Pupendo * * *

Pupendo (link to DVD on Amazon)
"One day a little tapeworm poked her head out of an anus, looked around at the big wide world. She popped back in and raced to find her mother. 'Oh, mommy tapeworm what is that great and lovely blueness that is all around outside?' 'That my darling is the sky.' 'Oh mommy tapeworm, what is that beautiful yellow orb in the sky?' 'That my darling is the sun.' 'But why mommy, why do we live here, here in the dark?' 'Oh my darling, because this, this is our HOME...yes, my darling, up someone's ass.' -- a joke told by an insurance appraiser from the movie Pupendo.


This movie is a comedy-drama about the 1980s in Czechoslovakia, and that little joke sums up the Czech perspective pretty well. Yes, we're living in crap, but nonetheless it's home. The story follows a talented Prague artist, Bedrich Mara, who in the heady years around the 1968 Prague Spring was one of the top artists in the country with his work shown in the west. But he refused to make the necessary compromises (join the communist party presumably) and has fallen out of favor with the authorities. He loses his job, is ostracized from the art community, and barely brings home enough for his family by making kitschy clay things, like a money bank that looks like a butt. The movie tells the story of a summer in which on a bit of a lark, he brings home a bum. The bum turns out to be an art historian caught at a particularly low point. And through a bitter-sweet series of events, he helps Bedrich return to the international art world -- although at costs that have a certain black humor to them.

Pupendo is by the same director that made Pelisky, and it feels like a follow-up. Pelisky was a comedic-drama about life in the summer of 1968, while Pupendo is a drama-comedy about life in the 80s. But I think one reason Pelisky was more successful was that Pelisky combined funny with a very obvious tragedy -- the 1968 invasion. In Pupendo, the juxtaposition of funny and serious is not as effective -- perhaps because the tragedy of the 1970s and 1980s, the post-1968 period of "Normalization", is difficult to capture on film unlike tanks rolling down streets. "Normalization" is an Orwellian term because it refers to squelching the "abnormal" ideas of freedom of speech and civil liberty that dominated the the attempt at humanizing Czech communism (Jan-Aug 1968). I once heard a Czech describe the difference between the Stalinist oppression in the 1950s versus the Normalization oppression in the 1970s. In the 1950s, you were executed but there was a certain logic and predictability to what activities would get you killed. In the 1970s, you were ostracized rather than executed, but punishment was completely capricious. You think you are fine, and then some innocuous comment, or forgetting to put up a flag, gets you on the blacklist.

For this reason, I think the film probably has mainly home-market appeal, unlike Pelisky which is likely to be quite funny and tragic to non-Czechs also. Also Pelisky has Miroslav Donutil, one of the most famous Czech comedic actors, who is hilarious in the movie.

Pupendo refers to a Czech "game" in which a heavy coin -- in this case a 5kc piece which is about like a Sacajawea or Loonie -- is thrown swiftly down onto the bare belly of the "recipient". If done correctly, the coin lands flat and gives a frightful sting. Video of pupendo being played. Why this movie-vignette about life in the 1980s in Czechoslovakia is named after this slightly sadomasochist game is unclear. Presumably it is meant as some kind of metaphor, but I couldn't quite get it.

---

I purchased the DVD in the Czech Republic where it is widely available in video stores. Purchasing or renting it outside of CZ is difficult, but in the U.S. you can try searching on www.eBay.com; you'll sometimes find it for sale there.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress * * *

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (DVD on Amazon)
Not wanting to sleep the other night, I flipped through Netflix instant viewing and saw that "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" was available. The book is excellent -- a real page-turner. It tells the autobiographical story of two young men (about 19 yrs old) who are sent to a remote village in the mountains to be "re-educated" in the early 1970s. This was part of Mao's Cultural Revolution during which time he waged an all out assault on anyone with higher education, i.e. doctors, lawyers, musicians, engineers, writers, etc. They were labeled as "reactionaries" or "black elements". Their houses confiscated and property destroyed. They were forced into menial labor and all aspects of their lives constrained. In the late 1960s, Mao instituted the "Up to the mountains and down to the villages" policy. The children of the intelligentsia were sent away to be work in the countryside and not allowed to study. This period lasted 10 yrs and effectively exiled a entire generation.

