Jan Švankmajer, Lunacy / Šílení (Czech Republic, 2005)

Lunacy is experiemental in form but not avante guarde in the sense that there is little dedication or conversation with human society as a whole. Švankmajer seems to be not at all concerned with the sputters of society. Instead, the symbolism that has culminated in his mind is released and the result is Lunacy--slight pun intended. There is no realism to speak of because Švankmajer is interested in the spiritual or abstract. If we are looking for some kind of reality, we are expected to look beyond the images on screen because they only vaguely refer to familiar things. We must thumb through our own memories to compensate for the incoherent images on the screen if we want this film to make sense. This is where interpretation becomes key. Švankmajer himself expresses preference for individual interpretations of his film, but he seems to reserves critical elitism for himself.

With this film, Švankmajer documents sessions of auto-therapy, which could be called surrealism. Through the opening scene, Švankmajer sets contextual grounds for his film and introduces his art family which includes Edgar Allen Poe and the Marquis de Sade, the latter being a main character in the film who narrates this first scene. The film's blasphemy and subversiveness is also credited to Sade, according to the opening speech. The beginning sequence is a little pretext for us to mull over, as if Švankmajer grounds his argument or justification-- which becomes the driving force for the rest of the film.

"Art is dead," Švankmajer expresses through the narrator. It is safe to say that this film participates in an active debate on the function of art. I think Švankmajer's Marquis de Sade during the opening sequence was responding to modernist modes of art, in which there is a conscious project to remove art from the day-to-day and instead reserve its space outside of or high above the world. Art is removed from reality in order to provide commentary and often simultaneously contribute to the tradition of art by alluding to past achievers. As a response, artists address the self-consciousness requisite of art as creating problems for the liberation of individual imagination because there are now limits imposed on the artist should he or she sign onto this very specific project.

So then the solution is to destroy 'art.' In other words denounce the present point of the evolution of art, however, that may be interpreted. I'd venture to say that there is infinite ways to argue Lunacy is similar to work from Dada artists because both are in conversation with the Enlightenment rigor of reason and logic (leading the world into WWI and massive devastation, not to mention the horrors of WWII with respect to the holocaust). Svankmajer seems to feel the shock that spread over the art community during WWI as the Dada movement flourished. He envisions the world of today as a horrific one that combines the very worst aspects of absolute freedom and punishment/control. This theme is apparent throughout the film. Švankmajer brings out the ridiculousness and utter grotesqueness of unrestrained indulgence as a group of people eat cake at a dining room table, with an over persecuted Jesus statue in the background

We see super close-up shots of the diner guests smearing the cake all over their mouths. The heightened soundtrack captures every nuance of sound coming from the devourers. Another obvious point of unrestrained chaos is the madhouse sequences where we see the chaotic 'treat patients as equals' ordinance in play. The camera lens peeks out a window to record a lunatic whose fetish is hitting things. He violently knocks another man on the head with a shovel. Control and punishment is shown in a horrific light. The madhouse is run by a man whose correctional method is a kind of compulsive mind/body balance quackery to likes of Dr. Benjamin Rush. People whose minds are overdeveloped to varying levels of insanity can be cured with affliction to the body which will then bring the mind back in check. A man has his eyes stabbed out. Another has his tongue removed. Needless to say, Švankmajer is successful when turning his audience off on punishment.

Švankmajer breaks the traditions down as if to refuse any requisite or project which posits a goal or obligation for art. However, like some modernists, such as T.S. Eliot, Švankmajer does include self-conscious elements which draws attention to the film as art by alluding to other artists with the Marquis de Sade character, elements of Sade's writing, the elements of Poe stories, and other references to art. This added, for me, a slightly annoying element of pomp to the film. I felt, while watching this film, a little but like I did when trying to read T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" without ever having read Dante or any of the other works Eliot plays on, as if Eliot has expectations of his readers and those who did not get the memo to read entire body of literature from era, are simply left out of the circle of knowledge (classic Modernist project). But there was pure enjoyment to be had when watching how the film poses itself as the worst dream I've ever had; chocked with humiliation, rape, mutilation, blasphemy, infidelity, one dimensional characters chasing me with a straight jacket, and disgusting slabs of meat writhing around doing human things. Maybe it's a matter of taste.

I argue that Lunacy is a successful example of postmodernism because the narrative interrupts itself and effectively draws our attention to the exhausted plot structures of traditional film. There is a parallel story that vaguely relates to the primary narrative but in total abstraction. The camera cuts to scenes of eye balls, tongues, and other unidentified slabs of meat, dancing, having sex, drinking beer, telling their own story, perhaps as a morbid gimmickry. The film also mocks old-fashioned allusion and reference (and quite literally. The Marquis de Sade sits at an artist's desk directing a tableau vivant of Delacroix's "Liberty Leading the People"--so I guess this was a popular thing to do in France, but filming the event too is something like meta-mockery!) Concurrently it mixes time periods and artistic styles, refusing politics and any active agency in society; all of which effectively distinguishes the film as an autonomous work of art rather and not another cultural relic. The setting confuses and disorients to, I think, the point of pleasure because it becomes clear early on in the film that there is no specific setting or logical progression from one time period to another, only a layering or collage of time that doesn't really draw on the plot in any logical way. The spectator is on a playground of time periods spanning from 18th century Enlightenment Philosophy and the French Revolution, to technologies of the 21st century. We see horse drawn carriages, trains, cars, 18th century costumes, archaic methods of punishment, modern-looking lunatic institutions etc. There are references to various historic stories such as Narcissus, Oedipus Rex, King Arthur stories. The film is a network of tropes from Western culture. It refutes knowledge, replacing logic with abstraction that confounds combined with somewhat nauseating images (esp. for vegetarians).

Danis Tanović, No Man's Land / Ničija Zemlja (Bosnia, 2001)

No Man's Land is set during the 1993 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tanović's film is a cynical absurdest representation of humanity which focuses primarily on two enemies of war; plus a man trapped on a mine, an intruding British reporter with hearts for eyes for a UN officer, and the useless French UN officer, among a few other minor characters. The condition of the Bosnian war is acted out in a Beckett-esque minimalist drama ending with unresolved pessimism. The Serbs are represented by a naive soldier, Nino, (played by Rene Bitorajac) and then we have a temperamental macho Čiki, (played by Branko Đurić) to stand in for the Bosniaks. The film begins with a sense of peace. The morning is sunny and the camera collects beautiful shots of the landscape along with little sound or dialogue giving the scene as overall calmness despite of the obvious war environment. We are introduced to the main character Čiki as the camera closes in on his face, as if to personify war.

Čiki and Nino meet in the ditch soon after Čiki shoots Nino's companion for making a game out of endangering a man's life-- the commander drags the body of this man, who turns out to be a dear friend of Čiki, over a jumping mine that detonates once the weight is lifted from it. The man, Cera, turns out to be alive. He wakes up from his unconscious state to discover that he is in the most absurd situation. If he moves ever so slightly in the wrong direction, he and Čiki, who refuses to leave his side, are dead. The animosity begins between the young Serb and the jumpy Čiki because of hasty assumptions about each other's intentions and backgrounds. Čiki assumes that Nino was in on the brutal game but as it turns out, Nino was just an inconsequential alter-boy not even informed of the commander's name. Čiki reveals his cruelty with his response to murder. Killing, to him, is of little value unless it happens to someone on his side of the fence. Killing from Čiki's perspective becomes a performance. Nino's experience with fatal weapons comes out when he shoots the fun by mistake--revealing his attempt to play the part of the army man. Despite of the relatively minimal murder rate (unlike, say, The Red and the White ) Tanović is throughly successful with his representation of war as absurd by nature, worsened by the failures of bureaucracy, and misrepresented in media. The focus on these particular men and their clashing personalities brings about an element of comedy.

