Man of Iron

Człowiek z żelaza; political drama, Poland, 1981; D: Andrzej Wajda, S: Jerzy Radziwiłowicz, Marian Opania, Krystyna Janda, Irena Byrska, Wiesława Kosmalska

A radio reporter, Winkel, is summoned by the communist authorities to find dirt and make a report about steel worker Maciej Tomczyk who leads a strike at the shipyard in Gdansk, so that the TV editors can later edit it into a disinformation campaign to discredit Maciej. At a protest where Maciej holds a speech, Winkel meets an acquaintance, Dzidek, who tells him more: in '70, Maciej's father Birkut was killed during the government crackdown of protestors. Winkel also visits Agnieszka in police custody, who tells him how she married Maciej, but had to leave with their baby to live with her father from fear of the authorities. Despite blackmail from the authorities, Winkel quits his job and embraces the Solidarity labour movement. An agreement is later reached, granting the protestors a labour union independent from the communist authorities.

One of Andrzej Wajda's most famous films, "Man of Iron" is an unapologetically activist film. There is nothing here besides politics, to such an extent that even characters, narrative and cinematic craftsmanship are neglected or even discarded, and thus viewers unfamiliar with the Solidarity movement and its role in the fight for democracy in Poland will not be able to understand the film and won't like it. Nontheless, it was a daring and subversive movie back in the time, a rare story openly critical of the communist dictatorship of Poland in 1981, and even today it is fascinating to wonder how it was allowed to be made in the first place—even the title, "Man of Iron", is a spoof of Stalin's propaganda name "Man of Steel". The opening text slyly says: "All the characters and their names in the film are a work of fiction. But they enact events that really happened." The protagonist Maciej Tomczyk, a shipyard worker, is an allegorical depiction of Lech Walesa (who even makes a cameo five times in the film, either through archive footage or direct appearance in front of the film cameras), whereas Wajda strives towards blending fiction and reality, since some of the protests were filmed on the spot, thereby achieving almost a documentary film at times, even including other key members of the Solidarity movement in certain scenes, such as Anna Walentynowicz. 

Some moments are brilliant. For instance, the ironic scene where a communist member turns around a big violin in his apartment, revealing alcoholic drinks hidden inside it, to offer it to radio reporter Winkel. The sequence where Maciej is assaulted by three paramedics in the hallway who sedate him and put him in a straightjacket, and later in a mental asylum, is a strong example of political abuse of psychiatry, as is the sequence where Maciej and his friends bury the corpse of his father in earth of a graveyard, but when they return later, they discover his body is gone and a new cement tombstone with someone else is now found on his place. These moments have weight since they illustrate that archetypical situation where an evil government is wrong, but instead of admitting its mistake and changing, it rather invests all the resources to gerrymander reality by trying to present good people as evil in order for said evil government to appear good. Some of the dialogue also works, for instance when father Birkut says: "No lie lasts forever" or when Maciej has this exchange with a shipyard worker: "But you will be a slave!" - "I know, but I will still live longer. Your uprising won't change anything." On the other hand, the majority of the lines are schematic and only at the service of checking political points, without much effort to make it more enjoyable for the viewing experience. At 2.5 hours, the movie is definitely overlong by at least 30 minutes and needed better planning—instead of its excessive inclusion of as many details and events from that historical time, since sometimes one symbolic scene is able to say more than ten superfluous scenes repeating the same thing. Unfortunately, despite noble intentions, "Man of Iron" is too dry, since it is more activist inspired than cinematically inspired.

