The Czechoslovak New Wave: A Collection DVD review

Posted on by harrietwarman

Second Run DVD’s latest release, The Czechoslovak New Wave: A Collection is a perfect introduction to this period of creative brilliance, including as it does, three excellent and diverse works. Diamonds of the Night (1964) by Jan Nemec was adapted from Arnost Lustig’s novella, Darkness Casts No Shadow, and strips out dialogue and contextual information to a bare minimum so that the film’s simple plot becomes an absorbing and horrific survival tale. Following the struggle to remain both alive and free by two young men; who have escaped a German train bound for a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, Diamonds of the Night opens in the thick of a chase, as the escapees flee armed men, by scrambling and pushing onward through the vegetation of the forest floor. The camera follows them in wide shot and gradually zooms closer as they trip and stumble on uneven terrain. It’s a truly remarkable opening, establishing quickly that the film’s formal aesthetic will be as economical as its protagonist’s basic endeavour – to survive.


There’s also a surrealist aspect to the editing – clearly influenced by the likes of Luis Buñuel – that shows ants crawling over hands and editing that cuts between the boys current struggle and what is presumably their remembered past – the initial flee and life before capture. A great deal of this is silent, or at least uncluttered by the presence of a musical score, giving the sound of frightened breathing, or a clocks chimes, or footsteps, a rhythm of its own. The horror of the situation is enhanced by the fact that these young men’s pursuers are elderly men – all crumpled faces and hunched backs. This didn’t go unnoticed by Michael Brooke, whose essay about the film accompanies the DVD release and notes the incongruity of the old having better survival chances than the young.

In contrast, this three-film collection includes the delight that is Ivan Passer’s Intimate Lighting, (1965)the story of two musician friends, Bambas (Karel Blazek) and Petr (Zdenek Bezusek) who took different career paths, and spend the weekend at the formers’ country home. Petr brings along his girlfriend Stepa (Vera Kresadlova), who delights in Bambas’ children and takes advice on slimming from his mother.

The action in the film is actually less action – in the dramatic sense – than the naturalism of an idle weekend’s encounters and moments. Bambas, who plays at the local music school, and Petr, who tours with an orchestra, share stories and get to know the similarities and differences in how their lives are playing out.

How they are playing out is complemented – as would be expected – by music, which represents shifts in mood throughout the film; the solemnity of a funeral chorus, the combined melancholia and forced jollity of the wake, a comedic quartet rehearsal stinted by elderly hands. There’s a wonderful sense of wit that comes from the film’s rhythm and absurdity – an awkward eggnog toast that becomes funnier the longer the shot is held; a late night, drunken escapade accompanied by another Strauss waltz.

All this makes for a fresh and thoughtful film that combines the character’s pathos with daily joy to result in a truly enjoyable and poignant must-see.

The third film in this excellent box set is the unnerving and occasionally terrifying The Cremator (1968)by Juraj Herz, a film that – like Intimate Lighting uses music brilliantly to convey the films tone, and as with Diamonds of the Night utilises a surrealist montage of images. Unlike that earlier film however, Herz takes the surrealism further – the opening credits alone use animation techniques familiar from the work of Jan Svankmayer – whom Herz studied puppetry alongside.

The Cremator concerns a man of the titular profession; Karel Kopfrikingl (Rudolf Hrusinsky) living in Prague during the Nazi occupation, with his ‘perfect’ family in his well furnished home. Karel is inspired by the political climate of the time to improve and refine his life, which leads to the most terrible inevitability. The hypnotic, heavenly chorus, appearing throughout the score, gives the impression that – beyond his professional activity – Karel aspires toward his world as a kind of faultless afterlife. He’s a precise, fiercely vigilant man; one who, it turns out is susceptible to the ideals of others, even if their actions are more extreme than his own.

Special features accompanying the film include an introduction by the Brothers Quay, who enthuse eloquently about the unique vision of Herz, providing an appreciated cultural and historical context for such astonishing filmmaking.

If like me, you desire to know more about the Czech New Wave – this is another illuminating and welcome collection from Second Run DVD, who prove their impeccable taste time and again.

You can read a review of another great box set here

Mundane History

Posted on by harrietwarman

The relationship between the individual and society is at the core of Mundane History by Anocha Suwichakornpong, but far from being a straightforward treatment of causality or employing a definitive narrative context, the film expands its theme to tackle spiritual and philosophical considerations as well. This expansion reaches as far as cosmological imagery – a juxtaposition with domesticity perhaps realised more coherently than in Malick’s Tree of Life.

The plot concerns a young man, Ake (Phakpoom Surapongsanuruk) who is paralysed from the waist down and confined to his room in his father’s manor house. Cared for by male nurse, Pun (Arkaney Cherkham), Ake oscillates between fury and obstinacy at his new, restricted world. Ake and Pun’s initial interactions are awkward, with Pun seeming unprepared for the tension and emotion of his patient, and Ake resistant to conversation with his round-the clock carer. Eventually the two find common ground, with both expressing their previous ambitions toward creative careers – one of many instances of the way the film is concerned with differences between outward appearances and internal desire.

