The man who cried - Les larmes d'un homme

I did not know what to expect when I watched this film. What I did not anticipate, was that it would be so poignantly moving...very few films can actually reach out and involve the viewer to such an extent. There are many words that come to mind - haunting, sad, sweet, poetic...yet none of them capture the true essence of The Man Who Cried.

Sally Potter has done a wonderful job. This film suggests - it never really comes out and blatantly states. The scene with Cate Blanchette in the swimming pool is particularly beautiful. This film is so visually appealing - the graceful lines, the shadows, the colours...and that wonderful haunting music. Ms. Potter takes you into the minds of her characters, while the story floats and drifts around you in a collage of beautiful rich tones. She doesn't attempt to conceal the ugly face of war, but does not depict explicit violence as so many other directors do.

Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci are perfectly cast - unusual roles for both. They bring depth, intensity and meaning to their characters. Unlike Sleepy Hollow, this film is gentle and strong at once, while retaining something of the same gothic charm. Cate Balnchette also surprised me with her very unusual portrayal of Lola.

I would watch this movie all over again...and again...and again!

The only reason I did not rate this film a "10" was that the Christina Ricci character (Feygele/Suzie), who is supposed to be a superb singer in the era before microphones, was not dubbed by someone who can actually sing. (Ricci, gifted actress that she is, can't, and to a musician, that's a problem). Other than that, I loved this movie. Ricci and Depp, as impossible lovers who just happen to be members of the two peoples most persecuted by the Nazis (a Jew and a Gypsy), are both perfection in their roles. John Tuturro and Cate Blanchett, as (respectively) an Alpha-male Italian tenor enamored of Mussolini, and Suzie's fellow dancer/confidante seduced by the tenor and his Fascist tendencies, are such compelling characters that they almost needed their own separate movie. The cinematography is beautiful throughout, and the sense of history, of the sweep of time, is wonderfully evoked. Last but not least, the score of the film memorably weaves together an old Yiddish lullaby with "Je crois entendre encore," the great tenor aria from Bizet's "Pearl Fishers." Both melodies share the same rhythmic and harmonic skeleton, and the film score reveals and celebrates it. A wonderful musical reflection on the theme of the film in general. Wait until the end of the movie to see what I mean -- the music explains it all.

Christina Ricci sings more than she speaks in the movie, but she manages to hold your attention nevertheless for a pretty solid hour and a half in this well-acted and profound, but uneven period piece. Sally Potter, who also directed the similarly problematic "Orlando", clearly has the visual and thematic talent to be a much better respected director than she is - she just needs to learn how to tell a story.

The first forty minutes of the film, which begins in the year 1927, are absolutely masterful. The sublime Claudia Lander-Duke plays young Fegele, an impoverished Russian-Jewish girl whose beloved father decides to journey to America in search of a better life. After that, Fegele and her family are set upon by unnamed bad guys (probably either Cossacks or Communists), and Fegele is separated from them. She ends up on an ocean liner bound for England, where her name is changed to Susan, she is adopted by an English family that doesn't understand her, and she is forced to begin the process of assimilation.

Flash forward ten years or so (Potter is regrettably and consistently unspecific about such things). Fegele (now Suzie and now played by Christina Ricci, she of the large, expressive eyes) wants to be a showgirl so she can earn money to go to America and find her father. She auditions and is accepted by a group based out of Paris. Once in Paris, she rooms and becomes tight with fellow showgirl Lola (Cate Blanchett), a somewhat vapid and materialistic creature with no ambition save that of landing a rich man - which she manages to do in the form of opera singer and Mussolini supporter Dante Dominio (John Turturro, in one of his better performances). Around the same time, Suzie meets and falls in love with Cesare (Johnny Depp), the leader of a band of gypsies.

