Following on from their fascinating debut together, Delicatessen, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caros astonishing steampunk fairytale drama The City Of Lost Children is a landmark in fantasy cinema hey, well say it, in any kind of cinema. Utterly fruitlooped scientist Krank (no honorific for him, earned or otherwise) lives on a rig in the ocean near the port city that circus strongman One and thief Miette call home. Krank is incapable of dreaming, and that disability is causing him to age at too rapid a rate. To solve the problem, hes created a machine capable of stealing the dreams from children, and kidnaps local children to satisfy this need. When he steals Ones kid brother, One determines to rescue him, with Miettes assistance and then it gets weird. We wont go into the peculiarities of the cult that performs the kidnappings for Krank in exchange for bespoke bionic ears and eyes that they believe allow them to experience other worlds. We wont touch on the thiefmaster(s), The Octopus, a conjoined twin that controls a legion of pickpocket children. We wont even expand upon Kranks odd little family, composed of the dwarf Mademoiselle Bismuth, a disincarnate brain in a tank by the name of Uncle Irvin, or his six brothers, identical clones constantly arguing amongst themselves as to which one came first. No, were here to talk about Krank. Gaunt and prematurely ancient, the deranged scientist lives in a laboratory like a dozen mating Rube Goldberg machines. His plan to steal the dreams of children is flawed from conception, because the act of kidnapping them frightens them so much that their dreams become nightmares, and therefore of no practical use to him at all. Nevertheless, he continues because hes convinced that one day hell find a child whos not scared and because he gets off on ripping off their nightmares, naturally. At the films climax, we find that Krank and his dysfunctional, dysgenic family are actually the creations of mad science themselves. The maddest of mad scientists is the brainchild of a still madder scientist, the clones original, who returns to destroy the rig and take his experiments to the grave with him. Whos your favourite mad scientist in film? Tell us about it in the comments!
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