This film only touches briefly on the horror and degradation inflicted upon people by the Cultural Revolution -- during a scene in which one of the boys breaks down and cries. Instead it is a coming of age story about two boys, well young men. Luo, the son of a dentist, is handsome and witty. Ma, the son of a surgeon, is quiet and an excellent violinist (who later escapes to France and becomes a violinist in real life). One funny scene occurs in the beginning when the villagers are examining the boys stuff. They find the violin and are about to burn it, when Luo saves it and offers that Ma will play Mozart for them. "Hmm, Mozart, that sounds reactionary", says the village chief. "No, the song is 'Mozart is Thinking of Chairman Mao'".

The film follows about a year of their four years in the mountains. During this time, they are saved from the intellectual poverty of village life by a suitcase full of illegal Western novels -- Stendhal, Kipling, Dostoevsky, and ... Balzac. Such books were destroyed by the communists so were very hard to come by and obviously would be a one-way ticket to jail if discovered. They boys acquire the suitcase by stealing it from another boy, the son of a poet, who is being re-educated in a nearby village. These books change their lives -- and the life of a young woman, the granddaughter of the local tailor. The boys fall in love with her and decide to educate her by reading the books to her. This has a series of unexpected consequences and one of the themes of the book and film is the power of education to change a person. Although in this case, it is not education per se, but rather opening one's eyes to the existence of a wider world.

The film follows the book quite closely, but diverges at the end by telling us what happened to the boys. Ma leaves China and emigrates to France where he becomes a somewhat successful violinist. Luo becomes a dentist like his father. The little seamstress left for the city and eventually emigrated to Hong Kong. This adds nice closure that the film was missing.

Overall I found the film entertaining. I had not intended to watch the whole thing in one sitting (it was after midnight when I started watching), but I ended up doing so as I was so engaged.

---

Watched on Netflix instant viewing. Subtitled.

The Greatest Czech: Jara Cimrman

Commentary by Kaja

In the heat of an early and humid summer, I had my first encounter with the famed Jara Cimrman, the Czech Genius. I’d heard the tales and only seen the dents in the sofa left by Cimrman’s fame before, but last night I went to a production of one of his plays, AKT.

I emerged from the show, but this elusive Bigfoot of great minds remained as ephemeral as before. The reason? The persona of Cimrman is a creation of the great Czech actors Zdeněk Svěrák and Ladislav Smoljak. They created the character during an era of satirical self-reflection and the transitional post-WWII era. While originally intended as a caricature of Czech people, history, and culture, he became and remains an immensely popular national hero. This is most evident when considers that Jara Cimrman would have won the Czech Television contest to choose THE GREATEST CZECH. Including candidates from pop-singers, kings, and other national heroes, Cimrman was disqualified from the competition only because he never truly existed. The prize went to the runner up, King Charles IV, founder of the Charles University and Charles Bridge in Prague during the 1300s.

The story goes that Cimrman was ridiculed and eschewed throughout his life. Thus, he passed into and out of this life understated and with only a bang or two. However, as with many great geniuses, Cimrman rose to glory only after his death when, in 1966, Dr. Evzen Hedvabny (Dr. Silky) discovered a locked chest containing many of Cimrman’s works. The brilliance of these works were instantly recognizable—needing little more than a glance at a title—and Cimrman became recognized as one of the world’s most accomplished men (certainly the greatest for the Czechs) as a poet, a composer, playwright, not to mention a philosopher and inventor.

In order to further expound and present Cimrman’s greatness to society, a panel of experts (in each field) was assembled to lecture on these accomplishments. Thus, the composition of the performance was as follows: lecture, intermission, and performance. Most likely needless to say, the panel of experts was composed of the actors. This first section was perhaps the most interesting and entertaining. Playing on inter-discipline tensions and differences, the academic territoriality became increasingly evident with each presentation. Of course, each performance was replete with stereotypes; most notably, the spacey engineer.