Once all the dominoes are in place, Potter wastes no time in knocking them down. You can see trouble coming a mile away: Lola, Suzie's one confidant who is aware of her Jewish ancestry, begins falling under the emotional and political spell of anti-Semitic, gypsy-hating fascist Dante. Meanwhile, the Nazis have invaded Poland and, despite everyone's self-assured predictions that they'll stop there, the French border is neither geographically nor historically distant. Suddenly, it's a race against time for all involved, but especially for Suzie - will she stay behind with her gypsy king, or, given a choice, will she escape certain death? The problem with all of this is that it's all so familiar. Potter adds nothing to the old story. There are some wonderful messages in this film about multiculturalism, nationalism, and the sometimes subtle nature of fascism, but if you don't care about the story you're not going to be interested in listening to the messages. The gypsy subplot, for instance, seems tacked on, like it was an excuse to give Ricci a love interest and have him be played by Johnny Depp.

The really interesting plot line here involves Lola and Dante, and I would pay ten dollars to see a movie that was just about them. Both Blanchett and Turturro create real, flesh-and-blood human beings, and it's in their scenes that Potter's writing really soars. Watching Dante sink deeper and deeper into a political philosophy fueled by his own insecurity while the irrepressibly optimistic Lola tries to turn a blind eye to it all is a fascinating and marvelous experience.

Ricci gives a good performance too, although occasionally that Valley Girl tone she uses in most of the rest of her movies slips out a little too much here and there. Fortunately, Potter doesn't give the shy, quiet Suzie very much to say. Most of her acting is done with her eyes, and she's really quite good. Johnny Depp does what he can with Cesare, but there's only so much an actor can accomplish when playing a plot device.

Art direction, music, and cinematography were all top-drawer. As is par for the course with Sally Potter's films, it looked good and had some interesting things to say. I just wish it had been more compelling.

First of all, try to avoid the trailer before watching the movie if you can. The Man Who Cried is about a young Jewish girl living in Russia in the late twenties who has to flee her home country and eventually ends up in Paris as a young adult just before the onset of World War II. She gets involved with a cabaret showgirl played by Cate Blanchett, an Italian opera singer played by John Turturro and a gypsy man played by Johnny Depp. I found the movie slow-moving but not boring. It had a certain melancholy to it where almost everything was restrained and understated. There are dramatic moments but no big melodrama which honestly I kinda missed. I wasn't particularly touched nor did I cry or even get teary-eyed. Your own mileage might vary, but I don't think it's a big tear-jerker.

There's a lot of music (mostly opera but not usually the bombastic cliché kind) in this film with two important recurring songs. They're quite beautiful especially the french song "Je crois entendre encore" which weirdly I didn't recognize as French despite it being my native language. The songs are important because they often convey the emotions felt instead of words. It doesn't really matter that you don't understand the words. As an historical drama, it mostly skirts big events, mostly focusing on their effects on our characters from different nationalities. You need some minimal historical background to get what is happening. The whole first part with the exile of the little girl was pretty gripping. She seemed so small and vulnerable. The romantic aspect was two-fold. The relationship between Cate Blanchett and John Turturro's characters was very interesting but not romantic. The relationship between Christina Ricci and Johnny Depp's characters was less interesting but more romantic.

Johnny Depp doesn't say much but his presence is felt. He was born to play sexy gypsy men and I suspect most women will "swoon" over him ;) The other performances were fine with the stand-out being Cate Blanchett as a somewhat superficial Russian dancer trying to marry into richness. The songs were mostly lip-synched. I think they were done very well but still it disturbed somewhat my suspension of disbelief. In conclusion, I liked watching it, it was well made with strong actors but the story could have been told a little better to engage the viewer more emotionally. It didn't strike me as particularly memorable or as the highlight of any of these actor's resumes.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10 (good)

Although I agree with those who say that Sally Potter's THE MAN WHO CRIED doesn't entirely live up to her two previous works, I think that even so it is still a very good movie.

