The kind, bittersweet tone was set by the unsurpassed films Obecná škola and Pelíšky. Contemporary Czech art is gradually exploring new ways of dealing with recent history. Director and screenwriter Beata Parkanová, in her third film The Word, which is having its world premiere at the main Karlovy Vary competition, has chosen the framework of a family drama through which she reflects on the events of 1968. It is an intimate portrait of the Vojíř family, headed by the principled father Václav, popular a small-town notary, a principled non-partisan, a person endowed with a Masaryk-like strong ethos of truth as an absolute imperative.
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Václav is stubbornly convinced that personal principles must be adhered to in all circumstances. The film portrays him as an extremely methodical, kind and fragile person who at some points speaks about moral principles like a calm preacher. His wife Věra, on the other hand, embodies an almost caricature of an obsessive mother-caretaker, who de facto constantly issues orders and passive-aggressively intervenes in the lives of her husband and her children.
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Bad times are remembered only by outside incursions. Sometimes it’s an unpleasant sound, other times it’s a mechanically chattering duo of comrades who came to break Václav into signing. The film thus deliberately cuts the context and focuses on the resonance of major events in the personal space of the heroes, which becomes a concentrated reflection of the big world. This method was developed to perfection mainly by the films of the Romanian new wave, which, thanks to authors such as Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristi Puiu, created a series of penetrating chamber portraits of the local society.
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The core of their success is the director’s methodical and uncompromising manner with which he transfers everyday life to the screen. He does not bring minor conflicts, character traits and growing dilemmas to the first plan, but let them gradually germinate under the surface of the perfectly observed reality of ordinary existence. Moral trials that may seem far-fetched to contemporary viewers suddenly materialize with distressing urgency.
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Who wants a strudel?
Beata Parkanová’s Word has a similar ambition, but unfortunately it fails in almost every way. Although the script is considerably tighter than Petr Jarchovský’s mushy historical narratives, it suffers from a similar tendency towards theses-like, stilted speeches and, in the end, is not so far from the psychological rigidity of the disastrous Horticulture trilogy. Václav’s magnificent moralistic monologues are devoid of life, similarly rigid are the scenes from everyday routine, which overuse the commanding manner and wallow in banalities that lead nowhere.
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The film’s preoccupation with the acquisition and distribution of various forms of food (especially ice cream) seems almost obsessive at times and actually draws more attention to itself than the moral dilemma itself, which is rampant somewhere behind it. Will Emička like strawberry or vanilla? Will the doctor have some strudel? And Ed stamped the rum? There’s nothing wrong with annoying family ambience, but there’s still a big difference between meaning-making emptiness and self-serving, raw realism and its mechanical imitation. The word acts as a festival of scenic padding and narrative microsleeps.
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At the same time, the central drama has hidden power. The occupation has a devastating impact on Václav, leading him to a psychological collapse and hospitalization. At the same time, the power creates a seemingly banal pressure on him, in which his family members are also involved. Instead of tension and psychological finesse, however, all attention is drawn to Věra, who gives the impression that she is going through a continuous psychotic attack.
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The passive-aggressive maternal terror has a tragicomically overwrought form in the film, and the character of Věra, played by Gabriela Mikulková, has no room to develop. He just convulsively alternates acting positions, entrances and exits. Even Václav, played by Martin Finger, is always characterized by a limited register of positive qualities, which at the decisive moment are always combined into a categorical no due to the temptation of communist nomenclature.
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Who’s actually watching?
The convulsiveness, flatness and lack of concentration are underlined by Beata Parkanová’s direction, which certainly does not lack ambition, but lacks coherence and methodicality. At times the film looks like a retro commercial for a popular popsicle, at other times it brings into play ambitious artistic elements such as long, rambling uninterrupted shots or intentionally brutal camera cuts, from which some speaking characters fall out. Sometimes the film works with great detail, at other times it goes into the extreme distance. The partial elements can be impressive, but within the whole they communicate with each other as rigidly as the members of the Vojířov family.
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But it is not entirely clear what kind of perspective he actually wants to offer the viewer. It is certainly not the cold observational distance that is typical of the films of the Romanian New Wave. There is no detailed intimacy either, the characters are too roughly “sketched” and mechanical for that. Parkanová flits between different options, but none of them is ultimately used consistently. The rhythmic inserts in the form of instax photos capturing the moments of the previous scenes from a different angle are telling. These are actually photos from the filming inserted into the plot. It is not entirely clear what role they are supposed to fulfill: is it more of an alienating effect, or, on the contrary, an attempt to underline the intimate, memoir character of the narrative?
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The word thus leads to the worst possible outcome. It does not say much beyond the central thesis about a difficult time of moral trials, compromises and quiet family tragedies. It offers only a few bookish and unquestionably true statements about truth and lies. It is possible to agree with them, but it is more difficult to identify with them. As a family simile, the film seems rigid, contrived and unrealistic.
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It just confirms that contemporary Czech film does not mince words. But he struggles to give them any kind of timeliness, weight or urgency.
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