The second half was a performance of one of Cimrman’s discovered plays—contextualized, of course, by the preceding lecture. AKT, as the play is named, presents an elderly couple in a painter’s loft atelier. In one corner is a covered painting. The couple is anxious. Mind you, this is a seasoned and well-respected, all-male ensemble. From here on out, imagine all events saturated with cross-gender humor.

Much waiting and three guests later, the plot thickens. The first guest is a teacher with a touch of pedophilia. The second, a fat realtor. And the last, a sex-crazed psychoanalytic. Each believes that their invitation is related to their field and that they have arrived at this mysterious place, on some mysterious day, at some mysterious time to make a little extra money under the table.

The rest of the play revolves around an uncompleted painting of a nude woman: the elderly wife as a young woman. The elderly artist states, that each time he set out to finish the painting he was seized by a fit of passion and that one of the three guests was the result of these “artistic” sessions. And there we have it! The plot: gentleman, I am your father. She is your mother.

I am not averse to sexual insinuation and lowbrow humor. However, when juxtaposing the two halves, I find the turn of phrase and intellectual foray more interesting than the latter. An example of the intellectual texture is the layers of meaning captured by the name "Cimrman". The name conveys a duality of heritage that is representative of the Czech nation. Jara Cimrman was the son of an Austrian mother, Marlen Jelinek (a Czech name meaning young stag) and a Czech father, Leopold Zimmerman (a German name meaning carpenter). The name “Cimrman” is the Czech phonetic version of his father's German name. While considering himself Czech and associating most with his Czech heritage, he is so confused by his ancestry and education that he speaks German with Czech-isms and Czech with German-isms, supported by a fair number of quotations on a number of topics. This linguistic word play persists throughout, even in the text of AKT itself. This first part, I believe, most fully engenders Czech people, history, and zeitgeist.

The most striking part of the performance was realizing a connection between Cimrman and another Czech folk hero: the good soldier Svejk. Both characters are created personas supposedly representative of the Czech nation. Yet, Svejk and Cimrman are antithetical. One is the greatest Czech in accomplishment and societal contribution. The other is a bumbling good-natured fool who, despite his repeated screw-ups, always manages to survive and escape harsh consequences. Cimrman’s success is his active and intellectual engagement with the world and its events. Svejk’s success stems from his complete disengagement from anything beyond his immediate surroundings. I have puzzled over this ostensible contradiction since the performance. I have yet to reconcile how both can stand shoulder-to-shoulder, filling the same role in modern Czech folklore.

I recommend that everyone read Jaroslav Hasek’s The Good Soldier Svejk. I would also recommend that you visit the Theater of Jara Cimrman, but unfortunately this is limited to those who understand Czech (or Slovak).

Családi tüzfészek (Family Nest, 1979) * *

Family Nest (link to DVD on Amazon)
Bela Tarr is one of the most renown -- albeit unknown -- Hungarian directors of avant-garde film (the other more famous Hungarian director of this ilk is Miklos Jansco). I had seen Tarr's film Kárhozat (Damnation) a couple years ago, and that ranks as one of the most striking films that I have ever seen. I would try to describe it but others have already done it eloquently enough: a link to a blog entry on Tarr's Satantango.

The films, Satantango, Damnation and Werckmeister Harmonies, are famous art films which explore the metaphysical and mystical using bleak black-and-white cinamatography. But before these films, Tarr made a series of social realism films while he was still in his 20s. These are very different and were shot in a kind of film-verite style with handheld cameras and small filming spaces. I had never seen his early work, and Kaja agreed to watch it with me although I warned that it would not be a feel-good film. Well, Family Nest was an experience. Kaja and I sat on the couch in a daze after it was over. It was like we had been psychologically beaten upon for an hour. Oy.

The movie is set mostly in one small apartment where, because of the housing shortage in Hungary in the 1970s, three families are crammed together. Imagine the worst kind of family dynamics possible, that it what Family Nest, aka Family Cesspool, makes you an intimate part of for a little over an hour. The filming and directing is masterful -- you really feel like you are there; I even felt like I could smell it.