Grade:++

It Happened in Broad Daylight

Es geschah am hellichten Tag; thriller, Switzerland / Germany / Spain, 1958; D: Ladislao Vajda, S: Heinz Rühmann, Gert Fröbe, Sigfrit Steiner, Siegfried Lowitz, Michel Simon, Maria Rosa Salgado, Anita von Ow

Peddler Jacquier finds the corpse of a little girl in the forest, runs to the village pub and phones Lieutenant Matthai from Zürich police to report it. The police arrive at the crime scene, but find no clues except that the girl was killed by a razor blade, so they blame Jacquier who commits suicide. Matthai was supposed to fly to Amman to train the police, but changes his mind and is convinced the real murderer is still out there. Matthai takes the little girl's drawing which depicts her next to a tall man in black. Based on other two murders of little girls along a road from Zürich to Chur, Matthai rents a gas station, hires Miss Heller as a maid and uses her little girl Annemarie as bait. Realizing a businessman, Mr. Schrott, is seeing Annemarie in the forest, Matthai confronts him. Mr. Schrott attacks him with a razor blade, but the police shoot him.

As much as Penn and Nicholson delivered a remarkable effort in their crime film "The Pledge", their remake could not reach the genuine simplicity of brilliance of the excellent original "It Happened in Broad Daylight", one of the best Swiss films. Based on a script by Friedrich Dürrenmatt (who was not satisfied that his meditative ending was changed into a happy one in the film, so he wrote a novel "The Promise"), "It Happened in Broad Daylight" plays with the people's deepest fears, in this case with an unknown misogynist criminal who kills little girls due to his private frustrations, but a one who leaves no trail, yet insuppressible police Lieutenant Matthai (comedian Heinz Ruhmann in a remarkably serious edition) will not give up until he captures him, even if he has to use unconventional methods via a little girl as a "bait". The opening act sets up an incredibly tight mood thanks to sharp writing that creates strong characters and dialogue, relaying on sophistication, not on violence or banal thrills. 

Little details and clever ideas go a long way in this film. When a mob wants to lynch Jacquier, the man who found the corpse of the little girl, but is now suspected of being the murderer himself in the pub, Matthai realizes his small police escort is heavily outnumbered, so he untypically addresses them: "If you can give me one evidence he is guilty, I will hand him over to you." One man says he saw Jacquier walking in the valley, but since three other men from the crowd admit they were also in the valley but said man didn't see them, Matthai ironically comments that he would now have to execute all five of them. While investigating, Matthai stumbles upon a drawing of the murdered girl in the elementary school which depicts her with a tall man giving her a hedgehog, while a car and a goat are also depicted. Upon sitting next to a man in a plane, eating chocolate truffle, Matthai relizes the "hedgehog" was actually said dessert, and that the goat is an insignia of canton Graubünden on the car plates, so he rents a gas station along the road where the murders happened and writes down every car plate with a goat insignia. He also builds a playground right next to the road so that the girl Annemarie can become a bait, in a risky move. The attempts at psychological explanation of the murderer's motives feel weaker, though, and the ending with the large doll is not that well thought out, which comes off as illogical. Nontheless, the movie is crafted with such an elegant and natural craftmanship by director Ladislao Vajda that it seems universal and fresh even today.

Grade:+++

Kes

Kes; drama, UK 1969; D: Ken Loach, S: David Bradley, Freddie Fletcher, Lynne Perrie, Colin Welland, Robert Naylor, Brian Glover

Barnsley. Billy Casper (14) lives with his older bully brother Jud and divorced mother in a small house. Jud works in the local coal mine, but Billy doesn't want to follow his footsteps. Bullied in school by other students and uninterested in class, Billy one days climbs up to a nest and steals a little falcon, naming it Kes. Billy feeds Kes in his shed with mice, dead birds and raw meat. When he tells about his falcon in front of the entire school class, his English language teacher Mr. Farthing praises him and even goes to see the bird himself. When Billy spends Jud's money not on a horse race but on fish and chips, and Jud's preferred horse wins, Jud is so angry that he kills Kes. Billy finds the bird in a trash can and burries it in the open.

