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CHARLOTTE (2022)
Directors: Tahir Rana, Éric Warin Cast: The voices of Keira Knightley, Sam Claflin, Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn, Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, Sophie Okonedo, Mark Strong MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:32 Release Date: 4/22/22 (limited); 4/29/22 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 21, 2022 Charlotte, a biography of the too-short life of an artist, seems more concerned with its aesthetics than its story. Neither element, unfortunately, is particularly convincing. The life in question belongs to Charlotte Salomon, a German woman of Jewish descent who came of age as the Nazis rose and took power in that country. In her 26 years, Salomon would come to create an autobiographical collection of more than 750 drawings and paintings, posthumously published as what some consider to be the first example of the graphic novel. Taking that work as inspiration, director Tahir Rana and Éric Warin turn Salomon's story into an animated movie, loosely aping the artist's own style. However, the actual images of the art within the movie show how removed the solid lines, consistent coloring, and fluid motion of the animation are from Salomon's actual work. Everything about the style here is straightforward, clean, and representational. The same, for the most part, could be said of the narrative, too. It follows Charlotte (voice of Keira Knightley) from a childhood of witnessing her mother's depression and to her early adulthood of dedicating herself to art, as the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies prevent her from having a career or a way of living in her own country. In the foreground, at home and in exile in France, she experiences a series of bad relationships and one good one, before learning of a familial history that suggests her life might have been doomed from the start. The screenplay by Erik Rutherford and David Bezmozgis is rushed in moving from one obstacles to the next, with a few moments of hope or unfulfilled possibility in between. It focuses on her ultimately disastrous affair with writer Alfred Wolfsohn (voice of Mark Strong), the ending of which here coincides with a Nazi raid on Jewish businesses, as well as Charlotte's long-term conflict with her stubborn and callous grandfather (voice of Jim Broadbent). A bright spot for the artist is Alexander Nagler (voice of Sam Claflin), the groundskeeper at her one place of sanctuary, who encourages her talent and becomes her true love. Salomon's art, its inspiration, and its impact fall by the wayside, presumably because the filmmakers believe they're directly honoring it by way of the animation and in fleshing out the artist's biography. Seeing the art itself, especially in the way the animators present its creation with lines appearing out of nowhere and colors filling the frame, speaks more than this hasty, event-filled plot does. Somewhere, the act of translating Salomon's work into a traditional narrative has collapsed. Charlotte details the course of a life cut tragically, unnecessarily short, but its details about the artist and the art are unfortunately slim. Copyright © 2022 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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