Czech Republic

The Painted Bird (2019)

André Crous

The Second World War was a grim time to be in Eastern Europe; The Painted Bird depicts it as the seventh circle of hell, in which episode after episode ends in horror but adds precious little to our understanding of the war or its victims.

The Painted BirdCzech Republic
2.5*

Director:
Václav Marhoul
Screenwriter:
Václav Marhoul
Director of Photography:
Vladimír Smutný

Running time: 165 minutes

Original title: Nabarvené ptáče

Persistent death by gunshot, brutal eye-gouging, paedophilia, skull-pecking, shoving a glass bottle up a woman’s vagina. These are just some of the horrific acts inflicted on the characters of The Painted Bird for no apparent reason. It also features a good-hearted Nazi soldier as one of its lone sympathetic characters, which is almost always a bad idea.

Based on the eponymous novel by Polish writer and Holocaust survivor Jerzy Kosiński, the plot comprises a string of nine episodes. And each of them tries to top the horrors of the previous one. The story, filmed in gorgeous black and white, takes place during the Second World War in an unnamed East European country where everyone speaks a fictitious Slavic language (Interslavic, an artificial language developed by Vojtěch Merunka).

Everyone, that is, except the main character, who is called Joska but remains anonymous until close to the end. We first lay eyes on him when he is about 10 years old, and over the course of the film, he ages enough for us to notice the passage of time. Played by Czech actor Petr Kotlár, he speaks Czech, is Jewish and lives on a farm with an old lady named Marta. To demonstrate how obscure the storytelling is, it is wholly unclear whether this is just a nice old woman, his grandmother or his aunt, and reviews filed from the film’s premiere at the Venice International Film Festival have come up with different interpretations.

In the very first scene, he is already being terrorised, as a group of young boys pursue him through the forest and eventually catch up to him. They grab his pet ferret, pour gasoline over it and set it alight. Together with Joska, we watch helplessly as the animal twitches in agony before it ultimately stops moving and turns into a pile of soot. But much greater tragedy lies ahead for the poor boy.

Very soon, Marta dies from old age, and when he discovers her, his shock is such that he drops the lantern and burns down the house. This incident sets him on a journey of discovery not so much of himself but of the evil in people. Hell is other people, director Václav Marhoul seems to be saying.

These hellish figures take many forms, but most of the episodes are so superficial that there is no chance to get to know the characters before they inevitably die in a variety of ways or commit atrocious acts that send Joska fleeing their company or, often, both. After his parents have left (or were taken) but before all the other tragedies befall him, he already engages very little with Marta, and he is so emotionally isolated that it takes him a full day to discover she has died.

What follows are episodes of such depravity that it is difficult to view them as anything but gratuitous – flogging a dead horse to give the illusion it is still breathing. In the next village, Joska is taken under the wing of a sorceress named Olga, who buries him upright, leaving only his head exposed and sticking out of the ground. This leads to a gruesome scene in which giant crows descend on him. At first, he scares them away by screaming at them, but when they return he inexplicably falls silent, and they start pecking at his shaved head.

He escapes the crows’ claws and Olga’s clutches, only to face the first truly disgusting setup at a mill, whose miller (played by Udo Kier) is paranoid that his wife, whom he beats all too frequently, is interested in another man and proceeds to gouge out the poor man’s eyes. We get a giant close-up of the eyes lying on the ground. Later, the naïve Joska tries to return the eyes to the man, who now sports giant black holes for sockets.

And so it goes, on and on. Before long, he witnesses a woman being raped with a milk bottle, is forced to eat out a lascivious young widow and is himself raped more than once by a man who buys him from the local priest, played by Harvel Keitel. There is simply no end to the cruelty. And yet, we never get any insight into Joska’s mind, because he is more or less expressionless throughout the ordeal.

The concatenation of horrors offers no point of entry for the viewer but, instead, beats us over the head with some universally loathsome villagers committing unspeakable acts. If Marhoul had wanted to convey to us that the Nazis were not the only bad people fighting the Second World War in Eastern Europe, and that the non-Jewish population was similarly deplorable, he could easily have found a better way.

But arguably as controversial as anything else is a scene in which Stellan Skarsgård makes an appearance as a Nazi called Hans. Soon after a drunk Soviet soldier tells the villagers to deliver Joska to a nearby group of German soldiers, Joska is seen walking the train tracks accompanied by a clearly conflicted Hans. But rather than kill him, Hans, for no real reason other than this is what the screenplay obliges him to do, lets the boy escape. The film contains barely any warfare to speak of, and for the most part, Nazis are wholly absent. Therefore, it is pretty distasteful for the director to insert them here and make one of them the kindly Hans, whom we never get to understand beyond his charitable act.

The Painted Bird‘s one major missed opportunity comes right at the end, when Joska is sitting around a fire under a bridge with fellow war survivors. This scene goes nowhere but would have made sense and packed a serious punch if some of the faces had been shown to belong to some of his erstwhile adversaries. There are certainly more examples of this, but one scene that springs to mind where this is done correctly is the celebration in the streets shortly after the Normandy landings towards the end of Claude Lelouch’s Les Misérables.

There are only three commendable elements here: Firstly, the idea of using Czech as the “outside language” even though it is mutually intelligible with Interslavic is a brilliant metaphor for Joska’s “outsider” status as a Jew among the general population. In addition, the fact that Kotlár himself is a Gypsy gives further depth to this metaphor. Second, the images are beautiful, although they stick in our heads for their grisly content rather than their composition. And third, a scene late in the film when Joska shares a tree with taciturn Soviet soldier Mitka (Barry Pepper) is disarmingly charming, with them finding a moment of real serenity amid the gloom. That is, before Mitka mows down the inhabitants of a small village.

The Painted Bird is an austere account of war. Its sympathies are ambiguous, but its intention is clearly to shock us rather than put us in the shoes of its main character. The shocks are grotesque, and instead of punctuating the plot, they end up being the plot. 

The film’s screenings at the international festivals in Venice and Toronto were followed by sensational reports of people fleeing the cinema, distressed by the events they were forced to witness. It has to be noted here that the implication was always that people can’t handle the truth. Let me offer a counterpoint: Sometimes people simply walk out of a screening because the film is bad.