The representation of the UN was illuminating. The blue smerfs show up long after Nino and Čiki nearly kill each other. In fact, they only show up after the two men show a little camaraderie (they discover that they both know the same girl). The failure and absurdity of bureaucracy is addressed with the French UN officer who shows up with supplies and food but is given orders to leave the men alone due to some abstract protocol from unnamed higher-ups (his direct supervisor is unwilling to investigate the situation because he has company--a sexy secretary). The comedy builds and builds. The man on the mine alone is absurd enough to laugh at. At one point a German "mine specialist" (the French mine squad was busy) shows up at the request of the UN officer. But since we already know that bureaucracy fails and hope is just a futile rebellion against an oppressive world in this film, it should not come as a surprise that the young "technician" shows up unprepared to detonate this particular type of mine.

The [British] media is another discipline deserving to be mocked. A promising Ms. Jane Livingston is the head reporter. We think she will provide the rest of the world with a window exposing the absurdity, but no. Again, a cynical artist [i.e. Tanović], is guaranteed to shoot down our sense of hope should we dare to have one. Livingston merely adds to the absurdity, since she is pressured by her supervisor to interview Cera, despite the danger, absurdity, and language block, she manages to get in: "Who started it," "How do you feel" and various other irrelevant and humiliating questions. The entire crew arrives oblivious to the danger. The enormous crew is fussing over and surrounding these three men, two of which don't even understand or speak the language that the cameramen need to film. I think it was Nino who brings up Rwanda-- pointing out the nature of the media with its underlying biases and political agendas, since the hype is concentrated around a bully, a boy trying to look tough, and a man laying on a jumping mine whose immediate concern is shitting his pants and listening to the other men's annoying stories -- and not the genocide taking place in Rwanda at that time. But at least we do get to see a little love story opening up between Livingston and the French UN guy before the film closes on its fatalistic note, with the camera looking down on Cera, as it pulls away, suspended on a crane, leaving him hopelessly alone on the mine (cue heavy music and dramatic camera angle to tells us that we should be sad that the character will eventually die; and not laugh as he will be forced to shit in his pants had he not already done so).

[An aside] I did't see how somebody couldn't just have carefully slid a hand under Cera's back to pull the mine out from under him while holding the button down!

[Additionally] I thought stage direction for No Man's Land as a theatrical performance would be interesting to look at, so I found this youtube clip...

Emir Kusturica, Underground / Podzemlje (Yugoslavia, 1995)

Undergroundis the farcical result of Kusturica's critique of communist systems. Kusturica 's underlying assessment is a departure from Serbia's popular veneration of Tito and his neutral government. Instead, for Kusturica, Tito's weak presidency is a crucial figure in Yugoslavia's political entropy. The Marko character is Tito's right hand man. We see him at Tito's side in the real life clips mixed with Kusturica's film to funnel the social-political reality into the fictional narrative. As an extension of Tito in some sense, Marko literally pens the people up inside of his elaborately crafted illusion of danger in order to exploit them for their labor with the construction of weapons. The people kept under the house are a comical representation of Serbian culture in microcosm. An extravagant wedding celebration takes place and all of the guests lavishly enjoy food and drink, despite the perceived danger above ground. At this point, Kusturica comments on Serbian culture as a persistently positive people, perhaps living in a delusion of perpetual triumph despite the political environment.

The underground situation reveals Kusturica's critique of communist systems. Communism functions by falsely assuring security to the people by ways of equal distribution of labor and prestige spreading out evenly across the professions to give the people a sense of "Brotherhood and Unity" in the sense that structurally, there is a mutual dependence between the people's state and the state's workers. One for all and all for one. (Robin Hood was an early socialist) Communism tends to put charismatic leaders forward as the sunny face for the system. Meanwhile the people are striped of any prestige in their respective fields and exploited for their labor to promote military strategies that in turn makes covert adjustments to the land while keeping the people in their place depending on how the ethnocentric authorities feel at the given moment). The supposed lateral organization of labor and contribution to the state is in fact organized in the way in which resources are concentrated at the center. All for one and horrible scratchy toilet paper, a couple rolls a month, for all. It can be said that people living in communist systems in Europe were in a sense kept underground supporting the terrain above them; which in turn functioned as a ceiling that tops individual economic growth at the level just about equal to the earthworms.

Kusterica's adoration of Serbian culture can be surmised with the amazing band playing Serbian folk songs throughout the film. Similar to Who is Singing Over There the musicians' were both in and removed from the action, and in Underground, as replacement for the soundtrack. During a scene were the men playing pool break out into one of the best fight scenes I've ever watched in film; the band actually reacts to the men, dodging bodies as the continue to provide the film with its soundtrack. At one point, on the cruise ship, a character leaves to piss, and the band takes off after him as a bathroom entourage. There is never a moment where music plays and there is no musician in sight. Perhaps a slight rebel against capitalism, Kusturica refuses to let music take a consumer capitalist role in his film because their is no extended assembly line kind of process involved, (i.e. hiring a band, signing the band onto a commercial label, recording the music in a sound studio, producing and mixing an album, promoting the album, the band having been heard by film makers, getting signed on to the film making project, mixing the soundtrack for the film, and imposing the layer of sound during editing) --his process that separates the laborer from his art, and estranging the consumers or audience from products or art they enjoy. The creators of the music make up part of the film's community. They are both working, as they provide soundtrack to the film, and entertaining the people in the film, and we-- the audience. The musicians function like the people underground who also labor, dance, and drink simultaneously emphasizing the survival of the Serbian sense of community.

The people are kept in the basement for 15 years (although they think it's only been ten since Marko slowed the clocks down-- an interesting performance of the regressive neutrality of Tito's government and communist states in general). Once they are freed, the situation begins to breakdown as can be seen in the heavy handed tragedy sequence. However, the people continue to dance, the band playing the same high energy folk song, as the very ground below them breaks off more and more, much like the frequent partitioning of the former Yugoslavia.

And now: Serbian music (Slovodan Salijevic - Kalasnjikov )

Ildikó Enyedi, My Twentieth Century / Én XX. századom, Az (Hungary, 1989)

Enyedi's My Twentieth Century is an essay on social change at the turn of the 19th century. Despite of the fervor during The Belle Époque in Europe, due to the rush of inventions that revolutionized communication, transportation, and science; the biological producers are of course women. Enyedi takes the focus back towards the creating role of women with the birth of twin girls at the start of the film. Enyedi takes on a polemic edge because My Twentieth Century has its critical eye slanted towards the condition of women and the relationship between man and the natural world during this supposedly positive moment in history.

This enchanting golden age was also a transitional period, when Europe changed far quicker than the cultural comprehension process. Magical realism, which parallels the hypnotic displays of Edison's light bulb, is tinted with irony. We get a glance at the ills of modernity from the start with the two impoverished children selling toothpicks in the snowy urban street.

We hear of optimism from all fields--from the publication of Freud's work revolutionizing our understanding of the human psyche to Einstein's publications revolutionizing physics to the invention of the railroad and telegraph--the latter two having annihilated our classical understanding of space and time. But as we know today, among the many aftermaths of modernity (i.e. world war, the atom bomb, the Holocaust, etc.); the environment suffers greatly and women had no autonomy at that time. And of course, dregs of that moment are still very apparent today.

The narrative carries us along the time on and around New Years day 1900. Two babies are born and are later separated. Played by the same actress, we later see the women grown up living dichromatic lifestyles. Dora is a harlot and Lili is the other kind of libertine, active in political endeavors and somewhat of an anarchist. These two roles are a good fit into the transitional period, both adaptive in their own ways. Dora capitalizes on her femininity and she is quite the successful entrepreneur. Lili, the innocent half, after having been seduced by an oblivious former patron of Dora, transitions a bit herself into the terrorist, mirroring the destructiveness of a society in transition. The binary theme is a reoccurring suggestion throughout. But the narrative culminates in confusion and irony, which suggests that the film would rather subvert, not reinforce, the limited binary perspective of patriarchal society. The linear progress of scientific advancement is addressed with the cyclical structure of the film, beginning and ending with the birth of twins. The animals add an additional layer to the narrative, telling their stories of exploitation and echoing binary opposition: man versus animal.