"Kes" is a Walt Disney film subverted into a depressive social tragedy. There are many movies about a lonely, neglected kid who bonds with an animal as a therapy and escape from the cruel world—a whale in "Free Willy"; a dog in "Lassie"; a horse in "Black Beauty"—or even a fantasy companion—such as "E.T." or "How to Train Your Dragon"—but few had such bitter, sombering aesthetics and naturalism as Ken Loach's approach in "Kes", about a friendship between a kid and a falcon. There is no sugar-coating that pretends nothing too bad cannot happen in life. It is grim, 'raw' and desolate in its gruelling honesty. Loach strives towards showing life as dirty as it is, in this case a kind child, Billy (excellent David Bradley), a hostage of a brute society: Billy is bullied in school not only by students, but also by his physical education teacher (Brian Glover) who throws a football at the boy, causing him to fall in the mud, and later punishes him for not dedicating himself to the football match by throwing Billy into the shover while he turns off the warm water, forcing the naked Billy to climb out of the window as to not freeze any further. 

At the same time, Billy himself isn't idealized—in the opening act, he works by delivering newspapers, and has this exchange with his boss: "I haven't taken nothing of yours yet, have I?" - "I haven't given you a chance, that's why." - "You don't have to. I haven't been nicking for ages now." Billy is also seen in unsympathetic light when using a shotgun to shoot a small bird on a branch to feed his falcon Kes. Despite these highly naturalistic approaches, the movie does "slip" towards a few brief satirical moments, such as the one where the camera shows a comic-book panel Billy is reading or the fantasy football match of the PE teacher with subtitles showing "Manchester United 1 - Spurs 2". The choice of a falcon as Billy's best friend is a strange one. A dog or a cat would have been a much more natural choice than a falcon that just mutely stares at Billy and never shows any affection towards him, aiming only for his food. It would have also made more sense if Billy had found the falcon abandoned, instead of abducting it from the nest. Their interactions are slightly too sparse, while the sequences of Billy in school are too superfluous. But the main theme still rings as strong as ever: the need for self-actualization. As strange as it is, the falcon becomes a symbol for Billy's discovery of some abstract happiness, meaning and a sense of purpose in his empty life. Few people can understand it, but it has an effect on him that is profound. The emotionally devastating ending thus hits you like a brick in the head—this denial of personal happiness, attack on innocence and insisting on cruelty is one of the strongest condemnations of human primitivism, inconsideration and malice caught on cinema. In spite of that, the final scene is flawed, since it feels strangely abrupt and incomplete, as if some conclusion is missing. 

Grade:+++

My Beautiful Laundrette

My Beautiful Laundrette; drama / tragicomedy, UK, 1985; D: Stephen Frears, S: Gordon Warnecke, Daniel Day-Lewis, Saeed Jaffrey, Derrick Branche, Roshan Seth, Rita Wolf

London. Omar is a Pakistani migrant living in a shabby apartment with his father, Hussein, a broke left-wing journalist. Luckily, Omar's uncle Nasser, a businessman, is there to help: after a job at a car wash, he gives Omar a laundrette to manage, and hopes he can arrange a marriage with Tania with him. But Omar is gay and meets his former lover, Englishman Johnny, who was a member of a far-right anti-immigrant group. Omar and Johnny smuggle drugs for Salim, hidden inside a fake beard, and thus gain money to renovate the laundrette which becomes a hit. Nasser has a mistress, Rachel, but his wife makes a potion that gives Rachel a skin rash, so she leaves Nasser. Tania leaves Omar. Thugs ambush and attack Salim in the laundrette, and beat up Johnny who protected him. Omar and Johnny splash each other in the sink.

"My Beautiful Landurette" is all over the place, and yet, this mess gives it that feeling of genuine 'slice-of-life' that makes it realistic even today. It tackles several themes (Pakistani-British relations, lives of immigrants, gay people), but they are always in the background, since the script just takes a funny and witty "proper" observation on life in general, centering around Omar trying to find a job and grow up. The best performances were delivered by Daniel Day-Lewis as Omar's business (and gay love) partner Johnny, and the underrated, excellent Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey as Omar's wealthy uncle Nasser, who senses he can always make a business from the "dirty", undesirable jobs Londoners don't want to do: "There's money in the muck!" This is a sly jab at capitalism and Thatcherism, since Nasser plans to use the capacity of the lower class of Pakistani migrants to catapult himself into the upper class. As he explains to Omar: "You have to know how to squeeze the tits of the system." Several of these subplots are introduced, but subsequently not that fully developed, which comes off as a flaw: the sudden attack of the far-right thugs on Salim at the laudnrette feels almost as an "imposter" in the film; it wasn't explained why Johnny was one of their members; some of Johnny's peculiar behavioral quirks are unexplained (he suddenly leaves with Tania in the rain, drives on the bicycle and crashes back into the house). 

