Movie Thoughts: The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024)

• Released: May 24, 2024
• Directed by: Michel Hazanavicius
• Running time: 1h 21min
• Rating 5/5

Synopsis

A couple of poor people living in the woods one day find a baby beside the train tracks. They decided to raise it, but it soon turns out that the baby is being hunted by people after her.

My Thoughts

Sometimes I am just randomly like "I wanna see a movie at the cinema" and will go see. Just about anything, even stuff that doesn't always appeal to me.

This movie did look appealing and interesting to me, but I also didn't pay it much attention before. Looked cute, I saw some shots of the lumberjack family with the baby and liked it.

But nothing, I mean nothing, could've prepared me for the emotional roller coaster that is this movie. This wasn't just a film, this was an experience.

It starts out simple enough. The poor lumberjack couple raises the baby. At first the father doesn't want her, but he soon warms up to her and it's just very wholesome. It has a fairy tale-like feel to it.

Then around the forty-minute mark pretty much all hell starts to break loose and the movie starts to hit you in the emotions hard. Some of these characters you grew so attached to either die or lose everything. We also learn the backstory of just how the baby ended up beside the train tracks that day she was found (hint: it's depressing and dark as fuck). And just when things seem to be going slightly better again as the woman and the baby find a new home with an injured war veteran, but nope, even that doesn't get to last for long. 

This movie just has wonderfully written characters you genuinely care for, and then so many bad things happen to them your heart can't help but ache for them constantly. I don't think I've been hit this hard emotionally by a movie in years. So I'm amazed at how well it pulled things off here. This is definitely a movie one has to be in the right mindset to watch as it can be very upsetting, but it is definitely a great experience that will get you to feel and think.

I also just really love how this movie looks visually, almost like a comic book come to life. The music was also very fitting and nice and really underlined what was going on on-screen very well.

If I do have to have a very, very minor criticism, it's that I wish the baby/child (she does grow a bit throughout the movie) had a little bit more of a personality as right now she does mostly feel like a plot device to get and keep the movie going. But the rest of the movie is handled so well I kinda don't care. And it's not like the baby has no personality whatsoever, but she's just a bit bland. Just a generic shy kid. But, again, I really didn't mind this aspect that much.

Yes, this is a fantastic movie, definitely one of my new favorites. I don't think I'll be re-watching this one a ton as it is a bit too emotionally heavy for that, but I respect this movie a whole lot.