The narrative style is non traditional, buoyant, and self-interrupting. Scenes of commentary are provided by the operatic stars in the sky, giggling and whispering about the world. The other statements made of the world are of a Hungarian speaking Edison, claiming that nature is at the service of man, who shapes it in his own favor. Even women, in some way, are shaped by man. In the fun house, the girls pose the question: Which one of us do you prefer? His response is both which suggests that society prefers both the innocent virgin and the whore. However, on the role for women in society seems to have some possibility for change, according to Enyedi. The last frame sores through a river ending in a big open lake or sea under a clear sky which suggests a return to the natural and the possibilities from which essential sublime from which beauty can spring.

Krzystof Kieslowski, A Short Film About Killing / Krótki film o zabijaniu (Poland, 1988)

This short film about killing is an extended part of the series of ten shorts by Kieslowski cataloging his renditions of the ten commandments. Despite of the nature of the series, Kieslowski tones down the Christianity, with only a brief glimpse of faith near the end when a priest blesses the convicted boy at his execution. The film is not meant to be a religious didactic but instead an objective or anecdotal sonnet with underlying moral anxiety. Aesthetically, its visual form takes precedence over the films content. The director uses weird filters which obscure parts of the frame and add a sickly greenish tint to enhance the grit and griminess of the action. The symbolism does not work metaphorically or as allusions. Rather, the lens lingers on absurd things like a cat hanging from a noose and a cartoonish devil head as if to ridicule symbolism and blasé foreshadowing.

Another aesthetic point is the sound track. The somber symphonic strings ad weight to the film's emotion which is otherwise scant. Posing itself as an observation or cinematic study of the cruelty of humanity, the audience gets a an unsympathetic perspective without additional romanticism or exaggeration. This is not leisurely entertainment but critical, harsh, and pushing for honesty.

The film is a study of two murders and an idealistic new lawyer. The unlikeable young hooligan murders the unlikeable old taxi driver during an excruciating 15 minute scene that vividly plants itself in your memory. Again, no room for sympathies, lots of space for wallowing in filth and coldblooded murder. However, Kieslowski preserves his unique brush strokes with the intensity of color, contrast, composition, and the use of filters to give real-life grit an artistic perspective in film. With regard to the murders, nothing is left out. The camera expects us to appreciate every gruesome detail and emotion, from start to finish, from head to toe, from inside out. If we can bring ourselves to sympathize at all, it may be the moments where the young killer wishes, if only I had done things that way instead of this, further insisting on wallowing, on comprehension. If film is the best medium to inspire action among the masses, as Walter Benjamin suggested in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Kieslowski seems to be playing on this possibility by directing his audience to face what happens in their own society, to feel Poland's moral anxiety it this time, ourselves.

The idealistic lawyer, fresh out of law school, is a figure one can easily identify with. His is the only psychology the spectator is privy to. He is compassionate, persistent, assertive, handsome, and perhaps the apple of the fortune tellers eye. Ok, maybe a little heavy handed here. It seems that the suggestion here is identify with the goodhearted lawyer. I was sold, especially after the final scene of the film which dwells on the pain of our sexy lawyer and the closeup of his teary eyes. The spectator is alienated from the remaining characters. No psychology whatsoever behind the young boy's murder. No investigation of the crime and very little of the court scene. We forget to care about those points since the action on camera is so heavy and demanding and our eyes and ears soak up the beautiful tones and strings. We do get a little background when the film is ready to stir up our anxieties. The boy is only 20 years old, his precious younger sister killed in an accident for which he is somewhat to blame, he expresses huge regret and we watch him hysterically breakdown in despair. If that wasn't enough to upset us, the chilling unforgettable sequence at the end adds additional twists of the knife. I felt as if I was challenged to act by the end of this film.

Goran Paskaljevic, Special Treatment / Poseban tretman (Yugoslavia, 1980)

Paskaljevic's Special Treatment covers, or uncovers, some of the ways in which authoritarian power functions as it simultaneously ridicules the central figure of power. Sounds like typical bar talk but this topic may not be surprising when sketching similarities between Special Treatment and Who's Singing Over There? ( Dusan Kovacevic is the screenwriter for both films ) Both Who'se Singing Over There and Special Treatment extract and ridicule the dark sides of fascist communism through the frame of a voyage, one being a bus ride and the other, a pseudo-psychological voyage, by bus and otherwise, through treatment respectively.

Dr. Ilić has developed a new treatment for addiction and he takes several alcoholics with him on a retreat. At the center of his theory is the catch-phrase will-power. But his intention to help his patients develop their will-power turns into his imposition of goals and wishes onto the people. His methodology is appropriately critiqued by some of the patients who blame the others for submitting and being the doctor’s parrot.

At the start of the bus ride to the treatment center, Dr. Ilić begins to stink of Nazi mentality, and the emission increases as the film continues. Dr. Ilić regenerates his own legacy by handing down a Red Riding Hood sort of life to his son. He actually reads Red Riding Hood to the boy on the bus and later alludes to the story when advising his son to stick to the path after the boy had picked flowers to give to Jelena. Recall that the story suggests a straight path ideal where the course of life is laid out before you and your part is to simply walk the line, never mind about imagination or whim. The therapeutic treatment for people then, on a societal level, is crushing those groups, or the red riding hoods everywhere, who presumably cannot walk the straight path.

Purity is of course politicized by fascist governments to make essential the hierarchical assortment of the wealthy and powerful, while degrading the less privileged, the foreigner, or whichever other. Dr. Ilić, a lover of nature and classical music, insists that his patients eat apples because they are wholesome and therapeutic. He imposes his utopia onto his patients and any breaking of rules, or straying, are obvious signs of moral decay. The utopian vision takes on ridiculous forms as acted out by the patients. Dr. Ilić has his patients running around flapping their arms because doves symbolize freedom. In a weird confessional theater, directed by Dr. Ilić, the patients recount painful histories as if to purge all of the bad while exaggerating the negative outcomes of alcoholism for all to fear. But its obvious that the personal narratives are far more complex than Dr. Ilić's fable making theater allows. The suicide confession takes on the theme of domestic violence, but the actor is quickly shut up and redirected to the actual source of her alcoholism: her underdeveloped will-power.

The delusional quasi-utopian theory Dr. Ilić envisions not only degrades his patients when played out in reality (especially during the slightly painful-to-watch play scene), it masks his own corruption. His intentions turn out to be of a rather selfish nature. He gathers up the alcoholics to cure them with his plan for the betterment of society. However, he is in fact the sneaky wizard of Oz who exploits his patients so that he will one day rule over Winkie Country, or the Medical Field.

Slobodan Sijan, Who Is Singing Over There? Ko to tamo peva? (Yugoslavia, 1980)

Roll up, Roll up for the mystery tour!

Who is That Singing Over There, written by Dušan Kovačević and directed by Slobodan Sijan, was an instant classic in Serbia after its release in 1981. The film explores clashes between a group of character types riding a bus to Belgrade on April 5, 1941, in the former Yugoslavia. To a Serbian, the date would suggest the film's conclusion because, commonly known in Serbia, the German Luftwaffe's surprise raid of Belgrade showered the city with bombs on April 6-7 that year which killed at least 17,500 people. Despite the looming tragedy, we see that Kovačević takes on a comedic posture with his eccentric character types. A couple of Roma travelers meet the bus at its departure and follow the passengers along their journey. The two boys function as a chorus, addressing the camera as they provide additional commentary through song.