The sense of an underlying, unspoken strain in the household – demonstrable by Ake’s father’s persistent absence – is maintained throughout, not only by the other inhabitants, who hold back from open conversation, but in the quiet, still shots of the house – both internal and external – that show through diegetic sound, how little seems to occur there. One wonders if this was the case even before Ake’s accident – the cause of which is never revealed – or if the quiet respectability is inherent to the patriarchy of the home.

In an excellent interview included with Second Run’s DVD release of the film, Suwichakornpong speaks of the way the film deals with the notion of life cycles in Thai culture. The stages of birth, decay, death, and rebirth are present both in the imagery of human childhood and Ake’s condition, and the montage, or layering of images of nature with a voice over describing the life cycle of a star. A shot of Ake’s empty room: the bed and chair notable for his and Pun’s absence cut to footage of a caesarean being performed. When described simply in this way, the grand, national and cosmological reach of Mundane History might seem heavy handed, however the effect is quite the opposite – by this point sympathy for Ake and Pun’s combined enclosure – one physical, one socio-economic – is established well enough to view their circumstances as symptomatic of the cultural norms (and life cycle) of the country as a whole, and reflective of even the most banal existence sharing elemental origins with other life forms.

It is testament to Suwichakornpong and editor Lee Chatametikool’s deft handling of the films various audio/visual elements that the pervading result comments on family structure and Thai culture with such subtlety. Finding the right music for the soundtrack was key for the director, and the editing process required a song that would compliment the visual edit. The final choice of a song by Malaysian band Furniture combines with visual shifts in the film, and punctuates the narrative. This punctuation was for the director a way of creating little ‘explosions’ of sorts that gradually expand, providing a way to introduce the cosmos to an ostensibly domestic setting.

Comparisons with Apichatpong Weerasthakul are inevitable, given the films ambiguity and balance of spiritual/familial aspects, but Suwichakornpong has clearly developed her own aesthetic, and one that is closer in its use of non-linear narrative to Wichanon Somumjorn’s In April the Following Year, There was a Fire (my review of which, you can read here).

Mundane History is an invigorating, hugely rewarding film, and one that only improves on repeat viewings – don’t miss the directors fantastic short Graceland also included in another excellent release by Second Run DVD.

 

Pedro Costa’s Casa de Lava

Posted on by harrietwarman

I could write just about the symbolic red of Mariana’s dress – such is the richness and potential for interpretation in Pedro Costa’s Casa de Lava (1994). Storming around Cape Verde with either a forthright, potentially desperate intent or equally desperate aimlessness, Mariana (Inês de Medeiros) appears a figure of life, potency and sheer bloody will. Towards the end of the film Mariana changes her clothes, adopting more neutral attire and seeming to calm internally too. Colour is used to startling effect throughout the film, in many cases where Costa’s compositions involve a single character framed within a scorched, dramatic landscape.

Costa’s second feature following the monochrome Blood (O Sangue, 1989) is a ‘remake’ of Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie (1943) and frequently cited as alluding to Rossellini’s Stromboli (1950). Construction worker Leão falls on site and becomes comatose, then, in a very concise piece of expository dialogue, the doctor announces that a letter and a cheque have been sent from Leâo’s village, he’s being discharged and will be sent on a plane back home. Nurse Mariana accompanies him from Lisbon to Cape Verde and on arrival attempts to ascertain her patients origins, but is met with denial or silence. A stranger in an unfamiliar land, Mariana’s presence is neither welcomed nor met with hostility, rather a questioning insight that seems to reveal to Mariana more about herself than she is willing to accept.

 

Violinist Bassoé (Raul Andrade) recounts his sorry tale to Mariana admitting that he has many sons, but is vague when questioned on whether Leão is one of them. Finding her equivalent in Edith, a white woman who arrived years ago and simply never left, Mariana is once again left frustratingly non-the wiser by Edith’s refusal to speak. The refusal, or denial as Jonathan Rosenbaum (who provides the booklet essay for the DVD release) puts it, is the locus of the film. Despite the sometimes perfunctory explanatory dialogue, the bulk of interactions have an ambiguity that hints towards many things and many interpretations, with plot points left unresolved and character motivation in doubt. Mariana is herself in denial about the purpose of her stay on the island, it seeming to go beyond the initial week she supposed without her noticing. At once a musing on colonialism and the notion of the individual within a community, this obliqueness of plot is characteristic of Costa’s filmmaking, the trajectory of which has been described by critic Peter Bradshaw as ‘one of the most fascinating in modern cinema’.

Indeed Costa’s films are highly celebrated but hard to access, none of them having had a UK release beyond individual screenings. Lucky for anyone able to get to the ICA in London this Sunday 30th for a special screening of Casa de Lava in collaboration with Second Run DVD. Costa himself will be in attendance for a Q&A with EIFF’s Chris Fujiwara.