The self-created hell in the family nest is oppressive. Everyone is crammed altogether, and they argue non-stop. When the lights go out, the arguments finally stop but then other joys continue. The father-in-law is a slimy man who is constantly pressuring his daughter-in-law for sex and slips into his daughter-in-law's bed next to the sleeping 2-yr old granddaughter. Finally, the daughter-in-law's husband comes back from the army, which will hopefully put the brakes on the nightly visits. The daughter-in-law has a woman-friend over that evening and a couple hours after his return, the husband and his brother walk the woman home. They rape her and then the husband comes home and has sex with his wife. Awful.

The movie ends with a epilogue. The husband and wife have separated -- the relationship was strained for some reason (hmm, I wonder why?). We get close-ups monologues of each bemoaning the loss of the relationship. There is a sense that life is only getting worse.

I gave it 2 stars just because it was so painful to watch. Both Kaja and I have family in Eastern Europe and this struck a little close to home -- not the abuse and rape bits, but rather the negative effects that social upheaval and communism had on families and the tendency of the strain to bring out the worst in people. A friend who grew up in Romania during the communist era put it this way -- she felt like people during this era had all their compassion sucked out them simply because life was so hard and the system pitted everyone against each other even against your own family. The system made people ugly and cruel to each other and this movie captures that. But I do think, Family Nest is a must-see for Iron Curtain-era filmmaking. The directing is masterful.

Background on Bela Tarr from KinoEye
Review of the films of Bela Tarr

Szerelmesfilm (LoveFilm) * * * *

Szerelmesfilm is a 1970s movie from the Hungarian director Istvan Szabo about two childhood friends, later teenage sweethearts, who are separated when Kata, the woman, emigrates to France after the 1956 Hungarian Uprising while Jancsi, the man, stays in Budapest. Of course, in this time, travel to the West was not permitted and it is ten years until he gets permission to visit her in France. The movie is about his visit and trying to sort out his childhood/teenage memories of Kata.

Although a small intimate story, it is ultimately about the generation born in the mid-1930s behind the Iron Curtain. They were children during WWII and grew up in upheaval and tragedy, they were young adults in the Communist era and experienced both the revolts and the resultant oppression, and finally they lived with the disappearances. People had to emigrate in complete secrecy at considerable personal risk. People would wake up one morning and their best friend or brother or aunt would be gone. And they couldn't come back. I suppose anytime that a group of people go through difficult times together, they form a special bond and are left with a feeling that others can't quite understand them. It's a kind of nostalgia -- although we often use that word for pleasant memories. Here it is a nostalgia driven by potent memories and one craves those who were there and went through the same things.

LoveFilm is largely a montage of memories. As Jancsi travels to France and visits with Kata, things he sees remind him of things in his past or memories just jump to mind. This is done very cleverly, and although it's a little muddled at times like memories are wont to be, it's engaging. To me, this felt just like the way memories are – triggered by something one sees or hears or smells, and some memories continually are repeated. Also one latches onto certain images – for Jancsi it is the image of the green backpacks he and Kata wore when they would go down to the cellar during the bombing raids. The two childhood actors that play Joza and Kata are precious and perfectly cast. The two kids get up to some funny antics, and there is a painful for them, but funny to watch, scene where there is a trial of the two by their Young Pioneers troop. They are accused of a) kissing and b) loving each other more than the troop.


Kata and Jancsi with the fish, learning to be doctors.

I recommend it to anyone who
a) enjoys love stories and is looking for something a little different.
b) likes stories about heartwarming kids, such as My Life as a Dog or Kolya.
c) is connected to someone who immigrated – especially someone from this generation.
d) and finally it’s a must see for fans of director Istvan Szabo (Being Julia, Taking Sides, Sunshine, Mephisto)

My epinions review of LoveFilm.