Out on a country road somewhere in Serbia, we see the characters immediately clash as they board the bus to Belgrade. The bus becomes somewhat of a microcosm of Yugoslavia's ethnic landscape under Tito's rule until the the early 80s. Yugoslavia was the grab bag country for an assortment of ethnic groups which were all unified under Tito's policies, but broke off, often violently, into separate 'ethnically clean' countries soon after Tito's death in 1980. If we consider each character type as a representation of a general innate group of characteristics specific to an individual ethnic group, our laughing response to their tensions is somewhat insensitive to the violent struggles for independence post Yugoslavia.

Each quirky passenger has a unique reason to arrive in Belgrade. They endure one another and the dangerous voyage only to find that the trip is futile. The bombs become the ultimate neutralizer among the disputing passengers. "Kill humanity to make a new one," sing the gypsy musicians in the blazing rubble following a frame of white. The gypsies allude to Nazi fascist policies to terminate anyone not in their quality adjusted life years, as it were (i.e. the ill, elderly, non-German, etc.). The gypsies have some what of an intermediary role in Who's Singing Over There. They interact with the characters. They even figure quite central to the film's climactic points with the brutality directed towards them just before raid sequence. On the other hand, they address the viewers directly as the provide additional commentary as it were, but also serving the audience with entertainment, despite of the cynical messages in the songs. The line "Kill humanity to make a new one" is both an observation but demonstrates keen incite on the state of things since we know that about 40 years later, Yugoslavia would experience its own brutal "starting anew." This line might also conjure various mythical deluges or other narratives of massive destruction followed by starting anew. Who's Singing Over There is monumental because of the way in which Kovačević and Sijan tell a very specific story about Yugoslavia's personality meanwhile colossal myth-like narratives are asserted. The camera mediates scenes that at once connect the audience to A) the immediate political context of Yugoslavia after the Nazis raid Belgrade B) a broader sense of ancient or inherent conflict between ethnic groups on that particular plot of land, and C) we are guided along a mythical plot of tragedy and near apocalyptic destruction.

And now: The Bealtes

Dusan Makavejev, WR: Mysteries of the Organism / W.R. - Misterije organizma (Yugoslavia, 1971)

Dusan Makavejev's WR: Mysteries of the Organism is the most precise manifestation of Makavejev's personal perspective of socio-political liberation, according to Gary Morris' review. The WR could refer to Wilhelm Reich, a psychoanalyst convicted of medical quackery for a form of therapy he developed based on his invention in the 1930s of orgone energies. Reich became a cult figure in the 60s as his publications resurfaced. Makavejev, interested in the parallels between Reich's practices and his own visions of a utopia that merges sexual and economic liberation in the socio-political sphere, invested himself into the project of creating a poetic documentary weaving various aspects of sexuality and socialist ideals of the 60s.

The film is a juxtaposition of seven plots. The opening scene introduces the Orgone plot. The camera zooms in on unidentified hands passing an egg yolk around in a circle. The yolk breaks and the hands begin to interweave sensually, mired by the ooze. The action demonstrates a large theme in Reich's work. He picked up on the Freudian notion of sexual repression and decided that the body should be considered an outlet for the subconscious. The Reich plot takes a documentary form showing clips of interviews with Reich himself and clips of the Orgone theory as it transforms from physical therapy to mystical therapy.

Makavejev wheedles his audience into seeing a connection between socialism and sexuality. (For more on conceit, see the metaphysical love poem The Flea, by John Donne-- in which the speaker uses a tick bite metaphor to seduce a woman.) Immersing ourselves into the documented progress of Reich's strange therapy, Makavejev massages our imaginations while our minds begin to anticipate facts. Eisenstein's discusses meaning as a derivation from clashing images. The film's montage form and helps us extract Makavejev's personal socio-political hopes by noting how the separate plots are orchestrated and associated by juxtaposition.

Speaking of poetry, one could consider the composition of the film like that of a poem. It connects both reality with fiction, lacing the two with metaphors, and these elements together effectively occult a narrative or perspective, with the camera lens replacing the speaker of the poem. Makavejev extracts our emotions with vivid sexuality (i.e. Jim Buckley's onscreen hand job), excruciatingly awkward therapy sessions (i.e. a woman's arduous reenactment of her own birth), and various other moving moments, to exchange the imagery we imagine through poetic language with imagery on a screen for our own assemblage of language.

I think the perspectives both Makavejev and Reich are bigoted. Despite his championing of physical releases of repressed desires, it is known that Reich expressed conservative views about sexuality. He frowned upon masturbation and he was homophobic. Makavejev addresses homophobia with the Jackie Curtis biographical moments. (She was a famous transgendered poet, play write, and film star who is accredited with starting the glam rock movement) and he celebrates cross-gendered lifestyles laced with a vague mocking of capitalist materialism (i. e. she walks down the street in full glittery drag in a scene dubbed with radio advertisements for various beauty products and other consumer goods). Additionally, Makavejev shoots Curtis riding in a car's backseat, as she explains, in emotional detail, her first gay foray. Here, Makavejev captures the sense of sexual awakening. The scene could also function as decoy for egalitarian sexuality on Makavejev's behalf. Anticipating our assumptions that Makavejev and Reich have similar reservations about sexuality, the film included a refutation for those seeking elements of bigotry against homosexuality.

I saw a tint of bigotry in the film. Admittedly, I was armed with a conviction that most films addressing sexuality, regardless of genre, tend to invest in the celebration of the female libido, or the problem of it's inaccessibility with respect to plot advancement. Disproving my assumptions could have made for a more entertaining film; oh well I guess.

The Organon therapy sequences focused on scantly clan woman reenacting sexual their memories whereas the men of the therapy group, dressed in less revealing clothing, were shot participating in breathing exercises. So here, Makavejev highlights an objectification of women as Reich had practiced.

Furthermore, the femme fatal figure, which inspired a cultural repression of sexuality by conservative socialists, is debunked, overtly, as an inherent characteristic of women by Makavejev through the fictional political rally scene. We hear anti-institutional outcries such as bourgeoisie marriage is licensed prostitution. However, the charismatic leader of the rally is a feisty cute girl dressed in a sexy military uniform, which subtly conjures the femme fatal figure but removes her from an overtly sexual context. Instead the seductress is liberated but as a source of the crowd's energetic outbursts in political rally. The girl becomes a simulacrum for the femme fatal, bringing the myth back into consideration and not debunking it after all. She seduces men as a political activist which holds onto the idea of women as seductresses. Rallies for economic liberation become a cosmetic for the encouragement of female sexual liberation. The film even relies upon the female libido as the core or initiator of political revolt, as if addressing supporters of conservative socialism: Bind our women from willing themselves into sex with us and expect a revolt! Male sexual liberation arguably completes the couplet of sexual liberation in the film. However; it appears to be trivialized or somewhat of a novelty because heterosexual male sexuality is mocked or serves as advancement for comedic points. The Tuli Kupferberg (of the Slovenian experimental music group, Laibach) scene coupled with the the Stalin mugshot suggests a mocking of Stalin and the tyrannical polities he represents. However, the joke facilitates simulated male self-satisfaction with a gun, to suggest comedy and effectively mocks male sexuality to make its sardonic point. If Makavejev agrees that the liberation of sexuality, both male and female, as a progressive political stance which leads to a happy society, then wouldn't being referred to as a dick head be somewhat of a compliment?

