Tag: czech

Restore Point

  By

★★★
“Have you backed-up today?”

My knowledge about Czechoslovakian movies is quite limited. Mainly the wonderful films, such as Three Wishes for Cinderella or Saxana – The girl on a Broomstick, and TV series (Arabela or The Visitors) made for children there in the seventies and eighties. Things have changed since these times: Czechoslovakia doesn’t even exist since 1992, when it split into two separate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. So this is a Czech movie, not a Czechoslovakian one. Though the famous Barrandov Studios where many of the classic movies were filmed, and in recent times some big Western productions too, remains in operation.

Still, this film feels of another time and another kind. I came across it during a period when nothing of interest to me seemed to come out of Hollywood. I was just looking for something entertaining, that didn’t insult my intelligence – you see the problem. Imagine my surprise when that ‘something’ turned out to be an East European Science Fiction movie – the second such, after recent Serbian film, A. I. Rising. Maybe I should recalibrate my sensors towards those countries? Because against my expectations, this turned out to be a first-class Science Fiction movie, with decent production values that could stand beside any Hollywood production. Indeed, someone in the Amazon reviews wondered how long it will be until Hollywood will remake it. [The remake of Danish film Speak No Evil is in cinemas right now, and as usual is not as good as the original]

The place is Prague and the time is 2041. Technology has advanced somewhat: while cars still drive on the ground, holographic displays are available in personal households. But one thing has changed considerably. People who get killed, or die in an accident, can be brought back to life. The catch: according to the law, in order for that to be possible, you have to have saved your memories digitally. The last memory – the so-called “restore point” – must not be older than 48 hours. Of course, such new and controversial technology faces resistance from part of the population; a terrorist group called River of Life fights against the introduction of the new tech.

Emma Trochinovska (Mohylová) is a young police investigator, who lost her husband due to him not having “backed-up” in time. She is on the trail of a River of Life terrorist, who commits suicide before she can capture him. She is greatly surprised when, a short time later, the supposedly dead inventor of restore technology, David Kurlstat (Hádek), gets in touch with her. He wants to find out who was responsible for the death of his wife, who had an affair with the terrorist and died after him. A number of problems arise. His last restore point is much further back than the usual two days. Indeed, he has no memory of the last six months. Europol agent Mansfield (Neužil) intends to protect the interests of the public, while the increasing influence of the Institute of Restoration is just as much a pain in the neck to Trochinovska as the terrorist, who isn’t really dead.

The above sounds a bit confusing. It may be at first glance, with a large number of characters with different interests popping up in the story. But once you have bought into the SF premise, things are actually not that complicated. What we have here is a crime thriller with cops, agents, terrorists and big money companies. It all leads to a well thought-out and very satisfying action-mystery, where for a long time you can’t be sure who is behind it all and why. Hint: it’s not who you may think. The solution was – at least for me – quite a surprise.

On a technical level, as mentioned, this is as good as, or maybe even a bit better than, your usual Hollywood Science Fiction movie, with the production filmed in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. While I know no one at all among the actors, they are all fine and give good, convincing performances. I especially liked main actress Mohylová fighting, running, shooting and investigating, without becoming a Mary Sue or losing her femininity and humanity. Her character has flaws and is not omnipotent, as is often the case with Western heroines. She did remind me of Katheryn Winnick from Vikings. But the other actors were also very well-cast for their respective roles. The film has a good, effective soundtrack with Debussy’s Clair de Lune as a recurring motive.

Outside of the Czech Republic, the movie has mostly been seen at festivals, and hasn’t had a theatrical release yet which is a pity. It won a number of awards or was nominated at festivals, and deserves a wider release, but even here in Germany it only came out on DVD. Reviews have compared it to Blade Runner and Minority Report: I tend to disagree there. This movie is far from the very futuristic, super-bleak, almost apocalyptic setting in Blade Runner (one of the most overrated SF films ever for me), showing a world just one or two steps away, and a future that is indeed imaginable. Nor is it the action-chase Minority Report provided. I guess the comparison is because Restore Point is what Science Fiction originally was, before star warriors and space fleets took over the genre on the big screen: a careful “what if”-exploration of a possible future.

It may be counted as cerebral today but in its essence it is what “real” Science Fiction is, without the fantasy aspects that have dominated the genre for the last 50 years or so. If I had to compare it to another movie, it might be Christopher Nolan’s Memento. While providing enough action to satisfy the casual audience looking for a quick SF fix, the movie works on a deeper level too. What is the value of our life is if we lose our memories? This leads to some strangely ironic, almost absurd results. So, yes, it’s a movie that can make you think. But you can also just let yourself be entertained by it. That works too.

Dir: Robert Hloz
Star: Andrea Mohylová, Matej Hádek, Milan Ondrík, Václav Neuzil

I, Olga Hepnarova

  By

★★★
“Czech, please…”

I am a loner. A destroyed woman. A woman destroyed by people… I have a choice – to kill myself or to kill others. I choose TO PAY BACK MY HATERS. It would be too easy to leave this world as an unknown suicide victim. Society is too indifferent, rightly so. My verdict is: I, Olga Hepnarová, the victim of your bestiality, sentence you to death.

