While Arletty is in the hospital, Marcel takes pity on an African immigrant boy named Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) who is trying to evade the authorities after the capture of the cargo container in which he and a dozen others were brought from Senegal. Although he is in dire economic straits himself, Marcel takes the boy in, hides him, and goes about raising money to pay for him to be smuggled to London, his final destination (he is trying to reunite with his mother). Marcel is aided in his endeavors by his neighbors in the eclectic old neighborhood in which he lives, including a kindly baker who constantly forgives his outstanding debts, a local grocer, and Chang (Quoc-Dung Nguyen), who sometimes works with Marcel and knows a thing or two about being an illegal immigrant. Working together in the truest, most idealized sense of working-class solidarity, they keep Idrissa hidden from Monet (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), a determined, humorless Javert-like police investigator who has been charged with finding the runaway boy. The exact reasons for Marcel’s good will toward Idrissa are never divulged, and we are left to assume that he is simply an inherently decent human being who sees a fellow human being’s plight and chooses to help him. The same can be said for the other characters, as well, some of whom change their attitudes significantly in order to held Idrissa (the grocer, for example, previously avoided Marcel, knowing that he wouldn’t pay his grocery bill).

Photographed in splendidly saturated hues that suggest the palette of three-strip Technicolor by Kaurismäki’s long-time collaborator Timo Salminen, Le Havre is a beautifully unpretentious film, one that asks little of us except to check our prejudices and cynicism at the door and open ourselves to the possibilities that people can act selflessly, generously, and even miraculously. The film has a real warmth to it, the kind that can’t be faked, but rather emanates from an artist who is genuinely invested in humanistic ideals and is looking to touch the hearts of others. Kaurismäki also invests the film with a generous sense of droll humor, which extends to the film’s own black-and-white worldview of decency and ugliness, good and evil, charity and soulless bureaucracy (how else can we understand Darroussin’s dour, black-clad police investigator except as a near parody?).

It is not hard to see why some might feel the urge to reject the film out of hand for its direct optimism and willful setting aside of political and historical reality despite engaging with the hot-button issues of economic disparity and illegal immigration, but to do so is to shut out the pleasures of art that enriches and rewards our better instincts. So much art today, especially of the cinematic variety, equates artistry with a willingness to walk on the dark side, yet that approach has become so common that Kaurismäki’s approach feels almost radical in its forthright optimism. Yet, Kaurismäki is no naïve simpleton, and while he understands the darker side of human nature, he is also clearly enthralled with the power of humanism at its finest—when people recognize themselves in others and act accordingly.

Copyright ©2012 James Kendrick

Thoughts? E-mail James Kendrick

All images copyright © The Criterion Collection