And now: Laibach

Miklós Janscó, The Red and the White (Hungary, 1968)

It is hard to talk about Jancsó's, The Red and the White because, first of all, there has been little written about it, and second, Jancsó participates in the task of creating a film that is devoid of meaning. The film engenders a some-what mystical experience because we respond viscerally, but we are denied objects of sentiment or obvious symbolic webs to organize. Instead, we can talk about what the film leaves out. Unlike The Shop on Main Street, The Red and the White does not hold our hand as we walk down the sign-posted street which leads to the revelation at the end, turning us into the director's disciples who spread the word, and of course, help. Nor is it a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey venture to will ourselves through muddy visual aphorisms, pasting our sentiments onto faces, to then await our hard-earned applause for having figured something out. Our intuitive responses are extracted by a more essential or mythological representation of tragedy and destiny. Jancsó makes it difficult to layer on formulas of genre X plus era Y with social issue B and A subtracted by C's bias, etc. to reach the assortment of meanings that each pseudo-mathematician prefers. This could be one reason that explains why so little has been written about the film. Such a mode can be quite an advantage to an artist attempting to provoke reaction on a more essential and humanistic level. Unfortunately, The Red and the White's universality didn't catch on when offered to the hands of the masses, unlike the paintings of Mark Rothko per se. According to Ian Johnston's review, Jancsó's films were more of a fad among critics in the 60s and 70s and he has since fallen into obscurity.

On to the film itself. The action is set primarily outdoors. The camera lens often considers vast landscapes including both sky and earth in its composition. In the opening scene, after a brief shot of text contextualizing the film, we see horseback riders charging in slowed motion. We know that two opposing parties are involved, the Reds (Soviet revolutionaries) and the Whites (counterrevolutionary czarists) but to which side the riders belong is indiscernible. The rest of the film leaves the distinction between the two sides ambiguous. In effect, there remains little room for contextual baggage to help us when choosing an enemy or hero. The following cut, as this film contains very few cuts, throws us into a sea of disconnected violence. A man is shot by another man, presumably because of the victim's Hungarian ethnicity, and he falls dead into a river. Moments similar to this, where indistinguishable men are killed by other indistinguishable men, are some of the examples of the film drawing out instant intuitive responses to drama.

Another scene shows a man staggering around in an open field with the towering acorn shaped roofs behind him. The camera is pulled way back from the moment and all we can make out is the imperative state of a stammering body in ecstasy.

Another version of trance-like rapture is the love between the beautiful nurse and the younger man. We see them interact in the clinic. They share a sensual moment following a voiced-over casual conversation without lip movements. The pretension of love professing is a trifle. The same kind of telepathic connection that The Shop on Main Street conveyed in the dream/heaven sequences can be noted here between the lovers. The encounter is something like a basic and essential recognition between two beings, but not in a removed fantastic place, like Kadar's version. It it happens right there in the clinic, mid-work day and among the sick; no vague idealized super-world that reaffirms individual conjectures of the unknowable that tend to clash, like the tragedy of Red and White (they say pink is the most irritating color to the human psyche). It functions sort of like a mysticism for the masses, bringing people together as we share instant recognition with a little help from Jancsó's film.

The concluding cut brings us back to the direct clash between the Red and the White. One cohort sings and marches towards the opposition, which takes the form of a great man-wall silhouette at the foot of a natural wall of hills. The singers shoot down a couple of men but are vastly outnumbered and all die within seconds when the shadowy men turn to face them, ammunition in hand. The camera places our eyes on the scene from the god-like perspective and we are at once divorced from the event but react on a deep level. The landscape is like the most sublime vaudeville demonstrating mother nature's talents. A chunk of peninsular land juts out into a sea. The hills become a closing eyelid as the shadowy men disappear behind them. This scene is so powerful that I almost begin to understand how hurricane Jancsó pummeled through the critical sphere only to be suppressed soon after. Maybe he'll make a comeback.

Elmar Klos and Ján Kadár, The Shop on Main Street /Obchod na korze(Czechoslovakia, 1966)

An arguably unromantic portrayal of anti-Semitic policies in Czechoslovakia on the eve of 1942, The Shop on Main Street, directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, is a film about the Holocaust shot in the Slovakian language with occasional lines in Yiddish. In the spirit of emotional affect invoked by the essence of the Holocaust, my personal dissatisfaction with this film is the bias of the response that follows.

The opening shot begins with a stork landing on the roof of a building. An eerie disjointed orchestra plays as the god-like camera lens tilts down, looking onto the bustling town below. Here, the directors introduce the forthcoming perversity that gradually materializes throughout the duration of the film. The omnipresent camera watching from the heavens offers a sense of fatality befalling the happy town. We are introduced to modest Brtko, his faithful dog Esens, his nagging wife, and their scant means of life. Looming in the background of the film is the ongoing construction of an ugly white pyramid-shaped tower, no taller than a three-story building, bearing what looks like the Cross of Lorraine or the motif of Slovakia's coat of arms and referred to colloquially by the townspeople as Babylon, or by the Nazi-ophiles as the eternal monument that shines on (because of the flashy spot-lights attached to it). Again, the cadence of looming evil accents the action.

The Brtko house welcomes guests for an indulgent evening of expensive food and way-too-much alcohol, with the theory that any horrific or harsh past (economic suffering, or perhaps anxieties caused by fearing, or wiping out, the Jewish neighbors); it can all be drowned in a sea of rum. Kadár and Klos condition us to dislike Brtko's wife. Evelyn Brtko, after having been a little materialistic and domineering towards her kind-of-lazy husband, flirts with the brother in law. Later, the questionable Evelyn Brtko exposes her ugliness with a pernicious anti-Semitic comment directed towards the sweet old widow with rheumatism and delusions of security. Ah, hah!, we say as Kadar and Klos validate our intuition. (I admit, I wallowed in my vanity a little bit because this film makes me feel as clever as I'd like to think I am.)

A little on Mrs. Lautmann, the old Jewish shopkeeper. Our sympathies are clearly furrowed towards her action. She is motherly and generous, despite her poverty, towards Brtko, who is commissioned by Slovakia's Nazi puppet regime to take over her shop since she would be soon relocated to a camp where she will presumably perish. To twist the knife even more, her body is weakened because of old age, she is devout in her faith and traditions, occasionally speaking, singing, or reading religious texts in Yiddish, her shop's stock is nearly gone, she tells nostalgic stories of her happy childhood, all of her family is dead or far away, and furthermore, she thinks she's inherited money from her deceased husband but really the Jewish congregation secretly fundraises to support her.

Internment camp. A group in the internment camp. In the front stands Zoli, the famous dwarf clown of Budapest. More photographs documenting the Holocaust in Hungary can be found here.

Kadar briefly alludes to the dark aspects of modernity with the character, Piti Batchi. This quirky character feels a bit like a novelty as we are first introduced to the little energetic Piti Batchi (Even his name is fun to say, I jokingly think, in any language). This charming man's business is later replaced by the installation of a loud speaker. He then is left with nothing but his charm; turning him into the novelty our suspicion anticipated. How cruel to victimize the little guy, we (are supposed to) say. As the tower is nearing its completion, more and more cruelty is exposed in the town which prepares us for the concluding tragedy we should be shocked by (so much so that we might tell all of our friends). Another example is the moment Brtko strolls through the town on a beautiful day. He dons the gifted hat from Mrs. Lautmann. The anti-Semitic passerbys apparently recognize something Jewish about the hat and stare at Brtko with disgust. Antisemitism is infecting the town like a contagious disease.

Alcohol comes back into play as Brtko tries to protect our innocent Jewess, Mrs. Lautmann, who is oblivious to the congregation of Nazi-ophiles and cheering crowds outside her shop door. It's only when Brtko is drunk beyond coherence that Mrs. Lautmann, thinking aloud, gasps pogram, a Yiddish word referring to the violent raids of Jewish homes. Flip-flopping between saving Mrs. Lautmann at all costs and loosing hope, resorting to a it's either me or her attitude, the defeated victim of the system, Brtko, hangs himself (with the rope that clued us in at the beginning of the film), following the ambiguous death of the old woman. Perhaps killing her was the only way Brtko could protect her from the horrifying camps, but it is ultimately unclear whether she died from health failure or directly by the very hand of Brtko. At this point, the film remains as ambivalent about her opportunity for salvation as we are, with a slight bias for Brtko's nihilistic side.

