The Most Precious of Cargoes: animated Holocaust fable cannot carry the weight of its subject matter

Adapted from Jean-Claude Grumberg’s 2019 book of the same name, The Most Precious of Cargoes belongs to a tradition of moralising fables stretching back to the Brothers’ Grimm. Jean-Louis Trintignant is the story’s narrator, assuring us that this is no typical tale. His gravelly voice bookends the film with self-reflexive exposition but it’s Alexandre Desplat’s overbearing score that takes the reins. Though not a silent film, dialogue is kept to a minimum, allowing heavy chords and jaunty klezmer music to do the heavy lifting while the characters express their feelings through a range of grunts and sighs. 

The poor, nameless couple at the heart of the story are known only to us as ‘the woodcutter’ and ‘the woodcutter’s wife’. They live a simple if sombre existence in the thick, snowy woods. Begging the “gods of the train” to give her something from the next passing cargo, the woodcutter’s wife’s prayers are answered when she finds a baby crying in the snow. Wrapped in a tallit shawl, the baby was thrown – not from the gods – but by a desperate father en route to Auschwitz. The woodcutter is furious, insisting the baby’s race is “that of the heartless”. But, just as the winter snow eventually thaws and gives way to spring, so too does his bitter heart.  

This first act shows gentle restraint, allowing tone and style to draw deep emotion from the film’s simplicity. But Grumberg’s is a story of two parts, with the latter half exploring why the man threw his baby from the train and what became of him and his family. The subject requires far more grace than director Michel Hazanavicius can give it in under an hour, and despite some transitional cross-cutting, the film inevitably feels like two stories inelegantly stuck together.  

Still, what it lacks in nuance, it goes some way to making up for in visual flair. Hazanavicius does most of the world building through the mise-en-scene: the woodcutter and his wife are solemnly candlelit, the constant dance of light and shadow highlighting their financial and emotional poverty. Layers of deep mist and falling snowflakes offer depth of field that coax the characters out of their two-dimensionality, as thick smoke billowing from passing trains adds to the overarching sense of emotional congestion.  

Taken as a short story about a woodcutter and his wife, the first act is a fine foray into animation for the mostly comedy-renowned filmmaker. But, as a “fable of the Holocaust”, The Most Precious of Cargoes veers too far off its narrative track.  

► The Most Precious of Cargoes is in UK cinemas from 4 April.