The Little Man (2015)

André Crous

Czech puppeteer Radek Beran’s The Little Man is an unconventional fairy tale and a lovely adventure for children and adults alike.

The Little ManCzech Republic
4*

Director:
Radek Beran
Screenwriter:
Lumír Tuček
Director of Photography:
Filip Sanders

Running time: 70 minutes

Original title: Malý Pán

With his second feature film, puppeteer Radek Beran sets the bar deceptively low so that we are continually surprised and exhilarated by events, visuals, twists and turns that we do not see coming. The Little Man (Malý Pán) is a film shot on location in a Czech forest but starring puppets (technically, marionettes) that are visibly manipulated, as their movements are somewhat jerky and the strings from which they hang noticeably rise up to the top of the screen.

Based on a children’s book by Lenka Uhlířová and Jiří Stach entitled The Little Man’s Great Journey (Velká cesta Malého pána), the film is an adventure that is primarily aimed at children but offers very funny moments for adults, too.

The titular man, voiced by Saša Rašilov, is youthful and slightly naïve and recently left his parents’ home to build himself a refuge in the middle of the forest, but he is haunted by a recurring nightmare of a door that won’t open while a mysterious voice orders him to open the door. This dream pushes him towards a discovery of his surroundings and eventually to open his eyes to unexpected friendships with those around him.

His first point person on solving the mysteries of existence is Empty Head, a giant disembodied head lying on the ground not far from his house. Empty Head looks rather worse for wear and says it cannot provide any answers before drinking the crystal clear water found in a fortress guarded by the evil Great Strait.

Thus begins Little Man’s journey, during which he has to persuade Fishrew (a kind of gentle half-dodo, half-Nessie that guards the moat around the fortress) to let him through, fight the Cheeky Punk (voiced by the not-dissimilar-looking Pavel Liška), research ways to fight off Great Strait, visit an expert robotic handyman that can repair anything, make friends with a larva named Fida, ask gherkins questions, find talking trees brimming with wisdom that is succinctly expressed, and much more.

The plot is a magical ride that may be light on substance but has enough quirky moments, an easy-to-follow storyline and an eclectic soundtrack by Tata Bojs frontman Milan Cais to keep the viewer fully engaged.

On the technical side, the decision to put puppetry front and centre in the visuals (by showing the strings instead of removing them in post-production) never impedes our suspension of disbelief. The work on location certainly helps the process and perhaps in light of the generally light-hearted tone of the narrative, a character’s sometimes erratic movements frequently succeed in sustaining the levity.

That is not to say that the production appears to have been simple or the product simplistic. On the contrary, the interior shots are beautiful, and director of photography Filip Sanders deserves praise for his lighting in these scenes. The flyover shots, especially the ones from the point of view of a hot air balloon late in the film, are also impressive to behold and truly gives the viewer a feeling of briefly inhabiting the world of the film along with the characters.

Although the target audience is children, Beran adds one or two curiously gruesome moments to his film that will be particularly funny to adults because they are so incongruous with the rest of the approach. One such example is the depiction of a plan conceived by the Cheeky Punk to kill Little Man, and we are shown his fantasy not by means of puppetry but through animation that includes various forms of gory execution. Another striking moment of adult comedy manages to reference Immanuel Kant and Harry Potter in the same sentence.

For the most part, however, the storytelling does little to distinguish itself from that deployed in a fairy tale. The visuals are certainly more interesting here, and since there are no actors, as such, we are spared any overacting. In fact, whenever the voices become hysterical, the effect is comical and clearly intended to elicit that reaction from the viewer.

It would be easy to belittle the film for the uncomplicated progression of its story and that it is merely a life lesson (life is worth little if you don’t have friends) presented as a flimsy adventure story. However, as suggested above, Beran’s creativity comes through on many occasions, and although he does use a handful of special effects, their use can often be explained by pointing out the scene is a dream or a fantasy or (in the case of the “Universal Fixer”) simply unrealistic, even in the world of the film.

This unconventional film may not be the most polished or the most insightful film of the year, but it keeps our attention despite its flaws. Its characters are quirky and unpredictable, and it is always a joy to keep suspending our disbelief, even when what we see is so obviously make-believe.

Milada (2017)

André Crous

First biopic of Milada Horáková, who resisted the Nazis but was executed by the communists in Czechoslovakia, is an utter disappointment.

MiladaCzech Republic
2.5*

Director:
David Mrnka
Screenwriters:
David Mrnka
Robert J. Conant
Robert Gant
Director of Photography:
Martin Štrba

Running time: 125 minutes

Milada is about one of the most heroic characters of the 20th century and among her native Czechoslovakia’s most tragic figures under the country’s decades-long totalitarian rule. Filmmakers had avoided telling her story for a long time, but nearly 70 years after a show trial staged by the country’s communist regime and a decade after new footage of the excruciatingly biased nine-day trial was discovered, we finally have a film meant to share the full story with us. It is painful to watch – but for all the wrong reasons.

The film depicts nearly two decades in the life of Milada Horáková, an outspoken Czechoslovak lawyer who came of age at the same time as her country and was active in the resistance during Nazi occupation. Despite an initial death sentence, she was eventually imprisoned until the end of the war and elected to the Constituent National Assembly, but after the communist coup in February 1948, which she vehemently and vocally opposed, she was arrested and ultimately executed.

And yet, despite its basis in real life, Milada is an atrocious piece of filmmaking. First-time director David Mrnka clearly made an effort with period costumes, but whether because of a lack of money, of creativity, or of filmmaking experience (likely all of the above), the film commits one sin after another.

At a very basic level, the transitions between scenes are laughable. Mrnka seems to believe he has only two tools at his disposal: the spinning newspaper headline (to provide wider historical context, the way films did at the time) and the fade-out (to indicate the passage of anything from hours to years). Both of these processes are sorely overused and suggest an editor asleep behind the console.

