With a cast featuring four of the most cutting-edge actors in contemporary Hollywood, it is difficult to understand how The Man Who Cried could emerge as such a disaster. However, even if the actors are of top quality, if they are not given an effective script to work with, the audience will fail to be moved in the manner intended. Such is the dilemma of The Man Who Cried. The film was written and directed by Sally Potter, a British filmmaker whose other most recent works include Orlando (1992) and The Tango Lesson (1997), both commendable movies in their own rights. The Man Who Cried could have followed in the same vein; its failing seems to lie principally in trying to accomplish too much at once.
The film follows the story of a young, Russian-Jewish girl (Christina Ricci) whose father leaves her at a young age to emigrate to America, where he can make a better life before sending for the girl, Fegele, and her grandmother. The story begins in a Russian village in the winter of 1927 and gives a wonderful portrayal of Fegele as a little girl (played by Claudia Lander-Duke, a child actor to watch out for) and the emotions she experiences as her father leaves and she, herself, is taken away with a group of other children for a difficult journey in the back of a horsecart.
The movie begins to go wrong from this point. It is unclear why Fegele is forced to leave her home - with nothing but a gold coin and a photograph of her father - and where she is going. It is also unclear exactly how the journey ends up being sabotaged. But, somehow, Fegele makes her way onto a ship bound for England. When she reaches the port, she is promptly renamed Susan, adopted by an English family and sent to a British school. However, despite the Anglicization imposed upon her, Susan - or Suzie, as she is called - remains an outsider at heart. This feeling is alleviated only by the one constant in her life: her ability to sing.
When Suzie gets older, she goes to Paris to become a cabaret performer. There, she meets Lola (a stunning Cate Blanchett), a fellow performer and Russian. The two move in together, and Lola vows to help Suzie to reach her ultimate goal of raising enough money to buy passage to America. Lola, however, is soon sidetracked by her own goal to win the affections of Dante (John Turturro), an Italian opera singer headlining at a prestigious Parisian opera house. Suzie and Lola soon find themselves as extras in the opera, where Suzie meets Cesar (Johnny Depp), a gypsy and a fellow outsider, in whose company she finds comfort. In the midst of these developments, however, World War II breaks out in Europe, and Suzie, a Jew, finds herself endangered under the influence of Hitler's hatred. Ultimately, she is given the option to go to America and possibly be reunited with her father, but to do so, she will have to leave Cesar.
It sounds like a fairly standard, WWII-period piece and in some ways it is, as far as the sets, costumes and atmosphere go. It seems, however, that Potter wanted to go beyond that, which she manages to do in her representation of Russian and Gypsy, in addition to European, culture. In the midst of it all, however, Potter seems to have overwhelmed herself. Sensually, The Man Who Cried is a great pleasure. One of the more positive aspects of the film is the music; in addition to the moving score by Osvaldo Golijov, the movie is punctuated by scenes of emotional, traditional Russian song, rich Italian opera and vibrant Gypsy music. Also, Potter uses a technique of intermittent, slow-motion moments that gives an air of theatricality and heightens the film's emotionalism.
However, the emotional dimension of the film is countered by insufficient character development and the relationships between them. Particularly faulty is the romantic liaison between Suzie and Cesar, which is supposed to be one of the major cruxes of the plot. Cesar is depicted to the extreme as the dark, silent type, and it is a bit perplexing how he manages to win Suzie over since he hardly ever speaks in the movie and the silent chemistry of looks between them is rather bland. Their mutual identity as societal outsiders seems to be their principal bond, an over-used theme that offers nothing new in this situation.
Suzie's anguish at the possibility of leaving Cesar is a bit ridiculous, since their relationship doesn't really go beyond a few visits to the Gypsy camp where Cesar lives and a couple of random sex scenes. Ricci and Depp are both able actors and make a good on-screen match, making this failure of the film even more apparent. Overall, the film is a good try, but not worthy of a filmmaker as advanced in her career as Potter and probably not worth seeing on the big screen.
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