Women who kill are rare. Women who kill multiple victims at once, without male associates, are rarer still. Among the few who have been recorded as such was Olga Hepnarová, a 22-year-old Czech, who in 1973 deliberately drove a truck into a group of people waiting for a tram in Prague. Eight were killed, and a dozen injured. The day before she had sent a “manifesto” explaining her actions to two local newspapers. As the extract above suggests, she saw herself as a victim, inflicting punishment on the society which she blamed for bullying her. Hepnarová showed absolutely no remorse, and became the last woman executed in Czechoslovakia, being hung in December 1975.

This is all historical and documented fact, but helps lend this feature version of Hepnarová’s life a bleak relentlessness. Presuming you’re aware of the story (and one imagines most of the Czech audience would be, if not necessarily those in other countries), you know exactly where it’s going to end up – with a short drop, though the film takes the specifics of that as read. So there’s no suspense to be had, and to be fair, that isn’t the point at all. It’s more about trying to get inside the mind of Hepnarová: how does someone get to the stage where committing an act of mass murder becomes not only plausible, it also becomes inevitable?

It was clearly a combination of factors. Olga displayed signs of mental illness from a young age, including a suicide attempt by overdose in her early teens, and as depicted here, has severe difficulty forming any kind of relationship – though the lack of effort she puts into them from her side is notable. She seems to stand outside the human race, at one point saying, “I can’t talk to anybody. I’m alone everywhere. People just talk and gather and laugh even at things I don’t find funny at all,” and later bluntly stating “The world has no value.” I’m not sure if her comments come from court transcripts, medical documents or were invented for the purpose of the film, but according to the makers, “We didn’t write anything that we didn’t know to be true – if we didn’t know it for sure, we removed it from our script.”

There’s no denying it sometimes packs a wallop – not least given events subsequent to filming, in Nice and elsewhere, with terrorists taking enthusiastically to vehicular mayhem for their own causes – and the blank nihilism in Olszanska‘s performance is chilling. But I can’t say any real insight into the psychology of her psychopathy feels like it was obtained. It’s clear she was bullied, and that was a factor, but what is offered feels like a facile simplification: hell, I had more than my share of being bullied at school, and didn’t kill anyone. There is eloquence to her own words, and I wish there had been more of this. For despite black-and-white cinematography which makes it feel like a contemporary retelling, rather than four decades later, the rest feels flat and largely uninteresting.

Dir: Petr Kazda and Tomás Weinreb
Star: Michalina Olszanska, Martin Pechlát, Klára Melísková, Marika Soposká

Three Wishes For Cinderella

  By

★★★½
“#CinderellaForPresident2020”

While we’ve covered revisionist versions of fairy stories before, e.g. Maleficent, this is likely the closest to a “straight” retelling yet covered on the site. Cinderella (Šafránková) is condemned to a life of drudgery at the hands of her stepmother (Braunbock), until she gets a magical chance to attend a ball given by the local monarch. There, she meets the handsome prince (Trávníček) who falls for her, only for the couple to be separated at the end of the night. He seeks her out, with the help of a lost slipper, and they live happily ever after. All the standard elements of the well-beloved story are present in this 1973 co-production between East Germany and Czechoslovakia. So what is it doing here?

Well, as the picture above suggests, this Cinderella is quite the bad-ass. She initially has no interest at all in the Prince; while the rest of the town is getting in a tizzy over his passing through, she sneaks out to ride off on her horse. That’s where she first encounters him, since he has snuck off similarly – and it turns out, she’s a better rider than him. Their second encounter comes when he is out hunting with his pals. This time, Cinderella is dressed as a boy (above – raise your hand if you’re unconvinced!), and proves herself to have better aim than him as well, shooting into a crossbow bolt being held in his hand. She also demonstrates a talent for tree-climbing: this is all apparently a result of the upbringing through her late father, who can only be commended. When she shows u[p at the ball, she’s not exactly throwing herself at the prince, chiding him after he says he has chosen her as his bride, for not asking her opinion [To be honest, he seems a bit of a dim bulb. Like father, like son maybe, for the Queen is the smart one of the family as well.]

There isn’t even a fairy Godmother to be seen here, and one isn’t needed. For this Cinderella isn’t pining out a window, waiting for her prince to come. She gets things done herself, more or less. She does get help from the local fauna when stepmom inflicts particularly tedious chores on her, and there’s also the “three wishes” of the title – though they’re less wishes, than sets of clothes that appear out of hazelnuts, because fairy tale. But overall, this is a remarkably self-reliant, smart and confident young woman, who will likely make an excellent ruler. Indeed, it would have been perfectly fine if, at the end, she had politely listened to the prince, and said, “No, thanks – although, if you can get my stepmother off my back, I’d appreciate it.” I do understand, it would likely have been a step too far, even for a heroine several decades ahead of her time.

This has become something of a staple of Christmas viewing on the European continent, broadcast on TV across a number of countries. In Britain, it was one of the East European films imported by the BBC’s children’s department in the sixties and semi-translated (the original dialogue is retained; a voice-over translates the dialogue and narrates, as if by a storyteller). However, it has now largely been forgotten in the English-speaking world, overshadowed by the terrors of The Singing Ringing Tree. That’s a shame, since this is worth equally as much attention, and offers a considerably more robust heroine than anything Disney was producing at the time, or would produce this side of Mulan.