Ucho (The Ear) * * *

1970, Czechoslovakia. A man and his wife are returning home after a late party. They discover that neither has the house keys. They argue. He finally climbs over the garden wall and breaks into the house. What begins as an irritating hassle, evolves into a story of suspicion and panic when they realize that someone has been in the house. Flashbacks to the social gathering earlier that evening piece together the reason for the panic. The man is a high level member of the Communist party. His boss, a minister, had been arrested that very evening by the secret police; a victim of the 'shoot the messenger' reaction when he turned in his report on brickyard closures. As for the couple, while the panic sets in, a picture emerges of a family living precariously in the peak of communist luxury(*) but in an atmosphere of fear within a political world that capriciously promotes people, or strikes them down at will. They assume as a given that their house is bugged and refer often to "The Ear" -- they argue in the bathroom where they can turn on the water and make love on the floor in the kitchen which they calculate is less likely to be bugged than their bedroom. The movie is the story of one psychologically harrowing night, combined with flashbacks to key conversations at the earlier social gathering, as the man tries to sort out what's happening and whether he to is to be picked up and dragged away. Random memories of remarks and incidents become full of meaning and foreboding. Claustrophobic uncertainty builds throughout the movie, and film eventually culminates in an unexpected twist.

Behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War years, moviemaking like all of media was heavily censored by The State. Thus there are few films about the realities of life in the Soviet-controlled socialist countries -- for the obvious reason that within the Eastern bloc, such films could not be made, and outside the Eastern bloc, such topics would not be marketable. But during the 1960s in Czechoslovakia, the director/writer team of Karel Kachyna/Jan Prochazka started making films that pushed the boundaries of what was allowable. They made films that were pessimistic when films had to be optimistic by strict party demands. They followed characters that were not supposed to even exist in socialist Czechoslovakia, such as prostitutes and alcoholics. They told stories involving the dark side of agricultural collectivism and even of WWII partisans. Many of their films were banned upon release. But the miraculous fact that these films were allowed to be completed at all was not so much the result of the easing of the political climate in the mid-1960s, but rather of the fact that ironically Jan Prochazka was an influential member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He even became a confidante of sorts for the back-then Czechoslovak president Antonin Novotny, in the latter's difficult relations with the rising guild of Czech writers and filmmakers. During the last of 1960s, many reformers like Prochazka had moved upwards in the levels of Czechoslovak society, within and without the Communist Party, and it even seems that the 1968 reform era of Prague Sprign owes in part its existence to Jan Prochazka.

In Ucho, Kachyna/Prochazka point the lens straight at the Communist Party and its leaders. Party members are generally scheming ambitious bullies and the few true idealists who spout about 'socialist principles' seem to be bitter caricatures. The president of the country and the head of its Communist Party is a scary combination of power and stupidity. At one point he says, "Sometimes I even think to myself: 'I don't know anything about any of this.' But then I think: 'I need to make a decision; we can not defeat imperialism by being indecisive.' So I make the decision. And you know, I then tell myself: 'You made a good decision!'" The audience nods and smiles vigorously, 'Comrade is such a good leader!'. Indeed, this film is so scathing towards the Communist Party that it seems unlikely it would have been allowed even in the thawing climate of early 1968.

But this movie was not made in 1968. It was made in 1969/1970 after the Prague Spring was crushed by the "Armies of the Brotherly Nations" (the Warsaw Pact) to protect Czech socialism from counter-revolution. In the aftermath, the Communist Party was purged of reformers -- such as Prochazka. This film is the story of one night during which one of these reform-minded ministers (the man's boss) is purged. "The Ear" was immediately banned on it's release, and Jan Prochazka was banned from further work and died a year later. After his death, use of his unfilmed screenplays was forbidden. "The Ear" was released 20 years later in 1989, after the Velvet Revolution overthrew communism in Czechoslovakia. It stands as a true insider's view of the Community Party behind the Iron Curtain and the associated 'priviledged' life of those as the top of it.