The intention was never to borrow filmmaking techniques that were in use in the 1930s and 1940s, however, as we get five almost identical sequences of Horáková’s family in the car in 1948/1949, driving along the same road in the Czech countryside to visit family close to the border, while many of the shots are obtained by drone. Now, obviously, drones have no business in a historical film unless they are used, as in Milada‘s final minutes, in the context of a shot whose existence is not tied to a specific moment in time. The use of the drone – not one, but FIVE times – is nauseating, onanistic and entirely inappropriate.

There is little to say about the copious use of the fade-out – a shake of the head and a deep eye-roll will suffice. But sometimes the fade-outs are so obtrusive that they terminate a scene before its emotional climax. The scene in which Milada is taken away by the State Security is staged in such a way that her husband, Bohuslav Horák, watches her being driven away as he hides behind a corner. When the car passes, we get a point-of-view shot from inside the car, which implies Milada sees Bohuslav’s shocked face. But before we get a reverse shot from Bohuslav’s POV, the editor presses the “fade out” button, ending the scene prematurely and completely forgoing a shot that would have taken our breath away.

Ayelet Zurer, an Israeli actress with a Czechoslovakia-born mother, stars in the lead. The entire cast is made to speak in a Czech-inflected English, but only the Czech players can do this convincingly. In addition, Zurer likely didn’t have enough time to prepare, as her accent is not only generally bad but also inconsistent: Sometimes within a single sentence, she can’t decide whether to roll her r’s or to pronounce them the American way (Czech only has rolled/trilled r’s). Other non-Czech actors also struggle mightily with the accent, and Robert Gant, who plays Bohuslav, settles on something akin to a Russian accent, which, considering that his character is wholly opposed to Soviet influence, is very unfortunate.

Even the bookends, which feature Horáková’s daughter, Jana, collecting her late mother’s letters to her from the newly elected democratic government shortly after the collapse of communism, miss the mark completely. We are told that Jana fled to Washington, D.C., in 1968, where she has lived since then. And yet, when actress Taťjana Medvecká speaks English, there is not even a hint of an American accent in her speech; on the contrary, the accent is entirely oriented towards British English.

But what is most jarring in this production is the lack of introductions to major characters. Jan Masaryk, the son of Czechoslovakia’s founding father and a long-time diplomat, is shown on the night of what is widely assumed to be his murder (although oddly enough, the film presents his death in a very ambiguous way). But he is barely introduced, and those unfamiliar with Czech history are unlikely to know what or whom they are looking at. Other characters, from Alois Schmidt, who appears to be an associate of Horáková’s, to the callous state prosecutor Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, right up to the slightly comical Prime Minister Klement Gottwald, are either not introduced by name or sketched so superficially that the uninitiated will struggle to understand their role in the events.

Most bizarrely, Horáková’s alleged co-conspirators appear out of nowhere at the trial. We have never seen them before, and we can easily assume she had never met them before, but that is not historically accurate. The film ignores the fact that five of them had the same party affiliation as her. Nonetheless, there is absolutely no contact – not even a sympathetic or a fearful glance exchanged – between them.

Finally, the staging of the show trial does not make anything dramatic of the vulnerable position in which Horáková is placed: a slightly raised podium in front of a long row of judges and Communist Party officials, where the defendant is made to stand awkwardly in full public view. There is no creativity to the camerawork or the composition of the visuals. Instead, we basically get a colourised version of the original television footage. 

Perhaps the only thing Milada does right is to suggest that, in some respects, the communists were far worse than the Nazis. This comparison remains a sore point in present-day Czech society. Nazis, and Germans more generally, were thrown out of the country after the Second World War; by contrast, the communists stayed and remained part of society after the collapse of their regime. But when we learn that Milada Horáková was allowed to see her family when she was imprisoned by the Nazis, while the Communists refused any and all contact, it is impossible to ignore the contrast. The film’s courage to speak the truth in this regard is commendable.

Despite the exemplary life and tragic death of its titular character, the film is an utter failure. It provides a vague outline of events, but the myriad fade-outs are simply farcical, and the mediocre performances and the badly structured narrative keep us at arm’s length from a flow of history that should have swept us off our feet.

Tambylles (2012)

André Crous

By deliberately avoiding all forms of confrontation, this very uneven hourlong graduation film turns its main character’s already undramatic existence into rigid stasis.

TambyllesCzech Republic
2*

Director:
Michal Hogenauer
Screenwriters:
Michal Hogenauer
Markéta Jindřichová
Director of Photography:
Adam Stretti

Running time: 58 minutes

Tambylles (a title that translates as Therewasaforest), a one-hour film that Michal Hogenauer made as his FAMU graduate film, is as uncomfortable to watch as its main character, an anonymous young guy from a small Czech town who has recently been released from a juvenile detention centre. Stripped down to very minimalist scenes and a lead actor who always has to contain his emotions, this film is not particularly viewer-friendly.

At first, we seem to be watching a documentary: An increasingly annoying filmmaker is interviewing people and asking persistent, provocative questions. But slowly, as the credibility of the staging becomes more and more suspicious, we realise this is a film within a film, with the fictional filmmaker presented inside more static, well-composed images. Luckily for us, director Hogenauer’s preoccupation with form is done away with more or less as soon as this fictional filmmaker’s attempts to provoke confrontation fail to deliver and he leaves the central plot.

These well-composed images are certainly one of the highlights of the experience of watching Tambylles, although I found myself tuning out very often because there is so little to tune into. Though the fictional filmmaker tried to construct the first 15 minutes of the film in a way so every interview is interrupted in order to create a cliffhanger, our anticipation constantly heightened, we find out very little about the central character and the events that sent him to the Big House. “Everyone one should know what he did”, says one character. Yes, they should, but what is it?

Given the fact this central character says so very little, becomes more and more isolated from society and from us and isn’t even given a name, he does not represent something universal – rather, he fades out in every scene to which he is supposed to bring some substance, or interest.

Nonetheless, actor Ivan Říha has captivating eyes that pull the viewer toward the screen. Despite his character’s visible solitude, a completely unbelievable domestic situation – not just the lack of chemistry between him and his parents but a lack of any feeling whatsoever – and a lack of much to hold on to in terms of character traits, we certainly want to find out more, and he offers the promise of something more. Unfortunately, he never fulfils that promise.