Even Johnny's and Omar's relationship was not that clearly written. They have one (almost) sex scene in the laudnrette's office before they are interrupted, with one unusual detail (while lying on top, Johnny takes a sip from the champagne bottle, kisses Omar, and then lifts his head up to "flow" champagne from his mouth into Omar's), but otherwise their emotional bond is not sensed that much. Omar sees him more as a business partner and acts distanced and cold towards him, an thus their final scene is not earned. The director Stephen Frears shows a lot of sense for depiction of people of that milieu (Omar is smiling watching Tania showing him her breasts outside the window of the living room, behind the backs of Nasser and his friends sitting and talking) and even has some creative camera drives (one fantastic one appears some 83 minutes into the film, as the crane lifts up camera up to the rooftop of the laundrette, showing a thug with a club on top, and then the camera descends on the other side, abck to the street), showing that the rather abrupt and incomplete ending had much more potentials. It doesn't matter, since there is some energy and likeability in the film that makes it almost invincible to flaws.

Grade:+++

Distant Voices, Still Lives

Distant Voices, Still Lives; drama, UK, 1988; D: Terence Davies, S: Lorraine Ashbourne, Angela Walsh, Pete Postlethwaite, Freda Dowie, Dean Williams

First segment: Nell is married to alcholic Tommy, who is violent and sometimes even beats her. They live in Liverpool and have three children: Maisie, Eileen and Tony. After being drafted to the army, Tony rebels against his dad and even breaks the window with his fists. Tommy becomes sick and lands in a hospital. He returns back home and dies. At Eileen's wedding, the siblings are split between those who wish their father was still there and those who are glad he is dead. Second segment: Eileen and her husband Dave have a baby. Maisie also marries, but their marriages aren't always good. Tony falls and is injured in a construction accident. Tony recovers and marries Rose.

A critically acclaimed independent British film drama, "Distant Voices, Still Lives" is a more bitter than sweet anti-nostalgic and semi-autobiographical depiction of director Terence Davies' childhood, but also the working class in the UK during the 40s and 50s in general. Assembled like a stream-of-consciousness, it goes back-and-forth in time, with the three siblings intermittently having flashbacks of their agonizing relationship with their alcoholic father Tommy (very good Pete Postlethwaite), thereby making the movie seem like a very loose collection of episodes, reminiscent of impressionism. The first half of the film is the best precisely because this tension between the three kids and father is sometimes electrifying. In one such moment, Tony, in his 20s, wearing a military uniform, wants to have a drink with dad sitting in the home, who refuses, so Tony shows him the money he received as severance pay and throws the coins into the fireplace: "That's all I've got. But I wouldn't give you daylight." During the Blitz air raid, several people hide in a bomb shelter, but Tommy sleps one of his little daughters in front of everyone ("Where the bleeding hell have you been?!"), showing heavy-handed negligence and inability to be considerate. After dad becomes sick and lands in hospital, Eileen opens the door and sees him standing there: "I've signed myself out of the hospital! I've walked home." The second segment is weaker, though, and feels rather aimless. It has some poetic moments and a few neat camera drives (70 minutes into the film, Maisie holds the hand of her injured husband on the hospital bed, the camera pans up and looks through the window, and then there is a "time jump" to the mother and the family holding the hand of the injured Tony on the hospital bed), but the dialogue and the events are standard, bland and routine, not managing to ignite a bigger enjoyment or spark out of this material.

Grade:++

Schtonk!

