The Man Who Cried

First of all I must admit that when I first saw the movie coming I tought it would be a great one. Besides two of my favorite players, (Turturro & Blanchett) there were two decent players in the leading roles. Ricci and Depp. But when the movie started, after 10-15 minutes I saw that one can make a very bad movie with such marvelous players. If we look at the whole movie, (by the way there is no such thing, the movie does not come together) the characters are like cartoons. Director gives us very shallow characters. In a movie which has no acceleration -like this one- there should be depth in the characters but the director completely forgets this. And in particular my two favorite players are simply wasted, and Johnny Depp is like the company of the white horse, because except 2-3 scenes we see him with the horse. As if the main actor was the horse and Johnny was there to hold it!!! There were many little details to mention about but the main thing is the movie does not make any sense. The only good things to tell the truth was the music and the scene that gypsies began to play the song that Ricci sings. For the last words: if you did not see it, you haven't missed anything!!! (especially if you like Turturro and Blanchett as much as I do)

I really don't know what was the purpose of Sally Potter when she made this movie. She begins telling the story of this Russian girl (CHristina Ricci) that has to go into exile in England and that's looking for her father. But Potter deflects the attention again and again to some irrelevant characters. Her script is quite imprecise and the way she shoots is sometimes pretentious and pompous, What's more remarkable about "The man who cried" is the performance of John Turturro (he perfectly plays an Italian opera singer) and Cate Blanchett. Christina Ricci is not specially brilliant (she can do better than that), and Johnny Depp is starting to make me sick with that silent-full-of-inner-life character. The music lovers will enjoy the soundtrack of the movie, but I don't think that's a good reason to watch this movie. *My rate: 3/10

Sally Potter's "The Man who Cried" turned up recently on cable. Not having seen it, and based on previous work by Ms. Potter and the cast, we decided to take a look. The film is beautiful to look at. The fabulous cinematography by Sacha Vierny serves the movie well. Also, there is great singing heard of operas by Bizet, Puccini, Verdi and Purcell. The film is the saga of a little Russian girl in the search for her father who has gone to America in search of a better life and eventually, to send away for the ones left behind to share a life in a land of promise. It will take the whole film to have father and daughter reunited once again. Christina Ricci is, in our humble opinion, sadly miscast in the film. By having her sing, Ms. Potter makes a blunder, because Ms. Ricci can't carry a tune. Why not have her lip-sync like Mr. Turturro does whenever he is seen in an opera, or belting a Neapolitan song for his friends? Ms. Ricci, a good actress, otherwise, is not as effective here as in other films. Cate Blanchett fares much better with her Russian Lola. Ms. Blanchett makes a great contribution to the film, and she makes Ms. Ricci pale, in comparison. Ms. Blanchett gives a fantastic performance in the film. John Turturro is also excellent in the movie. His Dante Dominio, a famous tenor with a golden voice is a Fascist and a bigot. Johnny Depp, who plays the gypsy Cesar, is another actor that doesn't live up to his potential. The only thing we can think it must have been Ms. Potter's direction, because Mr. Depp is a great actor who is usually effective in whatever role he plays. Also, we wonder why did Ms. Potter insist in having Cesar and his horse in all the operas one sees staged. The romance between Suzie and Cesar doesn't seem to work out. "The Man who Cried" is a valiant attempt by Ms. Potter to present this multi layered story in a good way. Her excesses seem to work against her.

"The Man Who Cried" is another rip-off of the Holocaust. This time by a high tone writer/director, Sally Potter, with a classy cast of Christina Ricci, John Turturro (even more annoying than in "O Brother Where Art Thou?," Cate Blanchett (wincingly miscast as a Russian femme fatale), and Johnny Depp (yet again as a horse-riding Gypsy as in "Chocolat;" I guess he'll take any role that keeps him in France with his girlfriend and baby daughter.) As a phony bio pic, it verges on offensive with its stereotypes from the shtetl to the literally Hollywood ending. Potter's visual talent was demonstrated in a couple of mise en scenes where she got to show off her fabulist side, as in a foggy horse ride through Paris. I wasn't even sure who the titular character was. Otherwise the only thing I liked about the movie was that in a Jewish neighborhood where usually any Holocaust or Jewish-themed movie gets a good run there were only a couple of people in the theater.