It is difficult to become involved in the development of a film that is going nowhere. We keep waiting for confrontations that Hogenauer instead chooses to avoid. The confrontation (provoked by the fictional filmmaker) between him and the mother of his victim is wordless and actionless; the confrontation between him and the fictional filmmaker consists of him grabbing the camera and storming off, though this action is elided by means of a cut; the confrontation between him and his boss, who discovers his secret, is avoided when he storms off, again; and a final suicidal confrontation is shown without any sound.

Minimalism is one thing, but deliberate obstinance is another. Říha’s face (the only thing the character has going for him) can only interest us for a limited time, and that time is much shorter than the film’s 58-minute length.

Hogenauer shows great promise with his camera, but the images he creates cannot inspire us to sympathise with a character who encounters resistance everywhere he goes. Moreover, we have no real clue about his past and don’t get an insight into his feelings in the present. Along the way, a character played by Hogenauer himself steals away the girl who might have brought this guy out of his shell. A fitting metaphor.

Anthropoid (2016)

André Crous

True-to-life account of the two heroes behind a stunning assassination in the heart of Nazi-occupied Bohemia is brilliantly staged but marred by peculiar editing decisions and a mishmash of accents.

anthropoidUK/Czech Republic
3.5*

Director:
Sean Ellis
Screenwriters:
Sean Ellis
Anthony Frewin
Director of Photography:
Sean Ellis

Running time: 120 minutes

There are few people as unequivocally heroic yet as little known outside their home country as Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík. Czechoslovak soldiers born during the First World War, they would grow to see their proud nation in the heart of Europe betrayed by the Allied forces and handed over to Nazi Germany by the time they reached their mid-20s. Their supreme act of bravery – assassinating Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s cold-blooded emissary to the occupied territory of Bohemia and Moravia – ultimately did little to change the tide against the Nazis, but the stand they took against the Third Reich is one of the most admirable acts of the 20th century.

UK director Sean Ellis spent many years developing the screenplay for Anthropoid (the title refers to the codename of the two soldiers’ top-secret mission), and the film’s plot closely resembles the events as they occurred at the end of 1941 and the first half of 1942. However, accuracy and entertainment are by no means the same thing, and it is with this latter point that the director fails to make an adequate impression.

Anthropoid opens late on a cold December night when the two men, who had received their orders from the Czech government-in-exile in the United Kingdom, are dropped 30 kilometres from Prague. Anthropoid’s screenplay is boldly structured to eschew flashbacks and to limit itself to the Czech territory for exactly as long as the two men’s lifespan.

Very little happens over the course of the first hour, however. Although there is a sense of foreboding regarding the execution of the plan, Ellis does a poor job of showing us life under occupation. Czechs appear to go about their business, even as Germans in uniform show up at their cafés and bars, but there is no real feeling for the Czechs and their (presumably) terrified frame of mind. Uncle Hajský (Toby Jones, whose presence in the film is very steadying) expresses anger about the 1938 Munch Agreement, but that is as much as we get. The film also makes very little effort to show us the camaraderie between the two men who spend six months in very close proximity, most of the time hiding the real purpose of their presence in the Prague to everyone around them.

Unfortunately, because of the actors involved and a number of peculiar decisions made during the editing process, the final product is wildly uneven.

The actors are Jamie Dornan and Cillian Murphy as the Czech Kubiš and the Slovak Gabčík, respectively, and it was certainly a clever bit of casting, with Dornan being a native of Northern Ireland while Murphy hails from the Republic of Ireland. This cleverness, however, cannot make up for Dornan’s unshakable Irish lilt that hits us every time he opens his mouth, which has the effect of leaving the viewer wholly alienated from the story’s time and place.

Among the rest of the cast, the inconsistency in pronunciation is another nuisance. From a financial point of view, it is understandable that the film was made in English. But while the accents are already imperfect, the issue is compounded by the fact that some Czech cast members choose to pronounce uniquely Czech letters (such as the notoriously difficult-to-pronounce “ř”) in their native tongue, while other players stick to the closest English equivalent.

The editing process is equally flawed, and perhaps the most egregious examples are the otherwise stunning set pieces that serve as pivotal moments in the narrative: the assassination of Heydrich, which takes place in public in broad daylight, and a six-hour shootout inside the Ss. Cyril and Methodius Cathedral.

Both of these events, while meticulously staged and deserving of admiration because of how they unfold, have their sound turned off at the most crucial moments. At times, they are only accompanied by the soft sounds of an extradiegetic piano, which imbues them with a cloak of artistry when they require a more gritty sense of immediacy.

The film’s opening minutes are similarly inelegant. After a few introductory bits of text that are misleading at best and historically inaccurate at worst (Germany’s annexation of the Sudetenland in October 1938 and its full-scale invasion of Czechoslovakia less than six months later are seemingly lumped together), we get a handful of shots in close, slapdash succession that communicate precious little but point to a director more interested in telling his story through the editing suite than with the camera.

Visually, there is nothing particularly memorable about Anthropoid, at least not in a good way, as the film is tinged in a golden hue that is completely unnecessary, and Prague is always covered in a thick layer of fog, with only a church spire, a few rooftops and Prague Castle visible, most likely in order to save money.

And yet, despite all these problems, Ellis does draw on some genuinely moving material in subtle and very effective ways. Perhaps the most powerful moment in the entire film comes very early on when the two parachutists are questioned by the Prague Resistance: Kubiš’s response to a question about his hometown in Moravia shimmers with nostalgia and patriotism conveyed through words alone that conjure up a single image. In that moment, we understand Kubiš’s firm connection to his country and why he has come back to defend it against the ongoing Nazi aggression. Quite simply, it is extraordinary.

Dornan’s accent does not do him any favours, and in general, he appears to be absent from the narrative, except for the numerous close-ups on his shivering hands (to make the point, in no uncertain terms, that he is also just a man and does not have nerves of steel). By contrast, Murphy excels as Gabčík, and so does Anna Geislerová, who plays his romantic interest, Lenka, a young woman who has already seen more than her share of violence and experienced more pain during the war than we could imagine.