Schtonk!; satire, Germany, 1992; D: Helmut Dietl, S: Götz George, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Christiane Hörbiger, Veronica Ferres, Harald Juhnke

Hamburg. Fritz Knobel doesn't earn much money for his paintings, but earns a lot for inventing Nazi memorabilia, a hobby he started since he was a 9-year and sold a fake Hitler's visor cap to an American soldier. Fritz secretly cheats on his wife Biggi with model Martha, who poses while he makes a painting of Eva Braun using her naked body. Fritz sells it to the rich Lentz, and later even makes a forgery of the last volume of Hitler's diary. Slimy reporter Hermann Willie buys the diary for his newspaper, "HH". Smelling a fortune, Fritz starts writing earlier volumes of Hitler's diaries, all until the newspaper pays 9 million Deutsche Mark for it. Fritz flees to a Swiss town, while the federal police concludes the diaries were written on notebooks manufactured only after World War II, and are thus a forgery. Hermann becomes crazy and decides to search for Hitler, thinking he is still alive.

Based on the real case of forger Konrad Kujau who created Hitler's fake diaries, "Schtonk!" is a satriical German auto-reflection on its own society (but also other countries) where that unhealthy fascination with Nazism and its legacy still lies on the margins, contemplating why some people are so obssessed with the past they never experienced, instead of living their own lives in the present. The writer and director Helmut Dietl uses unusual camera angles and sharp framing, but also relies on several jokes and black humor to carry the story, though he did not manage to make something more than the standard storyline that was expected from the concept. He shows how desperate the yellow press reporter Hermann (very good Gotz George) is, as he has to resort to playing a gigolo for the rich Freya von Hepp, Göring's grandniece, already obvious when they meet in the restaurant and have this exchange: "And you are...?" - "Broke." This gives justification for Hermann's attempt to get out of this slump and his motive for trying to gain a fortune to persuade his newspaper to buy Hitler's diaries. When Hermann wants to speak to the deputy editor, he greets him with contempt: "How long have we not see each other?" - "We have actually never seen each other." Fritz's "inspirations" for writing the diaries is a 'hit-or-miss' affair: in one sequence, he sees some people running a marathon on the road, so he already imagines writing a section about how Hitler opened the Olympic Games in '36. At one point, he is seen wearing a dark coat and even having a Hitler's accent in his mind as he writes further text on paper at his home. "Schtonk!" spoofs the supply and demand problem, since scammers will invent a fake supply just to sell it to the masses and earn a fortune, though some banal or lukewarm jokes could have been improved (for instance, Fritz writing in the diary how Hitler had "flatulance").

Grade:++

Children of Nature

Börn náttúrunnar; drama, Iceland / Norway / Germany, 1991; D: Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, S: Gísli Halldórsson, Sigríður Hagalín, Baldvin Halldórsson, Björn Karlsson, Bruno Ganz

Geiri (78) shoots his dog, packs his things and abandons his desolate farm. He goes to live in a Reykjavik apartment of his daughter, but since her teenage daughter argues with him, the family arranges that Geiri is transferred to an elderly home. There he meets Stella (79), his childhood friend. Together, they steal a car and drive off to die together at their childhood village on an island. The police tries to find them. They take a boat to the island and find the former fishermen outpost abandoned. Geiri finds Stella dead on the beach. He goes to the outpost and walks to the edge of a cliff, disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

"Children of nature" is one of those movies that tackle the ultimate taboo: death, or better said, accepting the inevitability of it. The simple story about an old couple who decides to die together in the abandoned village of their birth is subtle, emotional, minimalist and humanistic, but also has a certain sense for directorial craftmanship that tries to imply and rely on the subconscious rather than on a clear narrative—in the first 10 minutes, there is no dialogue; in the last 20 minutes, there is no dialogue. Several contrasts imbibe the film: the protagonist Geiri leaves a rural area, his farm, to live in an urban area, a residential building; whereas the finale becomes almost metaphysical and negates the realistic approach up to it (Bruno Ganz is credited as "The Angel" and appears as a man in a black coat who puts his hand on Geiri's shoulder in the sequence in the abandoned building; a naked woman is waving from the shore at Geiri and Stella in a boat, as the sailor says: "There is no need to be afraid of her. She is just a ghost"). The nature plays a big role in the film, showing the landscapes as a journey whose end leads to its beginning, the birth place of the couple. The two lead actors give fine performances, and are given intimacy to understand them (for instance, while sleeping on the hay in the open, they have this exchange: "I wonder if it's the same moon that shone on us back in the old days?" - "I don't know. I don't think it has ever recovered since they started taking strolls up there"). "Children of Nature" suffers from at times an overstretched running time and slow pacing, yet as a meditative contemplation on the cycle of passing and death, it is shaped to work completely. 

