About Water, Fears and Non-Comparabili

2017 appears to be rather varied in Slovak feature film. And to such an extent that, after several years of ongoing increase in diversity, it is more and more difficult to assess the production as a whole. The trends noted in the previous years are strengthening, whilst attendances are growing in record figures. However, the qualitative non-homogeneity is also increasing. Unlike 2016, when I adapted the imaginative quality scale to the tendencies which seemed most original to me, this time at least two films really made me happy.

Nina (dir. J. Lehotský) and Little Harbour (Piata loď, dir. I. Grófová) are ripe, empathic, and both visually and acoustically perfectly developed works whose authors are not afraid to work with imagination and metaphor. In both cases, it is the metaphor of water, in particular, which affords safety, escape and return to the original integrity. The metaphor of water – this time mainly in the context of inundation but also the yearning for the exoticism of the sea or being caught in a net just like helpless fish – also appears in another example of the festival film “genre” – in György Kristóf’s début Out. But while the first two films remain compact in aesthetic terms, Out tries to achieve a balance (not always successfully) on the cusp between the stern, even academic minimalism of a festival film and bizarre humour. The at the humour is largely based on hyperbole is too obviously confirmed shortly before the end of the film when the main protagonist meets a Latvian beauty exaggeratedly “pumped up” by plastic surgery.

By contrast, the images in Nina and Little Harbour are just as impressive as they are accurate. Both films are also linked by the fact that they take the series of Slovak social dramas in the direction of family film. While the social dramas made up to the present dealt with the problems of marginalised adults, adolescents or teenagers, both films focus this time more on the world as viewed by children. As if the films’ imaginativeness was directly related to this in both cases, thereby rejecting the rational perspective of an adult “white” man that has defined Slovak post-socialist cinema for such a long time.

While these two films did not significantly attract the interest of domestic audiences, 2017 also brought films which fought for audience interest in a more superficial manner. All or Nothing (Všetko alebo nič, dir. M. Ferencová) and Cuky Luky Film (dir. K. Janák) invite comparison, in particular with regard to their (successful) attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audiences. At the same time, both films move the comedy genre a little bit further on from “first attempts” like The Corpse Must Die (Mŕtvola musí zomrieť), So Fine (Tak fajn) or Vojtech which were not fully competent in terms of dramaturgy. However, if we seek to compare them with the art films mentioned above, we quickly discover that these are non-comparable categories, especially with regard to quality. That is because both films represent an advance within the development of comedy in Slovakia, but that does not mean that they do not also have many weak points. All or Nothing is visually attractive, like a Christmas bauble, a shiny fusion of several familiar romantic comedies, mainly of Hollywood provenance. This fi lm does not even attempt to resemble real life, it creates a picture of Prague which is interchangeable with generic images of any other European metropolis – but it does contain an episode of a romantic weekend in Italy or a trip to the Tatras. Solid acting and wellchosen types save this obvious kitsch feature full of stereotypes about homosexuals, single mothers and university professors from the threat of its becoming a total fiasco. By contrast, Cuky Luky Film is far more unbalanced, albeit, maybe precisely for this reason, more interesting for some – as it also includes an attempt at self-reflexive narration or a sense for autoirony and it is certainly commendable that in the full-length feature film the main protagonists have abandoned the excessive expressiveness typical of the TV sitcom the film refers to. Even in this case the film is overburdened with familiar motifs copied from Hollywood romantic comedies, although it is rather heading toward being a farce.

All the other films made last year prove that Slovak cinema does not have to be polarised solely on a strange axis of “festival” versus “audience” film. They either try to combine both tendencies or they present quite untraditional deviations from what we imagine under Slovak cinema. The biographic mid-cult drama A Prominent Patient (Masaryk, dir. J. Ševčík) would appear to be the most successful in this regard – in terms of quality but also the number of awards. It is a professionally unusually mastered off-shoot of Hollywood representatives of this genre which, moreover, ushers in an important historical theme. However, the filmmakers were not able to resist clichés, not even trivial attempts to create a metaphor – by accident again largely associated with water. The repeat motif of the tempestuous ocean completes the dramatic atmosphere of the film and helps to render it comprehensible for the less perceptive viewer. A Prominent Patient remains a local work within the global context, even though English is spoken in the film to a quite unusual extent, but it is definitely an above-average work within the Czech and Slovak Republics as regards the depiction of critical moments of our national history (in this case the relation between Jan Masaryk and Edvard Beneš at the time of the Munich Agreement).

The sequel to the popular series about Spievankovo is a totally different type of film. It already occupies a stable position in Slovak audiovision even despite this being a series of films which are regularly denied support from the Slovak Audiovisual Fund. What is positive about the entire project is that progress is visible in it and its latest instalment Spievankovo and Queen Harmonia (Spievankovo a kráľovná Harmónia, dir. D. Novotná) makes a far more harmonious and professional impression than did the earlier ones. The combination of the peculiar acting expression of the project’s authors and professional actors does not harm it either. The gender stereotypes remain, but they are amusingly disrupted here and there and, instead of getting to know professions, the authors enter the more neutral territories of musical instruments and styles. The film has weaker and stronger episodes, constructs and performances. Many melodies and arrangements look as if they were adopted from the children’s musical programme Golden Gate (Zlatá brána), while others react in a quite humorous manner to various musical genres and styles. However, all in all, the film does not leave the impression of any greater theft of motifs from other films than, for instance, All or Nothing.

