Micmacs made me feel a little strange. Its a nice film, the good guys put an end to the dealings of heartless arms manufacturers without resorting to mindlessly using their own weapons against them. Allegorically we could see this whole film as saying “you can win without killing, violence is for those who lack the intelligence to think of better ways to overcome”, but I don’t really think that is the point, it could also be saying “weapons are terrible, and so are those who make them”. Equally we can see this film as about friendship, unity and family, and the strength we can derive from those things. Why this film makes me feel a little strange is that whilst all these things are jolly nice, none of them is particularly well resolved. Ultimately the plan the good guys hatch leaves a number of people (albeit bad people) dead. Not their fault entirely, but dead none the less. There is a definate sense that the guys who make the weapons need to be linked to the use of their weapons very explicitly, at one point one of them declares “a wounded soldier costs more to his army than a dead one”, death and injury seen in purely financial terms marks the speaker as particularly cruel, but did he really need to be, he after all made the land mine which killed the heros father, is this trying to tell me arms manufactuers are all bad, or just the ones who are assholes along wirh it? Beyond this, the beginning of the film gets to me a little, our hero is invited to join a “family” of misfits, yet what qualifies him is never enunciated, why is he chosen out of the many we see in a line for soup, maybe the fact that he could die any second from the bullet lodged in his brain means he is special, but why do we need to be special to be part of a family? As I said, this is a nice film, it makes you smile and feel good when things come right, but it could have been so much more if everything had just been a little more considered. As the characters are charicatures as are the issues.