Once upon a time, a poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a great forest. Cold, hunger, poverty, and a war raging all around them meant their lives were very hard. One day, the woodcutter's wife rescues a baby. A baby girl thrown from one of the many trains that constantly pass through the forest. This baby, this "most precious of cargoes", will transform the lives of the poor woodcutter's wife and her husband, as well as those whose paths the child will crossâincluding the man who threw her from the train. And some will try to protect her, whatever the cost. Their story will reveal the worst and the best in the hearts of men.
based on novel or book holocaust (shoah) family relationships adult animation historical drama 1940s abandoned baby loss and grief
A private user reviewed The Most Precious of Cargoes (2024)
The Most Precious of Cargoes
Initially, I thought we were in for a reversion of âTom Thumbâ as a surly woodcutter and his wife live a subsistence existence in the snowy forest where she longs for a child, but we are swiftly disabused of that theory! Their lives are only ever broken up by the disturbance of the train as it passes through, and itâs when praying to that one day that she thinks she hears a baby crying. Searching the snow, she quickly discovers an infant wrapped in a distinctive blanket and quickly takes it to their home. Her husband, though, feels the child to be an ill omen and wants nothing to do with it, so with her and the bairn confined to the cold of the woodshed, she has to try to find it some milk! Thatâs just the start of her travails, though, as we are gradually clued in to where this baby came from, and of the fate that awaited itâs parents that led to such a desperate act of love. What now ensues follows her struggle to keep herself and the child from an increasingly approaching war that had hitherto largely left them be, and that might ultimately dot the iâs and cross the tâs of a story that is touching, courageous and heartening. The almost constant wintery scenario adds an additional chill to a stylishly presented animation that features a sparing degree of dialogue, but some fairly effective audio effects to help create a variety of emotions as the child begins to grow and this simple, decent, family find they no longer have their problems to seek. Itâs perhaps the last half hour that resonates most, as threads of the tale start to bind together revealing a degree of bleakness and inhumanity on one hand and yet the diametric opposite on the other. What wouldnât a parent do for a child?
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