Detour on the Path to Perfect Illusion (Obchádzka na ceste k dokonalej ilúzii) was literally a surprise last year, albeit not a positive one. It was not made by a professional filmmaker and it did not receive any support from system sources. Unlike some other attempts to make an amateur full-length film, such as the cult title Nothing Bleeds Forever (Nič nekrváca večne), the author of this film does not make an attempt at irony, and certainly not self-irony; on the contrary, it is intended absolutely seriously despite failing to master the basic rules of film language. And its focus on alienation, cheating, deception is also serious, even existential. The film also quite obviously draws on the style and acting stylisation of the new wave and combines it with a pinch of Lynch. However, its attempts at metaphors border on embarrassment (for instance the repeat motif of a steamboat) and though it creates an expectation of an important punchline that would resolve everything, it does not offer any.

Among the excellent or at least interesting representatives of art film (Nina, Little Harbour but also Out), an attempt to make a world-class mid-cult (A Prominent Patient), non-systematic attempts to make art, a block of songs for children and romantic comedies, several other films were made last year, where the filmmakers tried to link their artistic ambitions mostly with popular genres or at least bizarre humour. These were mainly films with socially urgent themes, although no other Slovak film managed to demonstrate an illusion of influencing social events to the extent of the cleverly deployed Kidnapping. In short, Kidnapping (Únos, dir. M. Čengel Solčanská) established a precedent despite reacting belatedly to the theme of Mečiar’s amnesties and, moreover, in a markedly tendentious manner, as the story of Róbert Remiáš’s murder is not only likened to the story of Christ on the cross (with his mother as Virgin Mary and the journalist investigating the case as Mary Magdalene) but it is also presented as part of the fight between two specific political camps – the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH).

If Kidnapping lures audiences with the noir atmosphere of the story of crime in the highest circles, The Line (Čiara) by Peter Bebjak, who previously displayed noir positions in The Cleaner (Čistič), is a gangster movie obscuring these positions to the benefit of Eastern Slovak exoticism, which is mediated more by kitschy exotic music than by image. This is unfortunate, as the film broaches the important topic of the derelict border region and it presents a more humane approach to the theme of fear of immigrants with even existential persuasiveness. Incidentally, this theme also appears in one of the stories of the omnibus film DOGG which re-introduces fear to Slovak cinema after several years without horror movies. The original set of stories has been adapted in the long-awaited project so as to better correspond to the current social-political situation. In particular, the first story Duet by Slavomír Zrebný is updated; as regards the invocation of fear, this story is the best and least obtrusively directed. Just as in The Line, the migration crisis is given room in the story, this time in connection with fear of terrorism. In addition, the second story (Viliam Csino’s Opus Dei) reacting to the legacy of the Slovak State corresponds to the social events of the past years, while the third and fourth stories attract interest more by their timeless themes and the effort to move from concern for national values to the issue of transnationality. Out of the four stories, the third story Grassvater is the one that tries least to invoke fear by traditional horror or dystopic action film means. This story might make fans of the little-known experimental filmmaker Enrik Bistika happy, but it is least related to the overall concept of the omnibus film, mainly because, instead of invoking fear, it invokes loathing, even aversion. The last story Game directed by Jonáš Karásek is a dystopian story on the extreme consequences of the reality show trend. It captivates with references to video games and classical film dystopias from Metropolis to Blade Runner, or Gilliam’s Brazil, but, in particular, with its harsh ideas and even neurotic pace.

It is not just the last two stories of the omnibus film DOGG that are characterised by the effort to move toward the disconcerting current effects of globalisation or even to some exoticism of transnationality – including the use of foreign language (German in Grassvater and an invented language in Game giving the impression of “universality”). We can find similar features in György Kristóf’s début Out, which erodes the dominance of the Slovak language that we are accustomed to in Slovak films. The film’s main character speaks mainly Hungarian and only starts to speak Slovak when he arrives in Latvia where he tries to communicate with the local people in a kind of Slavic gobbledegook.

In addition to more confident work involving other languages, several of last year’s films are also characterised by being set in other countries and some of them are ineligible to compete for a “being Slovak” status. A Prominent Patient which received many Sun in a Net awards is spoken mostly in English and Filthy (Špina) – the last film that I am going to mention – is, in turn, a Czech majority film but made by a Slovak director (Tereza Nvotová) with predominantly Slovak actors. The film has a confident expression and, even though it is a début, it is more balanced and more compact than for instance Out – but it contains fewer surprises. Not only with its theme and choice of actress in the main role who by chance also appeared in a similar type of role in the début by the Klein Svoboda spouses Little Feather (Pirko), but especially with its conciseness which is, surprisingly, only connected with some illogical motivations (for instance the sudden change in the relation of the main character’s brother to his favourite teacher). Despite all this, it is one of last year’s better films.

The feature films screened in cinemas in 2017 are not only diverse in terms of their genre and quality, but also interconnected by common or similar metaphors and motifs. From the water that provides the illusion of integrity and transcendence but also (un)safety, up to seeking out ways of transcending the limits of what is still a Slovak film – not only at the level of production but also for language, quality and themes.

— text: Jana Dudková —
photo:
Film Europe Media Company