It would have required a real genius to turn this story of bravery and success-despite-all-odds into anything but riveting, not unlike the entertaining hatchet job that Wolfgang Petersen did with Troy. The lead-up to the action-packed final act is rather dull and dreary, although Ellis has to be commended for minimising the visibility of swastikas – usually a hallmark of these kinds of films, but it is particularly disheartening that the two major set pieces fall short of perfection because of the sound choices. In addition, the climax contains a laughable hallucination that has no place in the film.

This is a story that everyone should be aware of, and this is the most poignant portrayal of the story to date, but the film itself would have benefited from a greater focus on realistic sound, particularly with regard to the accents of the cast.

Schmitke (2015)

André Crous

Début filmmaker’s surreal mystery set in the Czech countryside is a baffling take on finding identity.

schmitkeCzech Republic/Germany
3.5*

Director:
Štěpán Altrichter
Screenwriters:
Jan Fusek
Tomáš Končinský
Štěpán Altrichter
Director of Photography:
Cristian Pirjol

Running time: 95 minutes

Something is a little off in the German-language Schmitke, which opens in Berlin – where there is much talk of a “Bear-Man” who has been discovered in the wild – and closes deep in the forests of the former Sudetenland, on the Czech side of the border with Germany. Right at the beginning, when we first meet the title character, a middle-aged, unsmiling engineer (Peter Kurth) working for Deutsche Windenergie, we notice this German company has English-language posters on which the word “engineers” is misspelled. It is a small point, but if you notice it, you will immediately recognise that the world of the film is deliberately warped and confused, and things quickly get even weirder.

Julius Schmitke’s daughter arrives out of the blue and (literally) sets up camp inside his house, adding a statue of Buddha to his furnishings and trying to convince him to reconsider his nondescript existence. At work, his boss decides to send him and his loudmouth assistant, Thomas (Johann Jürgens), to the Ore Mountains to fix a broken wind turbine, and once the two arrive in the backwoods of civilisation, where the fog hangs thick and the forest almost becomes a character, everything they knew is turned upside down.

Schmitke is unconventional and uncategorisable, striving simultaneously to be a gentle contemplation of the mysteries of nature and a madcap absurdist thriller. Directed by the young Czech filmmaker Štěpán Altrichter, it is impossible to ever get a firm grip on the events that, as revealed during the final credits, may all just be a big dream.

The opening scenes at the energy company in Berlin have moments reminiscent of Roy Andersson’s work, especially when a crowd of people, expressionless and motionless, intently focuses on the only object in the room that is in motion. For the most part, Kurth’s imperturbable, deadpan performance is very effective, as it counters the actions of others in unpredictable ways. But the major plot point driving the narrative forward – the sudden and unexplained disappearance of Thomas – gets lost in the thick, mysterious atmosphere that Altrichter so painstakingly constructs.

With the exception of Julie (Helena Dvořáková), who runs a fancy hotel on a hilltop, it is impossible to describe anyone in the film as devoid of eccentricity, and the director emphasises the peculiarities of the Czech rural population in particular with sly digs at their language (Julie’s surname is the unpronouncable Řeřichová, the town is Chřmelava) and customs (upon arriving in the tiny town, Thomas proclaims they have travelled back in time; and in the bar, a deadly silence fills the room when Schmitke asks for tea instead of beer).

The style of the film may perhaps be best described as a kind of provincial surrealism mixed with poetic absurdism that leads to scenes such as a GPS system breaking down by changing its mind (“turn right… no… turn left…”) and a wind turbine that seemingly stops and starts just to provoke and confound the rational Schmitke.

Schmitke is no Homo Faber, but in the end, he does show some potential for having a fuller appreciation of the inexplicable. It is just a shame that the film itself nearly collapses in the process. It switches gears too rapidly from broad comedy to observational minimalism, and especially the second half of the film feels like a slow-motion implosion that is only flimsily sustained by the comical sounds of the Hammond organ on the soundtrack and the screeching sounds of the wind turbine struggling to rotate its blades.

Some of the film’s most intelligent details are its small moments of humour, like when Schmitke and Thomas get keys to rooms ‘1’ and ‘3’, clearly signalling impending misfortune, or the unexpected words of wisdom of an old lady at the bar, or the subtle repetition of incidents suggesting we may either be seeing different shades of the same event or people running on a hamster wheel.

There are few answers – even the questions are in short supply – and this lack of concrete information will frustrate many a viewer looking for a sturdy narrative backbone.

Unfortunately, the abundance of shots of the forest and the director’s unwillingness to make language more of an issue (everybody in this Czech hamlet can apparently speak almost perfect German, which leads to absolutely no discomfort, ever) hurt the audience’s involvement in this film that should have been much shorter than its 100-minute running time. Also, a shot in which Schmitke walks off-screen through heavy fog in a fixed long shot could have been utilised much more effectively, for example, by having him re-enter from the other side, at the same or at another location.

Schmitke is an experimental but quirky take on finding oneself. It is not always successful at keeping us engaged, and its second act is unnecessarily slow, but the rich soundtrack and unflappable performance of the lead actor will make this an interesting addition to any festival lineup.

Viewed at the 22nd International Film Festival Prague (Febiofest)

The Snake Brothers (2015)

André Crous

Two brothers – one addicted to drugs, the other yearning to be his own boss – make the most of their limited means in the bleak Czech countryside.

snake-brothers-kobry-uzovkyCzech Republic
4*

Director:
Jan Prušinovský
Screenwriter:
Jaroslav Žváček
Director of Photography:
Petr Koblovský

Running time: 110 minutes

Original title: Kobry a užovky

Petr, aka “Cobra”, is in his 20s and unemployed in Kralupy nad Vltavou, a town just north of Prague. He dyes his short hair purple, and in the opening scene, we find him walking down an empty street with bolt cutters on his back. He notices a semi-abandoned wooden house and decides to empty it of its electrical appliances. Shamelessly, he piles them into a trolley – in full view of the gobsmacked neighbour – before heading back out.