Grade:+++

The Round-Up

Szegénylegények; historical drama, Hungary, 1966; D: Miklós Jancsó, S: János Görbe, Zoltán Latinovits, Tibor Molnár, Gábor Agárdy

A prison in Hungary, 1868. The 1848 Hungarian Revolution failed, and thus the authorities are persecuting the last remnants of the followers of Lajos Kossuth and outlaw Sandor Rosza. The prison officers suspect that some of Sandor's men are among the convicts, so they summon a convict, Janos, who is sentenced to be hanged, and offer him amnesty if he can find someone who killed more people. Janos becomes a snitch and singles out convict Veszelka as one of Sandor's men, but since Veszelka doesn't want to confess anything, the prison guards whip a woman he loves in a gauntlet, causing her to die, so Veszelka, who was forced to watch from the tower, jumps into his death. Janos is later found strangled in his cell. The prison guards suspect convict Kabai. The prison guards start a mobilization of the convicts, and order convict Torma to assemble a unit made out of the former rebel army. The guards declare that their leader, Sandor was given amnesty, but that this does not apply to his unit, which is now identified and captured.

Ranked in a local poll ("The Budapest Twelve") as the best film of Hungarian cinema, Miklos Jancso's drama "The Round-Up" is in reality still a notch below all the hype. Set in only one location, a prison in the middle of a meadow, far away from anywhere, where the authorities are frantically searching for the remnants of the former rebel army of the failed 1848 Hungarian Revolution, the movie was interpreted as a sly allegory on the anti-communist '56 Hungarian Revolution, with a sense of isolation of the Eastern Europe and a well conjured up, depressive feeling of repression and authoritarianism. It starts with cynical sketches of military uniforms, boots, helmets, guns, sabers and cannons, as the narrator explains: "The spirit of 1848 has become a mere empty phrase..." Jancso is able to craft aesthetic, sharp shot compositions, but the overall storyline is still too monotone, grey, standard and narrowed down. The character development is abandoned as there are no emotions, no intimate scenes or some clever lines that gives these characters some greater interest, leaving the whole cast as cold, disposable (the top billed actor playing the seemingly main role of snitch Janos dies already some 57 minutes into the film) and mechanical. Only occasionally does the film offer some more untypical or strange situation (a naked woman running in between a row of some twenty prison guards who whip her). The final ploy with which the prison guards manage to trick the convicts into revealing they were members of the rebel army is neat, yet the movie simply needed a more colorful, higher amplitude of events and style.

Grade:++

The Promised Land

Ziemia obiecana; historical drama, Poland, 1975; D: Andrzej Wajda, S: Daniel Olbrychski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Andrzej Seweryn, Kalina Jędrusik, Anna Nehrebecka, Bożena Dykiel, Andrzej Szalawski

Łódź, 19th century. Karol, a Pole; Moryc, a Jew; and Max, a German, decide to unite forces and build a textile factory, but they lack money. Karol works as a managing engineer under the ruthless Bucholz, owner of a taxtile factory. Karol also has an affair with Lucy Zucker, the wife of a rich tycoon, and through her reads in a letter that a 25 kopeks tariff on American cotton will be imposed in two weeks. Thanks to this advance knowledge, Karol, Moryc and Max quickly buy as much cheap cotton as possible, and secure a lot of money. However, it is not enough, so Moryc borrows money from a Jewish lender. Max is trying to persuade his father to invest into modernization of his dated textile factory with manual labor and no automated machines, but to no avail. The trio builds their factory, but since Karol had an affair with Lucy, her husband sets it on fire. Karol marries the rich Mada Muller, owns the factory, and orders the police to open fire on workers on strike.