The directors restore our hope by offering an idealized release from the classic pity and terror scene he's contrived for us. A formally dressed Brtko and a healthy looking Mrs. Lautmann peacefully ride together on a white horse-drawn carriage. The lens distorts the hard edges of reality and we get the sense that they are in somebody's dream or heaven. A soothsaying Mrs. Lautmann converses with Brtko through voice over suggesting that they have a telepathic connection or that the limits of human communication are overcome in this mystical place, whatever it may be. The directors redeem us with hope and a pseudo-lesson in universal sorrows in connection with the root of all evil: fear. The Shop on Main Street is heart wrenching, but predictable. However, it successfully sells itself as a tragic film capitalizing on an immeasurably horrific historical moment. I don't blame him, I can imagine how hard is is to sell a film that's made in a marginalized language. I, too, might focus my creativity on getting my film to the shop on mainstream.

Jaromil Jires, The Joke / Zert (Czechoslovakia, 1969)

The Joke is a film based on the Milan Kundera novel with the same title and the screen play is co-written by Kundera and Jires. Another example of the Czech New Wave in film, The Joke was oppressed soon after its release in '69 after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia.

Central to the plot is Jahn's sardonic joke denouncing political enthusiasm and optimism. The scenes weave in and out of the present breaking up the continuity of time. Flashbacks of Jahn's interrogation or his futile relationship with Margarette demonstrate the reverse shot techniques, and, in effect, blend the past with the present. At one point during his interrogation, Jahn is questioned by an official and we see that his former friends have abandoned him. When asked a question we see Jahn replying but we cannot hear his voice. Rather, we hear a voice over of the present Jahn translating his perspective both then and now giving the effect of past and presence co-existing.

Throughout the film, we hear folk songs playing and sung during a political rally. Here, Jires is again demonstrating the collapse of time. The celebratory folk apparel and music adds a cheerful nostalgic element from previous generations to the perpetual nascent urgency of political movements. These two positive strands reach through time to create a sense of eternally reoccurring happiness inherent in the participating groups of people. The past was great, so is now, and if we keep up, the future will look that way too.

By contrast, Jahn explodes the delusion of persistent sunniness with a line of dark humour. Of course in a strict regime, there is no room for mocking honesty and Jahn is tagged criminal as far as his friends, his object for affection (or sexuality), and the government is concerned. There is the critique of voting because rather than agreeing to the terms of the ballet, Jahn expresses his own perspective but is convicted for it. As a result, he looses ties with all of his relationships and is expelled from school.

His dark plot carries on, interrupted with flashbacks of the harsh sequence at the mines. His colleagues work beyond their strengths in order to keep up with the superintendent's orders. He then spends his adulthood with hopes of revenging the injustice that has plagued his life. Over and over we see the dark undersides, with the story of Jahn, lining up with the positive aspects of the socio-political context. The film sets us up to despise the unfair circumstances as much as Jahn does but we pull away when he lies to Helena and kills her young lover. The film consequently achieves nothing. It does not position itself other than to perhaps highlight the futility of Jahn once the irony pulls us away from the sympathy we wanted to feel for him.

The twisted plot exemplifies the break from traditional plot structures that the Czech New Wave film makers championed. Rather than providing the audience with a sense of release, we can only dwell on the baffling action and conclusion. Did Jahn lie to Helena out of his spite for womankind? Who did he mean to beat if not the young boy? Perhaps his revenge had been at some time directed towards the selfish collectivity of the men from his school, who sacrificed their friendship on the premise that they might be convicted for agreeing with Jahn's non-conformist views. Then over time the object of his hatred replaced by another happy cosmetic, was misdirected towards the young boy who was involved with the wrong woman and the wrong time. My distaste for the conclusion of this film is in part because I realized the joke was actually on me for anticipating a boring resolution for the cynical smart-ass, like killing him off like the fate of Wajda's sexy Maciek or even the legendary Prince Hamlet.

Vera Chytilová, Daisies / Sedmikrasky (Czechoslovakia, 1967)

Like her fellow Czech New Wave directors, Chytilová takes on the form of a loose narrative structure with Daisies. The collage of adventures and symbols vaguely connected invites the audience to think allegorically or metaphorically. The vagueness of message leaves space for numberless interpretations, and the rich symbolism is fertile grounds for any theoretical mode to [de]code. One can easily take on a progressive or regressive feminist critique. For the optimistic feminist, the argument can be made that the girls are vessels for the corruption around them. Their destructive behavior is a reflection on the limits of agency for women as the patriarchal system of the time collapses on itself because of autocracy and the increasing disparity between the classes as results of systemic flaws. Within this broken space, women can only be successful when mimicking the destruction around them. Facing this reality, as Chytilová seems to insist upon with Daisies, inserts a talking point about systemic hurdles in the discussion of improving the status of women overall. Self-actualization occurs when the individual wills oneself into acquiesce, benefiting from ones own unique talents and experience, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, age, etc.

Then a more conservative feminist critique may express distaste for the film. If woman have complete agency regardless of inevitable systemic cracks, the girls should enter the career world determined to reap the rewards at least equally as much as men, if the status of men are a measure of success since their historical privilege has set the bar for everyone else. Self-actualization occurs when one accepts what society has granted one from birth and functions within those realms, developing appropriate skills, to the best of ones knowledge.

The argument that Chylilová made a film promoting frivolous consumerism has been made by commissioned censors. Chylilová then made the rebuttal that her story ends with a lesson in punishment for bad behavior. Clearly Daisies is rich with many currents of symbols, allusions, and themes that occasionally culminate in waves to extract shocked responses from viewers. Complexities swirling all at once draw in a multitude of assumptions that prefer to materialize the flow of complexity.

The girls themselves are represented as indifferent doll-like objects near the beginning of the film. Their limbs creak like wood as they move rigidly about. Chytilová anticipates the puppet masters who might watch Daisies and reduce the girls (and thus the film, or even further, Chytilová's talents in film making) to objects of their prejudices, using linguistic strings of logic to manipulate the girls like puppets on a stage set in imaginary theaters of biases.

The girls shake off their puppet tendencies as soon as they become inspired to go bad just like the world. Those who may argue that the film avoids the grim aspects of communism or any socio-political engagement should reconsider. I think that the film takes a very entertaining and flamboyant approach to social turmoil while poetically mocking the biases of criticism itself. Daisies for me, was a very cynical account of society and the individuals' opportunity to officially weave talents and experience with society in a constructive or beautiful way.

The choice of girls as taking on the role of the glutton ads an interesting philosophical twist for the allegorical reader. Woman become object of transition. One might think of Eden or the womb. Whereas the Man tends to assume maturation, adulthood, responsibility. With regards to the allusions of Eden, as we see in the opening scenes where the girls scamper about in a field of flowers and pick an apple from the apple tree. Eve is the weak figure, childlike in her susceptibility of being fooled. She then causes Adam and her own maturation by obtaining and sharing the fruit thus knowledge. Chytilová picks up on the theme of post-lapsarian maturation with the girl who dons the virginity crown of daisies. The virgin girl makes the choice to deny her lapse and instead feign prelapsarian purity. She also chooses the careless conscience of a child, denying the reductionism imposed upon the individual imagination by the expectations of the system in adulthood. Throughout the film, the girls test their ability preserve a garden of Eden world within a normal one because of their de-sexualized innocence and the denial of responsibility. They function upon whim and are relatively safe from harm using whatever they can to its fullest use, until it's destroyed. At one point, they even cut up the very frame that captures them. Occasionally questioning their existence, we can wonder if the idealized world they represent really does exist, or if it does, who lives there and what are the implications of an Eden-like world lurking among the variations of human experience who must all thrive on the same planet. The destructive tendencies could point to warmongers, ostentatious wealthy folk, or the tyrants; again, all side effects of the patriarchal system, per se.

