THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN: A Dreamlike Masterpiece

The City of Lost Children is the second feature film by the French filmmakers Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro. The film, full of unique decorations, both human and non-human monsters, an incredible, dreamlike atmosphere, and surrealism that attacks the viewer in nearly every second of the film, is as visible with Jeunet and Caro as it is, perhaps even more so, than in the films of David Lynch or Terry Gilliam.

On a small, artificial island resembling an oil rig, isolated from the land by an impassable minefield, lives Krank (an excellent Daniel Emilfork), a grotesque, ugly, cruel figure. He is surrounded by equally grotesque companions: six identical brothers, a mother – a dwarf, and a brain – Irvin, voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant. All of them are the work of a mad genius, an engineer and geneticist who, unable to bear loneliness, created them – failed experiments pretending to be humans.

Why failed? Each of them has a flaw: the brothers suffer from narcolepsy, falling asleep at the least expected moments; the mother is a dwarf; Irvin is a brain suffering from chronic migraines, and Krank himself… does not dream, he is incapable of experiencing dreams. Krank draws dreams from outside, from other people, especially from children. For this purpose, he kidnaps them from a coastal city, sowing terror and fear. One of the boys he kidnaps is Denree, the brother of a developmentally delayed strongman – a circus performer, who, against the whole world and his own limitations, decides to rescue the boy. He is helped by a teenage girl – Miette (young and dazzlingly beautiful Judith Vittet).

The City of Lost Children is an extraordinary film not only because of its unconventional production solutions, decorations, or the originality of the subject matter, but mainly because of its method of delivery. The world presented to us by the French is populated by the most imaginative characters: monsters, dwarfs, Siamese twins, street children taken straight from Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and the genetic creations of the sick imagination of a symbolic Doctor Frankenstein. Jeunet and Caro present us with two worlds. The world of adults – flawed and sick; represented by the island, separated from the world, and by Krank and his entourage, a world created by a god – a mad scientist who has forgotten his creation.

The second world is the world of children, full of dreams, vivid imagination, yet not without its own nightmares and villains. Its representatives are Miette and a group of children from the coastal city. Between these two worlds stands One – the strongman, who, due to his flaw, stands with one foot in the world of imagination and the other in the adult world. It is about him that Miette says, symbolically accepting him into the ranks of minor street urchins, that he is great, but at the same time belongs to their world, the world of children. One, whose name means one or the only, stands at the boundary of two realities, remaining both a child and an adult, becoming the only link between them. It is no accident that it is One who finds the way through the sea minefield and reaches the lonely island, bringing about their symbolic connection.

It seems that Jeunet and Caro’s film is an image of adults’ longing for childlike immaturity, imagination, and a naïve view of life. In the grotesque figure of Krank, it embodies what is most visible in the lives of adults and also the most negative: rigidity, the loss of joy in life, imagination, and partly even… humanity. Krank is a monster because the inability to experience dreams has deprived him of one of the traits that make us human. Only Miette’s sacrifice seems to bring him salvation through a “return” to childhood, which he never experienced. His god – his creator – is punished, abandoned; half-living, he dwells in an underwater “kingdom,” isolated from the outside world, suspended between being and non-being. He too, in the final reckoning, leads to the total destruction of the world he created.

In terms of acting, neither Ron Perlman, best known for his role as Salvatore in The Name of the Rose by Jean-Jacques Annaud and his later cooperation with Guillermo del Toro, whose One, although speaking little, is present on screen most of the time, nor young Judith Vittet disappoints. However, the best performances in the film are in supporting roles, and especially Daniel Emilfork as Krank. His character is truly repulsive, as is Dominique Pinon – almost a regular actor for Jeunet, playing the narcoleptic brothers and the mad scientist. In The City… there are also many great episodes that are hard to forget, such as the demonic Siamese twins or the flea trainer…

The visual side of The City of Lost Children is truly impressive, even though the film was made in the mid-nineties and the number of special effects is not overwhelming. The masterful set design by Jean Rabasse and the cinematography by Darius Khondji, which seems to have been shot 100% in a film studio, play a major role in creating the atmosphere and mood that accompany us practically from the first minute of the film. The artistic supervision of Marc Caro was also significant in this case, as his characteristic style is recognizable in almost every frame. This artistic signature can be further seen in Vidocq by Pitof, for whom Jean Rabasse also created the decorations.

Among the imitators who heavily drew from the style of Caro and Jeunet, we should also mention the notable film The Cell by Tarsem Singh, where the dreamlike poetics present in the French filmmakers’ works allowed the creation of the most artistically impressive part of the film. Paradoxically, in The City of Lost Children we can also find traces of inspiration from the great sci-fi classic – Blade Runner, in which a similar theme of a lonely scientist creating “artificial” friends appears. Just like in Blade Runner, the theme of creators afflicted with the god complex also emerges. It is also impossible not to mention the visible references to the gothic novel, with its iconic representative Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Jeunet and Caro’s film is undoubtedly one of the most interesting European films of the nineties, which led to the final crystallization of the easily recognizable artistic style of both French filmmakers. More importantly, The City of Lost Children expresses a deeply rooted and simultaneously hidden longing for the childlike element that adults irrevocably lose, just as they lose the ability to experience their dreams.