His older brother, Vojtěch, aka “Viper”, is working in a factory but often arrives late because he so frequently has to deal with the police who phone him up at night when Cobra causes a public disturbance, yelling from the rooftops about his latest “plan”. Viper is tired of the factory work, exhausted because he is not sleeping enough and fed up with being told he is not pulling his weight. He tells his employer to go jump in a lake and makes his way to the nearest pub.

The Snake Brothers was directed by Jan Prušinovský and stars real-life brothers Kryštof and Matěj Hádek as the two fictional siblings. The characters in Prušinovský’s film have little chance or ambition to escape the closed cycle of existence in their small town, but the director is never too hard nor too soft on them, and sometimes their desperate acts can be simultaneously heartbreaking and humorous.

The main thrust of the narrative concerns Viper’s steady trajectory towards control, as he opens a clothing store and works hard to make it successful. His evolution into a master of his own destiny is helped, in no small part, by his unexpected decision to seize the moment and address a group of German businessmen in German, a language he hasn’t spoken since his East German father left the family years ago.

At the same time, Viper has to contend with Cobra’s ever-fried mental state and proclivity toward kleptomania in order to finance his cocaine habit. He also has to deal with his lazy shop assistant, Zuzana, who is, unfortunately, the wife of his best friend, Tomáš.

Although the relationship between the brothers is obviously front and centre in the film, Tomáš is easily one of its most interesting characters. Actor Jan Hájek channels a man who is focused, sensitive and patient, and he is perhaps the only person in the story whom the viewer can truly admire, although Viper has by far the most complex personality. 

Dialogue tumbles like a dirty river out of the characters’ mouths. In fact, they might just be the most foul-mouthed of any film this year (unfortunately, the English subtitles don’t fully convey the power and the unfailing filth of the original Czech), but our attention always remains riveted to what they are saying, and how they are saying it.

The language, sometimes comical but often used by people in desperate situations, is complemented by actions that are similar in kind and work wonders to prevent the audience from feeling like they are falling into the characters’ abyss of desperation. In one scene, for example, Cobra steals a phone from someone’s handbag at a party. The victim sees him, but instead of assaulting him in response, the lady merely takes back her phone and returns it to the handbag.

It is a small moment that elicits a big laugh and shows that the people around Cobra have understanding for him. He is not a threat to their existence, and while he is utterly irresponsible, there is no need for trumped-up drama to entertain us. In this case, on the contrary, it is the unexpected lack of drama that sometimes provokes our amusement.

What sets this film apart from other similar depictions of desperation in the Czech countryside (Zdeněk Jiráský’s incredibly affecting 2011 feature film Flower Buds comes to mind) is that while it has many moments that appear to suggest a future of near-hopelessness for its central characters, the filmmaker does not put them through hell just to make a point or to stun us with despair. The scenes of Cobra getting wasted or going to the local gambling den to waste the money he has stolen from a vulnerable member of his family remind us of the constant monotony and melancholy in which he finds himself.

The final scene brings with it a shocking revelation that we don’t see coming, as we realise one of the central characters has become the replacement for one of the most despicable individuals in the film. To some extent, we are happy there has been development but mournful over the direction in which this has occurred for this person.

The Snake Brothers is presented very tightly with some highly commendable decisions made in the editing room, especially one late-night act of larceny that involves a television set.

Far from being the gloomy and/or uneventful work that similar features often want to be (like Flower Buds and Nowhere in Moravia, respectively), this is a strong tale told by a storyteller in total control of his material, complemented by a wonderful soundtrack.

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival 

Miracle (2013)

André Crous

Attempt to show mental problems of a girl in Slovak working class is a failure about as dismal as the central character’s prospects in life.

zazrak-miracleSlovakia/Czech Republic
2*

Director:
Juraj Lehotský
Screenwriters:
Martin Leščák
Juraj Lehotský
Director of Photography:
Noro Hudec

Running time: 80 minutes

Original title: Zázrak

Miracle by documentary filmmaker Juraj Lehotský is a fiction film that was clearly influenced by the work of the Dardenne brothers. Unfortunately, a very flimsy storyline, continual jumps in the narrative and a main character who is about as inactive and unlikeable as they come produce a film that is equally uninspiring and far removed from the Dardennes’ studies of the working class.

We first meet Ela, from the Malacky District, the country’s westernmost area, asleep in the car; she is on her way to a correctional facility, where she will spend an indeterminate period of time recuperating with many other girls her age whose scarred arms speak volumes about their emotional state. Ela is expressionless for almost the entire film, but she is also nearly speechless, refusing to share her problems or thoughts because she is certain no one will understand her or care for her.

She had a breakdown when her mother started dating a man Ela describes as “a moron”, but for the most part, Ela is annoyed that the relationship between her and her mother is non-existent and that she has, for all intents and purposes, lost both of her parents.

Having established the disintegration of family life, it is perhaps no surprise that Ela soon discovers she is pregnant, but without a high-school diploma, no money and few prospects, any hope of taking care of herself, never mind a child, is far-fetched at best. Roby, the father of her child, is a drug addict who lives in a small storage room on the side of the highway and already has a child, whom he has never spoken to.

At the facility in the woods where she discovers her pregnancy after a fainting spell, she tells another girl that Roby had caught her stealing something in the shop where he works, and because he didn’t know what to do with her, they ended up together. That’s not exactly the stuff dreams are made of, but Ela seems convinced – despite the evidence to the contrary – Roby would support her if she just escaped from her temporary home.

Ela shows almost no growth throughout the film; we cannot empathise with her because we know nothing of her life prior to the events depicted here (it seems she never had any friends, or at least anyone who would care about where she now finds herself), and because she treats her mother much worse than her mother treats her, we actually end up sympathising with the mother, who is certainly not without faults of her own.

In general, Ela is not just a problem child but seems like a genuinely stupid individual who makes her own life hard, irritates those around her and doesn’t have any social skills. She insults her stepfather even though her boyfriend is exactly the same kind of drone and has a drug habit to boot, and to get money when they need to pay back the drug dealers, she offers to become a prostitute, only to close up like a clam when she has to perform for her new clients.