(*) Life for regular people (meaning not in the communist elite) was very spartan behind the Iron Curtain. The shelves in grocery stores were invariably bare. To Western eyes, the life of this couple will appear average middle class. But to Czechoslovaks in 1970, the luxuries that are seen in the film -- roast beef, commercial liquers rather than the homegrown slivovice -- would have been unheard of and not to mention galling.

Rented from Scarecrow Video.
My epinions review of Ucho.

Pelisky * * * *

The year the Comrade Armies saved the Czechs from their Prague Spring

Pelisky (link to DVD on Amazon)
Pelisky is a popular recent comedy from the Czech Republic set in the Communist period. It follows three families in Czechoslovakia over the Christmas holidays 1967/1968 and then the day of August 21, 1968. It has some universal themes: teenage angst or "Help me I've been abducted into the most embarrassing family on earth", the comical joys of dating after 40, and the universal humor of the holiday family gathering. This is a very funny movie that really captures Czech culture and personality -- although non-Czechs will recognize many of these characters from their own extended family. But to understand the movie, you need to have a feeling for the special 1967/1968 years in Czechoslovakia that these characters were living through.


Post WW2, the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the Nazis by The Red Army led to an immediate strengthening of the political power of the local Communist Party, and in February 1948, sensing loss of popular support right before the upcoming elections, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia staged a political putsch in which the country became a hard-core Stalinist state. A bloody period of 1950's ensued: purges, executions, uranium mines, labor camps, collectivization of the farms, confiscation of property, fall of currency and confiscations of life savings. For many young people, however, it was also a period of great optimism and hope about the upcoming new world order. Those who did not share the optimism quickly disappeared: the lucky ones "over the hills"; the unlucky ones "behind bars"; and the rest of the land quickly became grim and mum.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Czechoslovak Communism became somewhat less lethal, but a long-term period of strict censorship of all forms of public expression was kept in place. Only approved writers were able to publish works written in the so-called socialistic realism. The economy collapsed and the only question was how far it could fall. Czechoslovakia was integrated into the Warsaw Pact, and industry was restructured to support the Soviet side or arms race. Life became an endless sequence of demonstrative meetings and October Revolution celebrations. People were controlled via their children: "... But how can we let your child into high school, when your granny goes to church every Sunday?" Borders were practically sealed; for every successful escape there was one who died in the attempt. All had personal dociers, just as all had a class origin -- labor, working intelligentsia, burgeous/kulak -- in steeply increasing order of severity from fine to extremely bad.

In 1967, a period of thaw began. It started at a writers' conference about Franz Kafka and for about a year the warmth propagated rather imperceivably, through the upper echelons of the society. The common folk only sensed that, somehow, the grim was not as grim as before, the gray not as oppressive as before, and cracking jokes not as dangerous as before. In 1968, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia changed leadership to that of Alexander Dubcek and begun a conscientious, controlled process of liberalization. The period of Prague Spring begun and the initially controlled process quickly snowballed. Political trials of 1950s were reopened, accused were rehabilitated, many posthumously. Writers' and movie makers' opened their drawers as suddenly as they were permitted to publish their stored works; many old actors and actresses were allowed back to the stage or film again. "We do not need democratization, we just need democracy..." declared Jan Werich, an actor, writer, and philosopher; probably the most respected and beloved man in the country.

This all ended the night from 21-22 August, 1968. Overnight the tanks of six Warsaw Pact countries squashed the Prague Spring. It was officially labeled brotherly help from Comrade Armies, and it returned Czechoslovakia to strict control, reeducation, and censorship for another twenty plus years.And yet through all this, Czechs and Slovaks never lost their sense of humor. In fact, the situation in many ways inspired humor. Those comic individuals who can poke fun in the darkest situations are who keep everyone else sane.

This is the setting of this movie.

[Written jointly with my husband]

The DVD of this movie has English subtitles, but it's hard to get outside the Czech Republic. www.czechmoviehouse.com seems to have it or go to www.dvdr.cz (but you need to read Czech). Sometimes you'll find it for sale on www.eBay.com;

Pupendo is a sort of follow-up to Pelisky by the same director.

Click on the tag, Czech, below to see reviews of other Czech films.