I chose this movie to watch it together with my girlfriend as I expected some romantic and not fully ridiculous and at least half way sophisticated movie. However - it turned out to be one of the worst movies I 've ever seen. I really cannot understand how anyone can seriously rate this movie with anything more than a 1 or maybe a 2 for Johnny Depp fans (which I am!) The pictures and the style of the movie is quite good. However there is no plot and no character development in it at all. You will feel no sympathy for even one of the characters. It feels like a number of pointless scenes arranged an extraneous way. Every time you start to think about just stop watching the movie there starts a scene with some singing which makes you think that afterwards there really has something to happen - but then it just doesn't. I really ask myself what the aim of this movie is. There are no big feelings in it. I thought it might get more exciting when the Nazis take over France but it isn't as there was anything to happen afterward - luckily the movie is almost over yet. So one good thing is, that this movie reminds you of how bad a movie actually can be done and what a lucky bastard you are considering you never have to watch it again!

The film, though highly predictable, is not anywhere near as bad as people make it out to be. It's not boring unless your attention span is that of the typical Hollywood absorbed moron. The acting isn't anything worse than the typical product of that filmworld - though it is slightly better. The story, also, is not a completely typical waste. Now that I've mentioned all of these things about the typical, that is unfortunately exactly what this film is: extremely typical beyond comprehension. Everything, down to the lame, supposedly romantic, slow motion scene of Johnny Depp riding his horse, has been done 3049090348 hundred thousand times before. Most of the story makes a remote amount of sense, except that the Russian soldiers who force Ricci's family to leave Russia for some reason that I must have missed are peaking Polish. Well, in the end, since the composition is pretty interesting, and the music is great, it is worth seeing - unless you have no idea about these things and would rather watch Bruce Willis blow things up.

It is difficult to put into words just how terrible this film really is. But, my dears, I'll try... Cate Blanchett -- what is she doing appearing in this rubbish? -- gives a comedy performance throughout complete with Monty Python Russian accent. Johnny Depp -- what is he doing appearing in this rubbish? -- gives a sixth-form moody performance that is truly laughable. The story wanders all over the place; the dialogue is hilarious the supporting cast seem totally bemused by the whole thing. The Ricci girl gives a 0ne-expression performance that makes you wonder if she was on Librium. Two hours of my life wasted....

I enjoyed this movie, much more than I thought I would reading the synopsis of the story. I was caught up by this meditation on human spirit. The cinematography created one stunning image after another, carried along by one of the most beautiful soundtracks that I have heard. Two couples, sharply contrasted; one couple told you everything about themselves, while the other revealed only what could not be hidden: Susie and Caesar were stoical, passive, watching, and waiting....as a catastrophic moment in history enveloped them. It seemed to me that the director purposely expected the viewer to participate in the story, using imagination and wonder to ponder the unanswered questions about human nature and need. The ending of the film was a bit too abrupt. I would have loved to have seen more development leading up to the resolution of Susie's journey. But it certainly didn't mar the film for me, rather it emphasized why 'The Man Who Cried' was so completely non-commercial and why it mystified and therefore angered the 'connect-the-dots' crowd. If you are in the mood for a beautiful, lyrical, non-linear poem-film, give this one a try.

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.

The Man Who Cried is a slightly strange movie, sensually driven rather than events driven. There is a story of a Jewish girl's (Christina Ricci) journey in exile. We see in the beginning the little girl sharing enchanting Yiddish music with her father, sung in his beautiful voice. The father then leaves the family to seek his fortune in America. The girl in turn finds herself a refugee in England, given the name "Suzie", grows up with some accomplishment in music and becomes a chorus girl with an opera group in Paris. As the threat of Nazism becomes imminent Suzie heads for America, finds her father in sickbed and, in fully circle, sings the Yiddish melody back to him. Johnny Depp's melancholy presence and Ricci's other-worldliness accompany the audience through a dreamlike journey, making them feel as if they are in a trance at times. Depp plays Cesar, Suzie's Gypsy lover. The scene where Suzie follows Cesar to his camp and gets introduced to his folks is very much detached from the rest of the movie, in a dream world where music is the universal language. And the movie is sustained throughout by sublime music presented sometime as part of the story, sometime as background, and often in a way that you can't tell which is which. "E lucevan le stelle" from "Tosca", for example, first appears faintly as background music, and later comes back as the performance of opera star Dante Dominio (John Turturro, but with a dubbed singing voice). The music is very much an integral part of the overall charm of the movie. Visually, the movie is also like a dream, the height of which is the scene showing Depp riding on his white horse towards the Gypsy camp, with two friends riding on either side of him, and Suzie following at a distance on her bike, all this in the middle of Paris with the Eiffel Tower in plain sight. The only other thing the remains to be said is about Cate Blanchett, the actress with a thousand faces. The gold digger Lola she plays here is just as earthy as Galadriel is ethereal in Lord of the Rings. What a blessing it is to movie lovers that we have Ms Blanchett around.