Apparently things are slowly starting to get better for THE MAN WHO CRIED. At least it has now been played in several countries in Europe other than Italy (like England, Germany and France) and its score and screenplay are finally being sold by Amazon.co.uk. (I'm hoping the VHS and DVD will soon be available also.) I want to contribute to this movie's current rebirth by saying what I think makes it special and definitely worth seeing.

The first thing that comes to my mind about THE MAN WHO CRIED is its formal visual beauty. It is extremely well directed and there are many scenes that I regard to be among the most beautiful ever filmed. Ms. Potter's talent as a film director is undeniable: her style is a mixture of choreographic elegance and subtle sensuality. I have never seen the camera move like it does in her pictures. In ORLANDO and in THE MAN WHO CRIED alike, it has a way of chasing the characters on scene, of playing with them, of circling around them, that makes it seem like an animated being rather than a mechanical object. It literally seems as if the camera dances with the characters it portrays! None of the movies by other directors I've seen so far are 'written' in this same 'language.' Ms. Potter's personal contribution to the renewal of the existing 'cinematographic grammar' shouldn't be underestimated.

A second striking quality of THE MAN WHO CRIED is the music in it. The director said that 'The intention was to find a way of telling the story where music was carrying emotional and spiritual truth with as much force as the images and the characters.' By frequently reiterating a set of intensely powerful, culturally eloquent and evocative pieces – among others, Purcell's Dido's Lament, Bizet's Je Crois Entendre Encore and instrumental pieces by Goliov – which serve to remind the characters who they are and where they come from (besides giving the movie cohesion), she succeeds in this difficult task brilliantly. (And courageously: not many film directors, I believe, would dare to make a movie with four opera pieces constantly being sung!) The idea that comes through is that when people are left without their cultural identity and/or dignity, music can save them for forgetting their 'Selves,' save them from silence and incommunicability.

As far as the characters in THE MAN WHO CRIED are concerned, I think they are very well thought out and effectively depicted. It is especially admirable that the director would decide to give life to a 'mute heroine,' Suzie-Fegele, who says almost nothing throughout the whole movie, but expresses herself surprisingly well in spite of this. She conveys, with incredible force, that sense of inadequateness and discomfort so many are left with for life when they are put into a hostile environment during their childhood. Cristina Ricci seems embarrassed at times, and rightly so, for in this movie she plays the part of an outcast, and that's the way an outcast often feels, unfortunately. But there's also strength in her eyes, and determination, and, once again, rightly so, for despite all that fate has unjustly taken away from her, she has learned to go on, to look straight ahead and not ever give in, to live and not to let herself die. Cate Blanchett is an exceptional actress and she performs wonderfully in this movie: both her beauty and intelligent eyes were never this intense and captivating. Johnny Depp is, as always, very talented and very handsome.

As I said at the beginning of my review, this movie isn't quite as good as ORLANDO and THE TANGO LESSON (which were, in my opinion, two absolute masterpieces). While those two movies were perfect from the very beginning to the very end, THE MAN WHO CRIED is perhaps a little uneven, in that along with many breathtaking and superb scenes there are a few instances in which something seems to be missing (overall I rate it 9/10). Also, I personally would have preferred for it to be as multilingual as it was multicultural (then again, I know this probably would have made the movie even less popular). Nonetheless I think THE MAN WHO CRIED has all the qualities of a good art product and I feel perhaps some haven't fully appreciated it because they weren't looking at it as one should look at 'poetry,' but rather as one normally looks at 'prose.' There's so much entailed in it, that needs to be interpreted, as with poetry. Sally Potter doesn't flaunt feelings, but they are there, and I guarantee they can stir you immensely if only you cooperate. Every minute of THE MAN WHO CRIED (which I have seen three times already) gave me something special to think about and remember, and movies don't do that to me very often. Consequently I think it would be a real pity for the public not to support this movie and its director. I think Sally Potter is one of the very best film makers around and I hope our support and enthusiasm will persuade her to do even better next time!