However, rather then limiting the scope of the film as a critic of gender inequalities in this particular society at this moment in time, I think that the film hints at a much broader scope; the founding soil of theological and philosophical lore that is perpetually tilled by earthlings, and then, from which social institutions sprout.

But who can say? The foundations of humanity is a slightly difficult topic and the film's hallucinogenic form suggests a dispute between the signifier and the signified. The girls seem to have the final word right from the opening of the film, nobody understands us. The pleasure of watching such a film comes precisely from an active refusal of obvious identifications and the same old logical plot structure.

Milos Forman, Loves of a Blonde / Lásky jedné plavovlásky (Czechoslovakia, 1966)

Another example of the Czech New Wave, Loves of a Blonde demonstrates influences of the French New Wave. The looser narrative structure and the camera as participant observer as opposed to the disconnected recorder of plot points allows for a more intimate relationship with the characters or study of human behavior. As can be noted in the banquet scenes, the camera watches the characters in action capturing all the details of every day life, as it were, as if the camera's eye was my own. Another influence of the French New wave can be noted in the way in which Forman vaguely connects plot strands. The film opens with a strange gender switch. A slightly boyish looking girl plays an acoustic song which is clearly written by a boy and is about the pursuit of a girl. Then the film cuts to Andula pining over the boy in the photograph as she lays in bed with a friend. Then suddenly it's the arrival of the old men from war and the banquet scenes in which they attempt to seduce the young girls which leads to the Andula and Milda action. The loosening of the narrative draws attention to the film as art and not a bit of romanticized reality meant for an hour and a half of fantasy indulgence and escape from reality. The film interrupts itself and lingers which allows space for contemplation on behalf of the audience.

The compositions of the frames allude to a painting and draws out the beauty of the cinematography. Again the French New Wave influence is suggested in the self-consciousness of the film and its experimental form. The film tells about the aesthetics of naturalism but at once dwells on itself wallowing in the feeling of endless romanticism. Andula herself, stands in for the nostalgia of enchantment as she falls for Milda's seduction and then leaves her town to seek her beloved traveling pianist wherever he may be. The injustice of seduction is soon revealed as Andula enters the mundane world at Milda's parents' flat complete with the nagging of the bitter mother, I myself was palm-to-forehead frustrated with, and the cruel indifference Milda expresses behind her back.

During one of the opening scenes, Andula dresses the forest in formal ties and the older man explains to her that she should stop because this will startle the deer. A quirky dynamic but already Forman is preparing us for the startling clash when pleasing or charming artifice of formality is introduced to natural settings and innate or animistic impulse. The story never deals directly with the psychology behind the tenderness between Andula and Milda. However, it conjures both the rapture of romanticism and maturation, which leads only to disappointment. Milda talks to his father about the girl as if she was a forgettable one night stand but both the argument that he feigns arrogant masculine apathy to convince his father that he is a Man, or the argument that he is genuinely a womanizing jerk, can be made. What rhymes with an obvious and sentimental story concludes with a rather open ending. With ambiguous motives and conclusions for each character, The Loves of a Blonde brings out the audience's preconceptions. The film turns its back just before the narrative's denouement and we are tempted to jump into the story with our delusions of accomplishment. Do we prefer happy endings where the boy really does love the girl he seduced? Or do we face the reality of fleeting romantic love and Milda capitalizes on his charming good looks to move on and use more girls?

And what about the tyrannical censors? The Loves of a Blonde could be a stand in for films about political strife, replacing the ebb and flow of autocratic power with the cycle of romanticism/imagination/ and defeat/disappointment/cruel realities. One can argue that TheLoves of a Blonde parallels the clashes of political movements. The cycling binaries line right up: artistic expression/film making without thematic limits and defeat/misfortune/tyrannical censorship/etc. Again, this is another feature of the French New Wave because within this movement of films, one can see that socio-political contexts are vaguely discernible or entirely avoided.

Jirí Menzel, Closely Watched Trains / Ostre sledované vlaky (Czechoslovakia, 1966)

Closely Watched Trains, directed by Jirí Menzel, is a film coming out of the shortly lived Prague Spring era and is considered a film of the Czech New Wave. A coming-of-age story about a young Milos Hrma sent to a provincial town to work as a train dispatcher parallels the sardonic tone of Munk's Bad Luck. The story begins with an comedic overview of the boy's paternal lineage and his forefathers' anti-heroic relationships with the military which sets the tone of dry comedy aimed at an awkward boy whose task is appropriating his weird background into normalcy and foreshadows Hrma's downward trajectory. We see Hrma's mother looking joyously at her son putting on his sharp work uniform. The camera captures the pristine outfit with a close-up shot that follows the cleans lines from floor to ceiling. The music triumphantly accents the hat crowning Hrma and comically exaggerates the importance of appearance as a marker of success. Clearly his family's values are questionable. Milos' grandfather was killed because he ridiculed hard labor. Milos' father measures success as doing the very least amount of work in his retirement. His eccentric uncle was killed when run over by a tank while attempting to stare the opposing army into submission and overcome war with his thoughts.

At the train station, Hrma meets other awkward characters which offer him space to fit in among the town's weirdos. The pigeon man, Mr. Novak, has seemingly little agency in the film at first glance. Aside from the obscure comedy he provides, Mr. Novak points out the ironic beauty of the clock tower which sounds after the explosion rips through the town, leaving it utterly destroyed; as if the forward motion of time is a universal promise of progress in spite of the horror that occasionally punctuates human experience. Mr. Novak falls on his ass after his beloved clock tower chimes as if to anticipate the fall of the town contrasted by the familiar chime of the clock tower. The bizarre man becomes a subtle microcosm within Menzel's world seen through this film. The complex hope suggested by light comedy is further complicated by the cynical sardonic undertones. Hrma dies at the hands of the Nazis. Every moment of the film casually walks you to the inevitable tragedy. However, the brilliant sequence near the end of the film streaming directly into the final explosion, created, for me, a nearly inexplicable affect because the fatal bullet ruptures the surface of light comedy that Hrma and his pristine uniform carried us through and the underlying tragedy that had been circulating the whole time flows through so violently that the whole town falls to the ground.

The domino effect can be picked up on beginning with the court scene. The girl confesses that her stamped thigh result of a name game requiring a list of everything that has wings can fly. She begins to list the objects which happen to be directly relevant to the plot: child, time, train, soldier, second, death, and lastly everything. The child, being young Milos, the chime of the clock tower, the Nazi carrier train, and the second Milos transforms from child to soldier is the moment of his death which is closely followed by the death of nearly everything after the explosion sends everything flying into the air, granting the whole town wings.

Just before Milos is shot, the words uttered are something like The most noble blood of Europe goes to front to fight for peace risking their lives or bloodshed. The dark side of the romantic hero figure is instantly exposed because this not-so-noble boy who recently overcame his deepest adversity, premature ejaculation, is martyred by the Nazis soon after having dropped the box onto the ammunition filled train that explodes the town.

Andrzej Munk, Bad Luck / Zezowate szczescie (Poland, 1959)

Like Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds, Munk's film contradicts the romantic hero story with an ironic comedy extracted from the horrific context of war. The irony comes with the protagonist that feigns enthusiasm with each new role he takes on for vain reasons. However, his naivete preserves his integrity and he remains quite endearing throughout the film.

Similar to another Czech New Wave film, Closely Watched Trains, Bad Luck is a coming of age story with a somber conclusion. An older Jan Piszczyk retrospectively narrates his life story from boyhood, in the form of flashback, to the present moment where we see him in what seems to be a job interview. This interview scene becomes the film's framing device. We are introduced to Piszczyk's fate from the very beginning and gradually throughout his story, we begin to realize what has become of him, which is that he is confessing his "bad luck" in order to gain sympathy from the prison authority, who then, as he wishes, might let him stay in prison: the only place Pisszczyk feels safe from misfortune. Piszczyk, unfortunately for him (literally), is released from prison which then leaves the audience feeling the cynicism Munk himself expresses towards communist fascism since his safety can only be secured in prison.

