This artistic animated film brings us the life story of Charlotte Salomon, a German painter of Jewish origin, who was killed by the Nazis in Auschwitz in 1943. And it is about one of those expectedly tragic and poignant stories like practically all Holocaust dramas, but even before the Nazis started persecuting the Jews in Germany, this young painter who managed to live only 26 years experienced unimaginable tragedies. The entire female side of her family died tragically at a very young age, and assuming that she too had little time left, Charlotte painted an expressionist autobiographical series of 769 paintings entitled “Life? Or the theater?”
Through her story, we also follow the rise of Nazism from the beginning of the thirties in Berlin and how in 1933, when the Nazis took power, 16-year-old Charlotte simply decided that she would no longer go to school. This rebellious and stubborn girl still managed to enroll in the Berlin Academy, but after the Kristallnacht in 1938 and after her father, a distinguished doctor, ended up in a concentration camp, she decided to flee with her grandmother and children to the south of France. As we know, the Jews were not lucky there either, and during the Nazi occupation of France, Charlotte painted a series of expressionist photographs. As it is an artistic animated film directed by Tahir Rana and Eric Warin based on a script by Erik Rutherford and David Bezmozgis (what a last name!), “Charlotte” is stylistically completely different from standard Hollywood expensive cartoons.
So even though the production of “Charlotte” was dozens, maybe even hundreds of times cheaper than the average Hollywood cartoon, a really impressive cast was assembled here that lent voices to the characters. As famous actresses Keira Knightley and Marion Cottilard were among the film’s producers, they lent the voices of Charlotte for the English and French versions of the film. There are also Brenda Blethyn, Jim Broadbent, Sam Claflin, Eddie Marsan, Helen McCrory, Sophie Okonedo and Marko Strong. While “Charlotte” may not be on the same level as some of the similar artistic cartoons I’ve seen in the past, it is a film that draws attention to the tragic life and legacy of a talented painter.