Miracle‘s director of photography, Noro Hudec, is also at fault here, because all the scenes of Ela having sex are shot from behind her partner, which obscures her face and leaves us with absolutely no idea what she is thinking or feeling, thereby making her more of an object than a human participant.

Ela is generally so unpleasant we actually root for her to have an abortion out of fear that the world would be polluted with another one like her in it. Her cantankerousness isn’t helped by the fact scenes don’t evolve but are rather shown as dots that we simply cannot connect in a smooth way. The film is filled with impressions, mostly just showing Ela’s unsmiling face, that do not present us with a complete character.

At one point, Ela gets out of her mother’s car in a huff and storms down the highway. Instead of showing us what happens when her mother catches up to her, there is a cut to a later scene that suggests she didn’t see her mother again, which is difficult to believe.

Miracle is a badly executed product that, even at a short running time of 78 minutes, feels like a mess the characters have got themselves stuck in and cannot escape. The only miracle here is that the film was made at all.

Viewed at the International Film Festival Bratislava 2013

Hany (2014)

André Crous

With almost no editing, Czech director Michal Samir’s first film depicts the spectacular tumult of a night out in Plzeň.

hanyCzech Republic
4*

Director:
Michal Samir
Screenwriter:
Michal Samir
Director of Photography:
Martin Žiaran

Running time: 85 minutes

James Joyce had Dublin, Richard Linklater had Paris, and Michal Samir has Plzeň.

Each deploying their respective, considerable talents, these three storytellers used the space of a city that already existed to let their tales play out in real time: Joyce in the “Wandering Rocks” chapter of his Ulysses, Linklater in Before Sunset and Samir in Hany, which is somewhat of a technical watermark in filmmaking. Samir may not have the experience of either of the other two, but the risk he took with this project has paid off handsomely and provided the movie-going public with a work that is equal parts funny, jaw-dropping, shocking, gentle and raw.

When people talk about this particular film, however, the first thing they discuss very likely won’t be the identity of the space, but rather how the camera moves around inside it. That is because Hany is that rare breed of film that was shot almost entirely in a single take, without any visible cuts. The film consists of one long take lasting most of the film, before a short epilogue (once again, shot in a single take) that occurs a little later in time.

In 2002, Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark (Russkij Kovcheg) focused the art film world’s attention on the use of the long take in the cinema today, and his ballroom scene, in particular, remains a remarkable demonstration of one director’s ability to control dozens of actors and camera movements simultaneously. But the film was filled with vignettes separated from each other as the halls of Saint Petersburg’s State Hermitage Museum were divided by walls, doors and corridors.

Hany moves into different territory – to which the long takes of Soy Cuba, Boogie Nights and Kill Bill belong – where the camera is not limited by space and can move freely into and out of buildings and even up and down along the vertical axis. It is important to note, however, that the camera never completely frees itself from its terrestrial shackles (by contrast, think of that beautiful shot in Mathieu Kassovitz’s La haine when the camera flies out through an open window over a public housing development), and the crane shots deliberately do not convey a sense of freedom but rather a brief sensation of release.

The “single take” actually comprises three separate takes, shot on three consecutive nights and imperceptibly stitched together; one would guess the stitches occur when the horizontal and vertical axes change, but these transitions are all but impossible to detect.

But even before we notice the long take, there is a moment early on that catches our attention. The film opens at 10 p.m. inside a bar (we don’t see the name, but it’s the Anděl Café and Music Bar on Plzeň’s Bezručova Street). A poet named Egon Alter is about to start a one-man reading of his latest play. Next to him, his friend Dušan sits beside a chessboard. The camera slowly pulls back and eventually tracks back and makes a 360-degree turn to show us the entire bar and its band of revellers. Such panoramic shots, which seem to reveal there is no one standing behind the camera directing the action or holding a boom, support our belief that this is all happening “for real”. A shot like that is rare, and when it happens, the audience had better sit up and take notice.

The black and white pieces on the chessboard in that opening shot suggest the tension between the darkness and the light that pervades the film in many ways and comes to a head during one of the final scenes, taking place at main character Jiří’s flat, in which the darkness is lit up by lasers in the colours of the rainbow.

Jiří is a guy in his 20s who sells drugs in a back room of the bar and has no problem provoking those around him. For most of the first part of the film, he is in the company of Míla, Hana, Hanka and Zuzana. By the end of the film, he will have alienated some of his friends, but we will have learned a little about him in a way that is wholly credible and far from contrived.

The scant knowledge we gain has to do with one of the themes that underlie the narrative in a way that is nearly cloaked from our sight by the events of the film. That theme is family, and although it doesn’t seem to influence Jiří or Egon directly, a few small moments clue us into the depth of their characters. Egon, who remains in the background almost throughout, suddenly takes centre stage towards the end, when his storyline unexpectedly delivers the most poignant scene of the entire film.

The image of moths drawn to a flame – which the camera also seems to embody as it floats between its sources of light, the characters – is presented to us early on, when we leave the bar for the first time, and it starts to become clear the camera will really be travelling around the city in a seemingly unbroken take. There are almost as many moths circling the lights on the street as there are characters with speaking parts, and Samir accomplishes something of a Robert Altman effect by sometimes having people talk over each other. While this is going on in the foreground, more things are happening in the background, adding to an impression of richness that is unusual in the cinema but that ought to be a prime concern for the works that want to reflect reality in all its glorious messiness.

For all the movement and spectacle, especially towards the end, it is the opening and – in retrospect – relatively subdued sequence in the bar that shows Samir’s skill as a director, as he interweaves multiple layers of action to create a shimmering, vibrant atmosphere that is dynamic, authentic, believable and entertaining.

The problem with having so much going on and following so many groups of characters is of course that there is no clear central storyline, and the viewer may struggle to summarise the plot in terms of action rather than space. Despite the occasional impression that the connections between all the pieces elude us, the epilogue delivers a stunning narrative blow as we reassess some of the scenes that came before (including one in a pub that at first seems random) with our newly acquired knowledge.

