s just one guy.

The movie was about as bizarre as I expected, from the scientists’ clones to the talking brain in the fish tank to the evil conjoined sisters and the setting itself (fascinating in its detail, but still a dim, creepy city). And then of course, Ron Perlman’s vibrant red hair. It’s very 12 Monkeys-esque. But what I did not expect was the delight I experienced from the young girl, Miette (which means “crumb” in French — thanks, DVD commentary!). She and One team up, and it makes for an interesting dynamic. Because she was an orphan, she’d been raised on the streets and has a fearless nature. Yet since she’s still young, she just wants to be loved by someone. So while she’s helping One and, in a way taking care of him, she’s also more than happy to be taken care of herself by him. It’s really cute. She stole the show for me with her bravery and no-nonsense way of looking at the world. Without her, One never would have succeeded, and I had no idea she would be such an integral part of the story.

The one thing I wasn’t sure I agreed on was that Krank was evil. The brain in the fish tank — Uncle Irvin — constantly calls Krank evil and other such descriptors. And yes, he does devious acts in his kidnapping of children and subjecting them to his dream experiments. But I found Krank to be more of a sympathetic villain. He wasn’t evil simply for the sake of it, which I don’t mind at all in a villain. But rather, due to his origin and his inability to dream. I can’t say I blame the guy for being angry and miserable all the time. He probably started out perfectly fine and then went completely downhill. Taking a quick page out of science’s book, we already know no sleep means death, and though some people claim they don’t dream, we don’t actually know what’s 100% happening during sleep, since an inability to recall dreams doesn’t mean they’re not happening. So what would happen to a person if they were absolutely unable to have any dreams whatsoever? Everything about Krank is unnatural, and not by his own doing. So as a villain, I felt bad for him.

It was a fun, weird film that I think more people should see. I also went with the original French language with subtitles for my first viewing, though I did go back and sample the dubbed version (as usual, not as good, but they tried). So for anyone who enjoys the strange and unusual with a much younger Ron Perlman and a plucky heroine, by all means see about getting your hands on a copy.

Film screenshots courtesy of Nicole Taft.