Dir: Václav Vorlíček
Star: Libuše Šafránková, Pavel Trávníček, Carola Braunbock, Rolf Hoppe
a.k.a. Drei Haselnüsse für Aschenbrödel, Tři oříšky pro Popelku, Three Gifts for Cinderella

Fair Play

  By

★★★
“Czech out those legs…”

fairplayTeenage sprinter Anna (Bárdos) is on the edge of making the Olympics with the Czech national team, but still needs to meet the qualifying time. She’s being brought up by her mother, Irena (Geislerová), a former tennis prodigy, now reduced to working as a cleaning lady – in part because of the defection for the West of her husband. Irena also secretly transcribes underground documents for a dissident, Marek. Coach Bohdan (Luknár) pushes Anna hard to reach her maximum potential, and gives her “Stromba”, a substance that helps her performance, but screws up her health. She stops taking it, believing it to be an illegal steroid: when her coach finds out, he enlists Irena’s help to inject her daughter surreptitiously, saying it’s the only way Anna will make the squad. Reluctantly, Irena agrees, unwilling to see her daughter lose out in the same way she did. But as the authorities close in on Marek, the two women become pawns in a political game, with their common Olympic dream now used as leverage against them.

This makes an interesting companion piece to Goldengirl, with both films telling a similar story about female runners in the early eighties, whose family and mentors are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve success at the Olympics. Goldengirl unfolded in the lead-up to 1980’s Moscow Games, but subsequent history rendered it obsolete, as America boycotted them. Fair Play shows things from the other side of the Iron Curtain, in the lead-up to the 1984 Los Angeles games – which the Eastern Bloc similarly spurned. The benefit of time allows the film to incorporate this history into an ironic postscript for its narrative and, while less SF-oriented than its American cousin, the attitudes of both heroines, and the approach of their supporting cast, have a surprising amount in common. The main difference here is, the doping regime is state-sanctioned; in Goldengirl, it’s free-market forces driving the “win at any costs” mentality.

The piece makes a pointed connection between Anna and Irena’s situations, both coming under pressure to compromise their personal morality for personal gain – one sporting, the other judicial. It’s this stand which represents the true heroism to be found here, though the script struggles to escape from the obvious clichés of Soviet Bloc culture. The other main weakness is the actual athletics, which never give the impression of anyone moving at more than an energetic jog, while the thread involving Anna’s relationship with a boy doesn’t go anywhere of significance at all. In the final analysis, it’s a worthy enough effort, if rather too earnest to be wholly successful. You can see why it became the official Czech entry for this year’s Academy Awards – and equally as much, why the Academy then decided it wasn’t worthy of making the final nominees.

Dir: Andrea Sedláčková
Star: Judit Bárdos, Roman Luknár, Anna Geislerová, Ondrej Novák

The Pagan Queen

  By

paganqueen★½
“Czech mates”

This is the story of three sisters – Kazi the healer, Teta the priestess (Filatova) and Libuše (Zoli), who can see both the past and her future. Their father is chieftain of the local tribes, and when he passes away, Libuše is chosen to replace him, due to her supernatural talents. This does not impress some of her male rivals, who seek first to wed her, then when she spurns their advances, to replace her. Libuše’s dream of founding the city of Prague hits problems, and she is forced into marriage, but does at least trick her way into choosing her own husband, the farmer Přemysl (Lucas). However, she soon discovers that he isn’t quite the man he seemed, and he rules the country with an “iron fist,” causing Libuše’s childhood friend, the warrior maiden Vlasta (Mornar) to raise an army of women and rebel against the patriarchy.

paganqueen2It really is nowhere near as good as this sounds, and the synopsis above is significantly more coherent. I swear, I didn’t fall asleep – but it felt like I did, the story lurching from scene to scene in a disjointed manner that rapidly drained all interest. Outside of the heroine, there was hardly any significant effort at giving the characters motivation or depth, and matters weren’t helped by the fact the entire nation seemed to consist of about 25 people. The scenery is nice, and the soundtrack has a full, orchestral feel which seems to have escaped from a higher-budget movie, but it doesn’t work as a historical piece or as a political one – and, certainly, not as an action film. However, I was amused by what I suspect is likely a realistic, if ruthless, depiction of what would probably happen when a warrior maiden comes up against her male counterpart.

I suppose it’s possible this may be more entertaining, or simply coherent, if you’re aware of the legend on which it’s based. However, this would still be a flaw: you don’t need to have read Le Morte D’Arthur to appreciate Excalibur. And, beside, this seems to have been critically skewered in the Czech Republic, so it doesn’t appear background knowledge is that much of a help. I think it’s probably more the case that poorly considered femo-paganism [or paga-feminism, if you prefer] does not make for great cinema, regardless of the language.

Dir: Constantin Werner
Star: Winter Ave Zoli. Csaba Lucas, Lea Mornar, Vera Filatova