It's hard to explain Forbidden Games and why it works so well. It's a film about coping with death, about the horrors of war; it's a film in which two children - a farmer boy and a little girl orphaned in a plane attack - create a cemetery for animals and fill it with crosses and markers as a way of coping with the death all around them. It sounds grim and horrifying, and make no mistake: it's a quietly heartbreaking film at so many points. And yet, "grim and horrifying" isn't the phrase you'd first come up with to describe it. Part of that, I think, is that the film so deeply immerses us in the perspective of these children, leaving us seeing the world through their innocent eyes. We're never clear, for instance, how much they truly understand about the death around them,now much the girl has truly coped with the loss of her parents. And while we understand the purpose of their game, the film never forces the issue, never makes the point explicit, instead simply depicting the children and their simple happiness as they provide for the animals who have died. There are other aspects to the film - a pair of feuding families, a romance between young lovers - but what resonates is this evocation of a child's world, of the simplicity with which they view the world and the way they're shaped by the environment in which they live. And the result is far more moving and involving than any number of monologues or more explicit explorations of the ideas could ever be, thanks to the beautiful performances by the children and the way that the film captures so perfectly their relationship and their joys. It's a deceptively simple film; it's never showy, never manipulative, never goes for the tearjerking moment. But that's what makes it work so well and what makes it so effective. It's a beautiful look at what war can do to the most innocent of us, and the way that all of us find our lives shaped by such horrors. That it does so beautifully and gracefully makes it the simple, wonderful masterpiece that it is.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
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