Film Review: The Man Who Cried (2000)

Johnny Depp stands among few remaining Hollywood stars of today for having much of its stardom built on playing quirky characters in films that, more often than not, strayed from Hollywood films. Some of them were low budget or independent, and some of them weren’t Hollywood at all, like The Man Who Cried, 2000 Franco-British period drama written and directed by Sally Potter.

The plot begins in 1927 Russia where young Jewish girl Fegele Abramovich (played by Claudia Langer-Duke) gets separated from her father (played by Oleg Yankovsky) who has decided to provide for his family by seeking fortune in America. After her village is attacked in pogrom, Fegele escapes and finds her way to Britain where her foster parents give her new name “Suzie”. A decade later now grown Suzie (played by Cristina Ricci) joins singing and dancing troupe that works in Paris. She befriends older Russian dancer Lola (played by Cate Blanchett) who catches eye of Dante Dominio (played by John Turturro), successful Italian opera singer. Thanks to that, Lola and Suzie become members of opera company run by Felix Perlman (played by Harry Dean Stanton). In the meantime, Suzie has fallen in love with Romani horseman Cesar (played by Johnny Depp). Their lives become ultimately affected by Second World War and Nazi German forces approaching Paris.

Sally Potter, British director who has gained fame with her quirky gender-bending period epic Orlando, shows a lot of her directing skills in this film. Her efforts are helped by talents of Sascha Vierny, famed French cinematographer for whom The Man Who Cried represented the last film in his impressive filmography. A film also benefits from interesting choice of music that include both classical operas and Romani music. Very diverse international cast, which includes Cate Blanchett in one of her more energetic performances, on the other hand, seems wasted due to poorly written and often dislikeable characters. That includes Suzie and Cesar, which Johnny Depp, like in so many films, allowing broodiness of his character to succumb in “artsy” pretentiousness. Potter’s script, which tries to explores themes of identity through story that spawns different decades on different continents, begins to fall apart when dealing with Second World War. That segment of film is both cliché-infested and incomprehensible to audience because Potter not giving necessary exposition to complicated wartime politics. Because of it and pretentiousness of the scene showing a ship being torpedoed, the subsequent ending The Man Who Cried loses much of the emotional impact and leaves audience cold. Potter’s film, somewhat unsurprisingly, didn’t have much success among critics and is now considered one of the more obscure titles in Depp’s filmography.

RATING: 3/10 (+)

_

Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com
Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/
InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo
Stars Arena: https://www.starsarena.com/?ref=draxblog
Unstoppable Domains: https://unstoppabledomains.com/?ref=3fc23fc42c1b417
Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax y
Bitcoin Lightning HIVE donations: https://v4v.app/v1/lnurlp/qrcode/drax
Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax
1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG
ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7

Posted using CineTV