Even though it was ranked as one of the best Polish films of the 20th century in a local film critics' poll, Andrzej Wajda's 3-hour drama about early industrialization and capitalism doesn't feel that fresh anymore today. Instead of enjoying in watching the movie, it feels more like homework. The major problem is that it is overlong, and that it isn't as interesting as it could have been. "The Promised Land" shows how the accumulation of wealth needed to start a business isn't that easy, and how the investors trying to finance their textile factory have to resort to unethical means, and later become as cold and distant from the workers as their bosses whom they initially despised, which kind of aligns with the socialist advocation for Poland during that time. Some of the dialogue is comical and witty. For instance, the main protagonist Karol enters the office of his cold boss, Bucholz, who gives him letters addressed to himself, to entertain Karol, who reads out loud one of them: "Most eminent Mr. President, emboldened by the fame and respect with which all the unhappy remember your name...". When Moryc wants to borrow money for his business, the Jewish money lender says this: "Why do I treat you like a son? What am I saying, like a son? Like a son and a daughter together!" In another sequence, the rich German industrialist Kessler belittles not only Karol, but the Polish nation, too: "First you must civilise, create an industrial culture. Only then will your attempts stop being laughable," and thus Karol replies with wit: "You are right and you are wrong. A pig, if it ever thought of an eagle, would think this way." The hyped orgy sequence, some 68 minutes into the film, today feels rather timid; whereas some unusual camera tricks are neat (the wide fisheye lens); yet the movie needed more of such eccentric, unusual and grotesque moments to become more entertaining, since such a long running time didn't justify its sole standard storyline.

Grade:++

The Saga of Tanya the Evil (Season 1)

Yojo Senki; animated fantasy war series, Japan, 2017, D: Yutaka Uemura, S: Aoi Yuki, Saori Hayami, Hochu Otsaka, Shinichiro Miki

A Japanese businessman fires an employee from his company, who in turn pushes him in front of a speeding train at a station. While falling to his death, a divine being appears and talks, but the businessman refuses to recognize that God exists, calling it being X, so the divine being has the man reincarnated as a blond girl, Tanya, in an alternate history Europe of the early 20th century, claiming that hardship in life will make him more religiously devout. At 10, Tanya discovers she has magical powers, and is drafted in a huge war of its homeland, the Empire. Tanya and a dozen other soldiers with magical powers fly and use machine guns to kill enemies. Tanya is ruthless and cruel, and thus climbs up the military hierarchy, followed by her friend Viktoriya. Despite victories, more countries join forces against the Empire, fearing its growth of power, leading to a world war.

Anime series "The Saga of Tanya the Evil" is the darnedest thing. It has a fascinating plot tangle—but it treats it as a subplot on the margins, even though it should be the center point of the story—and for some reason pushes the far less interesting (and questionable), standard war and battlefront story as the main segment. This uneven decision in the construction of the storyline which gives undue weight to the lesser story ultimately hinders "Tanya". One isn't quite sure what the point is, at least from this first season. This better plot tangle revolves around a nameless Japanese businessman who is pushed in front of a speeding train, but just then time stops—and an invisible divine being speaks through the mouths of "frozen" people around him, and even through the beak of a pigeon (!), but the businessman is an atheist and refuses to believe in God ("Are you unfamiliar with the 'duty of disclosure?' If you claim to be God, you should put more thought into your decisions." - "Administering 7 billion people is already beyond my capacity." - "Overwork is the sign of a failed business model."), defiantly calling it being X, as if his powerless, mortal status only leaves him with mental rebellion and critical wit at his disposal. The sequence is sheer genius, a fascinating contemplation on the problem of evil and satirical take on religion, but for some reason the authors stubbornly refuse to simply continue this story. 