His ultimate conviction as a result of bad luck is interesting when considering the persecution of artists during the strict period of censorship. Much like the choices a Polish artist during the 50s must face, Piszczkyk takes the audience through the implications of self-actualization within society versus that in prison. Piszczyk demonstrates life as a free man admiring various persona's within the society around him and recreating himself in these images. As a result of his genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for everything from activism in both the anti-communist league and the student nationalist group, to wearing a soldier's uniform regardless of the ideological slant it implies, he gets penalized precisely because of his curiosity and enthusiasm.

At the point when Piszczyk is amoung the prisoners of war, Munk frames the shot so that Piszczyk and his admirable soldier friend fill the entire scene. We see Piszczyk on one half and the friend in reversed symmetry on other half as if Piszczyk's image was copied from the man's image, dragged over to the right of the screen, and pasted. Pyszczyk imitates the friend down to the very nuances of his body language which emphasizes Piszczyk's devoted attention to authentic imitation. An artist working to organize layers of chaotic biases into some kind of objective beauty, or unifying societal mirror (an authentic imitation of sorts), faces situations which bar him or her from ingenuity because her product risks exposing the corruption that adheres the pillars of any given institution. Piszczyk is less artistic than a filmmaker per se but his goals are often aesthetic, like when he puts on the military uniform in order to see how his image looks in the mirror, or with passionate motivations, like when he joins student political movements to gain attention from girls. An artist may create a film that is plenty reserved from political commentary; like Polanski's Knife in the Water which was released four years later and criticized by the Polish commission of culture for having no social value. Piszczyk turns to the camera and asserts his innocence to the men convicting him of Nazi espionage, " Pretending? The whole time, I did my very best!" He becomes a mouth piece for innocent achievements by filmmakers and other artists when creating genuine art but are convicted for obscenity, frivolity, western ideological sublimation, etc. All the while, Munk preserves a somewhat positive outlook because of the comedy and entertainment value of such a depressing situation.

Piszczyk's quirks brings sunshine to an otherwise dark situation. At several moments, we see Piszczyk face-to-face with adversity, like at the point when he is framed for vandalizing the poster of the company's director. His initial response to overt forces arbitrarily against him, from his perspective, is a hilarious twitch. Munk creates an entertaining philosophical chiaroscuro with the comedic portrayal of his protagonist's somber fate.

Roman Polanski, Knife in the Water / Nóz w wodzie (Poland, 1962)

Polanski avoids dealing directly with the socio-political context of Poland in the 60s and instead, focuses on human interrelationship and psychology with Knife in the Water. The moment of discussion between Krystyna and the young man regarding the student quarters is virtually the only thing we hear in regards to class. Also, the argument can be made that Krystyna and Andrzej are of the privileged class because they can afford leisure time and a yatch.

Knife in the Water is Polanski's debut film. With the budget of a novice film maker, Polanski makes due with minimal actors and settings. The film has only three actors and two or three different settings. The minimalism becomes a close-up portrait (nearly a still life) of three character types who are united by the compression of space and time. Most of the film is set on a small yatch over the course of a single day. The enclosed space of the yatch functions like the frame of a portrait with emotional detail as the primary storyteller and the fickle weather highlighting the turmoil behind the face of the action. Low angle shots and few cuts with the camera following the character who is speaking or acting at any particular moment demands the audience to consider the most subtle interactions between the characters.

The two men are opposed to each other; one having experience and lacking virility and vise versa. Consequently, the two men's' battles result in a relatively balanced draw. Krystyna connects them by offering each what they lack. She gives advise to Andrzej when confronting him about his arrogance and she offers herself to the young boy who then gains sexual experience. Her growth throughout the film can also be detected in a subtle way. We see her gradually become more attractive as the day progresses which highlights her growth as a woman as she referees the competing male egos.

Metaphor also drives the narrative, since dialog is kept at a minimum and we know nearly nothing about the characters' backgrounds or motives. The oblique angles soften the directness of the camera lens which leaves us with the feeling of an implicit action or motivation at the core of each scene. Speech is rarely direct, aside from Krystyna's efforts to confront Andrzej about her infidelity and his personal flaws of arrogance and masculine pride. However, even these slivers of overt plot points are left as loose ends for the audience to make sense of. The ambiguous ending with the car at a crossroad offers the audience the space for an engaged inquiry about gender roles in general and dishonesty within relationships, also the potential or perhaps hopelessness for positive changes.

Andrzej Wajda, Ashes and Diamonds / Popiól i diament (Poland, 1957)

Wajda sets up dichromatic forces against each other within the context of a postwar Poland, or a transitional state from war to peace, and explores or amplifies the tension for his audience. The title itself, Ashes and Diamonds, suggests the binary structure of this film, set in May 8, 1945, aka, the day after WWII ends. The Diamond is a metaphor for the glimmer of hope, the integrity of Poland, the humanity of even a most vicious character: Maciek--the murderous debonair, through his expression of love with Krystyna. The Ashes suggests the irrevocable damage to both the landscape of Poland and the morality of its people, as seen with the fate of the story’s protagonist. Maciek’s blood against the white sheets rhymes with the red and white Polish flag which reminds the audience of the Polish blood seeping onto the history of the state.

Maciek, the Polish home army soldier, takes the audience through the task of functioning as both an assassin and a lover. The fate of Maciek suggests the constraining reality of WWII on self-renewal through love. The tension between the brutalities of war and idealistic love is amplified by the compression of time. The story itself takes place within a 24 hour period. Maciek kills an innocent Polish man by mistake when ordered to assassinate the incoming commissar, Szczuka. Wajda successfully conveys a sense of bleakness by blurring the distinction between the Polish army and the enemy. Furthermore the sense of bleakness is amplified with the theme of arbitrary annihilation as seen with the murder of the innocent man and the ironic shooting of Maciek which half-suggests, or perhaps questions the possibility of his retribution. The drunken guests leaving the party after sunrise conveys the sense of bleakness because the escape of celebration is met with an abrupt and unprepared reentry into daytime. The bleakness of postwar Poland is punctuated with scenes between Maciak and Krystyna giving the audience a sense of relief but at once fortifying the tension as we return to the political contexts. Most of the outdoor scenes take place when Maciek is with Krystyna.

Wajda uses various theatrical elements to orchestrate the each shot with emotion appropriate to every moment of the film. Trash and ruins is an example of the film's dramatic symbolism. Maciek ends up dieing on a heap of trash which adds another layer to the aftermath or debris of war: the death of the romantic hero perpetuated through propagandistic communist art, which suggests Wajda’s sardonic response to artistic constraints imposed on artists during Communist Poland. Fire is another example. Before the innocent man falls to his death at the doorway of the chappel, large flames rise from his jacket. The fire, as well as death in a doorway, speaks to the irrevocable destruction of war and the transitional period following WWII in Poland.

Ashes and Diamonds mirrors the moral anxiety of Poland just before the 60s as many of the Polish filmmakers conveyed to during this time. Krystyna offers Maciek moral redemption from the murderous life of a member of the underground resistance. However, Maciek’s choice between these two opposing lives; personal needs versus public obligations, individual struggle versus political goals, romantic love versus heroic action, is left ambiguous and ends on a dark note. Like the labyrinth motifs all over the hotel lobby and reflected onto Maciek’s coat as he leaves the hotel, his fate is a complicated path leading to only to a dead end. The ironic display of fireworks at once celebrates the end of the war and illuminate the chilling death of Szczuka, as he falls onto Maciek embracing him. Wajda successfully points out the horrifying essence of war in spite of relative and ephemeral displays of success.