Not all of our questions are always answered, and at times this uncertainty works to bring about the feeling of ambiguity that André Bazin credited for making films seem realistic. In one scene, a tram from 1954 arrives to pick up two characters on Plzeň’s Square of the Republic and among the passengers, at the side of the frame, we see someone with a scarf covering his mouth. Is this the same man we see a few minutes later striking the first blow against the police, thus ushering in a quick transition to the chaos that reigns over the final act?

The quick descent into disorder is preceded by an elegant shot of a man on a bicycle whom we watch while Egon’s rich, melodious voice reverberates in a voice-over on the soundtrack. Egon is one of the film’s many outsiders, which include the naïve and apologetic Míla, the Arab referred to as “Salaam”, and Martin the Slovak, a genuinely nice guy who experiences the malice of a drunken Jiří.

While Jiří is the main character by virtue of making the most noise and the one we see most often, the others are there to offer a mixture of hope for humanity and fear of what may happen to the ones who are weaker than the rest. The director doesn’t take sides, and he doesn’t judge, and while we never laugh directly at anyone, there are many moments that make us laugh out loud at the antics of some of these people. We can nitpick about the empty streets, the acting of a Vietnamese saleswoman who has her merchandise stolen, or a car crash that is not particularly believable, but these are negligible exceptions in a film that is in many respects astounding.

Director of photography Martin Žiaran’s work with the Arri Alexa doesn’t draw unnecessary attention, and Samir’s blocking of his actors is equally laudable because they seem to move freely, even though almost every single movement was planned out in advance. And when the camera floats down the street and the score swells on the soundtrack for the very first time, we cannot help but shiver with wonder.

Hany contributes to the art of filmmaking by immersing us in the world of the film, explicitly situated on the border of fiction and reality but presented in a way that is absolutely thrilling and never dull, even if the riot scene so ominously announced in an opening voiceover is over all too quickly. Whatever the achievements of Russian Ark, it was not a constant thrill.

The film eschews artifice and succeeds in representing a lively night out. In life, things sometimes happen out of the blue, and in that regard perhaps the film’s sudden switch in tone from restraint to anarchy is not all that far-fetched. The dirty, alcohol-soaked and drug-infused final scenes can be difficult to stomach, but the images will stay with you.

Egon refers to his unbroken performance in the bar as a literary night. Samir’s unbroken performance through the streets of Plzeň doesn’t aim to be literary, but despite its thin storyline, his is undeniably one for the books.

Peacock (2015)

André Crous

Short film about Czech playwright Ladislav Stroupežnický is a period piece like almost no other and has a central character who almost never speaks but evokes passion beyond words.

furiant-peacockCzech Republic
4.5*

Director:
Ondřej Hudeček 
Screenwriters:
Jan Smutný
Ondřej Hudeček
Director of Photography:
Ondřej Hudeček

Running time: 27 minutes

Original title: Furiant

The early years of the 19th-century critical realist Czech playwright Ladislav Stroupežnický are vividly brought to life with a dazzling display of humour and unconventional storytelling in Ondřej Hudeček’s 25-minute short film, Peacock (Furiant). This is the story of a young rebel whose first encounter seemed to have been divinely ordained. And even though the tale also has a tragic component, a warm romanticism that is both affectionate and slightly tongue-in-cheek infuses the presentation of the material.

Borrowing liberally from the visual style of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, as is to be expected in any period film worth its salt, the film has another reference that is even more pertinent in terms of eccentricity and playfulness: Tony Richardson’s 1963 classic Tom Jones, which has become regrettably underseen and underknown. Hudeček’s use of a period setting to tell a story that is every bit as energetic as a music video and filled with painterly landscapes yet almost entirely devoid of dialogue is thrilling, and the film’s glimpse of this famous playwright is as witty as it is educational.

The structure of Peacock, which comprises an introduction, three acts and an epilogue, is just about the only aspect that one might label as traditional, as the contents and the presentation of the material are dynamic. Not only does the film deploy animation, droll title cards and a side-splitting extract from a screenplay, but it even does away with dialogue altogether, replacing it with the coherent, ubiquitous and atmospheric voice-over by Lukáš Hlavica.

Book-ended by gorgeous shots of the interior of Prague’s National Theatre, a magnificent symbol of the Czech National Revival to which Stroupežnický would become an important contributor (many of his plays would also be performed here), the film covers 14 years in the author’s early life, from 1853 to 1867. We follow him on his riotous rejection of authority, especially of the Church, and his first love.

Ironically played by a German and not a Czech actor, the young Stroupežnický (Julius Feldmeier) has a tense face that almost never relaxes, except in the company of Jan Aleš, a close friend whom a title card early on introduces as “a poet and a great lover”. This unexpected meeting between the two is anticipated – even endorsed – in religious terms, as the narrator tells us that “Ladislav, rebelling against the supreme authority, was unaware that he would soon receive a great sign from above.” 

This first love very intelligently marks the end, at least for him, of romanticism. In fact, the film suggests that the disintegration of their intimacy – whose melodrama is rivalled only by the climax, in which Stroupežnický attempts to commit suicide but is seemingly (and rather hilariously) spared by divine intervention – was a turning point for the artist and somehow explains his subsequent conversion to critical realism.

The film uses the music of Antonín Dvořák, one of the most famous Czech composers of all time and a contemporary of Stroupežnický, all the way through, and his series of “Slavonic Dances”, in particular, provides a rich and sometimes thrillingly bombastic frame for the emotions at work in the story.

The Czech title appears to be somewhat ironic, too, as Furiant literally means “show-off”, even though Stroupežnický almost never utters a word. The original meaning refers to the type of movements that accompanied, among others, Dvořák’s “Slavonic Dances”. Clearly, the English title is connected to the first meaning, and the attention paid to the film’s absolutely stunning visuals – especially the exterior scenes, although at least one interior shot also draws attention because of its theatrical composition – is highly commendable and helps to immerse us in the beauty of the story.

Hudeček’s work here is absolutely flawless, and his talent for producing splendid images that knock us with emotional hammer blows, often in complete silence, makes the experience of watching the film all the more intense. Filled with sly humour, bubbling with creativity and assembled as a coherent work of fiction that draws on reality for inspiration, Peacock is as colourful as its English title suggests. 

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival