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Successors of Great Generations rarely know what to do with the relay baton. They either break it, or jog along the indicated path with boredom. Jan Sverák,now 32 years old, is an amazing exception. He is offering an up-to-datecultural alternative based on what he has learnt from his father.The corner-stone of his increasingly significant (as well as successful)oeuvre as a director is the astonishingly fortunate juxtapositionof Father, Son, and History. Because before the parent would enterfreakish old age, his liberal humanism is confirmed by the system-shiftof the autumn of 1989. The son, on the other hand, does not envyhim for the role of the Victor - rather, he is happy with havingbeen liberated from the burden of a major fighting. Thus, in amoment of possible estrangement, the threads of human relatednessare drawn tighter together. And suddenly, a pair of most efficientEastern-European film-makers is born ..... As if they were having no more than a cosy chat by the family hearth. Both have their ownchairs, and their own fire-rake. And they know a lot about warmth.They strike up the fire of not hatred, but human understanding,empathy and generosity. And of that tactful hoaxing of each-other,and a trifle of self-irony so indispensable for loving. The fatherblows circles of smoke out of words, while in them his son recognisesimages. The father is sometimes preachy. His son is more reserved,more formal. The father is very Czech, his son vibrates with someAmerican rhythms. Zdenek and Jan Sverák. It is a pleasure to be in their company. At last with them, onecan have a meaningful conversation about the past, friends andenemies, successes and failures, moral courage and faltering,generosity and narrow-mindedness, and about where we were rightand where we were wrong. This is what has happened since the 1991Elementary School (Obecná škola). Now, a fireis on again, and perhaps a bit more warmth comes from it. Formerprofessed party members and resistance fighters may smile at eachother, the Russians and the Czechs may embrace. Without anybodyhaving to forget anything, here is a time for breathing freely,for sobering out. And for change... In Kolya, Zdenek Sverák tells us about change. That life is not all that hopeless if we are capable of changing. We do not need to transubstantiate, beforged into new persons, only that little bit of openness... thatis what we need to have. And then, something might happen, -anything may happen. The hero of the film, Frantisek Louka e.g.,- having been dismissed from the Philharmonics and now playingin a church-yard orchestra, living the "independent"life of the marginalised Czech intellectual, sweetened with passiveresistance - as well as women - , suddenly decides to get holdof a Trabant, because a car is a thing even he is entitled to.And having made up his mind, he does not refrain from enteringinto a nominal marriage with a Soviet woman. Shortly after themarriage ceremony, the woman is off further West, but leaves herfive-year-old son, Kolya, with Franta in Prague. True to himself,Franta does not cast off the boy, which puts him into a - forhim - entirely unusual life-situation. By shouldering it, he undergoesan internal transformation of cathartic force. The increasinglove he feels for the Russian boy frees him from his sulky, persistentgeneralisations, the limitations of the rituals of passive resistance,and at the same time prompts the development of a sense of responsibilityin him. All this opens his eyes to new values, the impact of whichis further reinforced by the social transformations in the background. Jan Sverák films the screen-play of his father as a stylistic transformation. Thus,the idea of change is there also as change in film language. Followingthe genre images of a specific Czech sourness that expose Franta'sweek-days, the melodramatic events bring about tangible modificationsin the epic traditions connected to Prague. Sverák is notaverse to reflections by film-makers, but with the livening upof the protagonist, he pushes the narrative to a peculiar, story-orientedlinearism. Some of his solutions, perhaps, have been influencedby Hollywood. Yet what is of importance is that he managed tomake Czech film breathe again, and indeed, it was high time. Becausesooner or later everything gets dusty and hardens into truism.Even Hašek's heritage, even the Hrabalian-Menzelian approach.All right, everything can be survived, but one must not lose sightthat this is not what life is really about. The moment will comewhen the organism throws up the noodles and the beer, the eyeslose their sight with the pretty buttocks and the attractive horse-tails,and one gets nervous dyspepsia with laughing continuously at theexternal forces one is burdened with. And what comes then is eitherannihilation, or something new... |
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