Instead, they just focus 90% of the rest of the story on the businessman reincarnated as a punishment as a 10-year old girl Tanya, who is mobilized due to her magical powers to fight in an Empire in a big war. The allegory isn't well conjured up: the country is only named "Empire", but the maps of Europe clearly show Germany during World War I. Then why not just simply say so? What is the point of a militaristic fundamentalism and warmongering in Tanya who enjoys being cruel to get to the next promotion? Why is Tanya only a 10-year old, when she could have been a grown up (the 10-year old mobster in "RoboCop 2" fallacy), as it would have been more logical for such a war-themed plot? A lot was not that well thought-out or well written in the story. A rare critical distance is taken in episode #8 where Tanya orders the artillery shooting of rebellious Republican remnants retreating from a city, including civilians, even though a military colonel refuses to do so—because it is a clear war crime. A few post-credit jokes have charm, such as in episode #9 where Tanya writes to a family about a soldier who was injured and relieved of duty, but decorated with honors—only to comment that this is the first time she lost a soldier because he ate rotten potatoes. However, one simply cannot get engaged with the obscure sight of dozen soldiers flying in the sky, "Harry Potter"-style, shooting with machine guns at the battlefront. The viewers simply long for the confrontation with the divine being from the start, but this happens only three times (besides the said first encounter, it appears speaking through a toy soldier and through the corpse of a killed pilot in a war plane), which consolidates "Tanya's" lost opportunities. 

Grade:++

Hugo the Hippo

Hugó, a víziló; animated fantasy adventure musical, Hungary / USA, 1975; D: Bill Feigenbaum, S: Ferenc Bessenyei, Gábor Berkes, László Márkus, Tamás Major

On the island of Zanzibar, the harbor is far away from land and thus sharks always attack people coming from the ships. The Sultan thus orders his assistants Aban-Khan and a Wizard to bring hippos to chase away the sharks. A dozen hippos, including the little Hugo, are abducted from Africa and deported to Zanzibar. The sharks disappear, but since the people forgot to feed the hippos, the animals start eating food from the city. Due to these complaints, Aban-Khan kills all the hippos, except for Hugo who manages to escape, swim across the Indian Ocean and find refuge in Dar es Salaam. There Hugo befriends Jorma, a little boy, but when the animal eats all the crops from Jorma's father's farm, people again turn against him. Hugo is put on trial, but due to Sultan's compassionate speech, the judge acquits the hippo and orders that the kids take care of him.

One of the most famous animated films by the Pannonia Film Studio, "Hugo the Hippo" is a surreal, bizarre and phantasmagorical little flick, but it is honest, heart-warming and with a humanistic message that animals should be treated with compassion. Its weakest link is the dated animation which feels pale compared to modern examples the viewers are accustomed to; forced musical segments; as well as the meandering story (Hugo's best friend, little boy Jorma, doesn't appear all until 45 minutes into the film), but the title hippo is adorably cute—he doesn't speak a single line, but his innocence creates an emotional charge since he suffers from abduction, displacement, becomes an orphan and has to start a new life all over again, with grown people attacking him for eating from their farms. Luckily, the director Bill Feigenbaum allows for several comical moments, some of which are almost cartoonish: for instance, when the sharks attack the ship and see several people hanging from a pole, they imagine shish kebabs on sticks. The Sultan summons the Wizard, who is introduced sleeping wrapped up in paper and floating above ground. The clumsy teacher in Dar es Salaam is so distracted while reading a book that he "shaves" himself with a toothbrush and accidentally places a snake around his neck, mistaking it for a scarf. The most expressionistic and memorable moment is the sole sequence of the abduction: the Wizard creates a robot cowboy on a robot horse which sucks out all the water from a pond, leaving the dozen hippos in a crater. The cowboy then lassoes the biggest hippo, but it pulls the rope so hard that the robot horse's and cowboy's screws start falling apart. This and the sequence where giant vegetable creatures attack Hugo might come off as too scary for some kids, yet the overall story has some distinctive charm and flair. Sultan's final words at the trial are remarkable, showing that even some characters appear to learn and change in the finale: "Unless we can embrace the whole of life on Earth, unless we can manage to learn from Jorma, we are doomed. The fate of Hugo the hippo is our fate. Let there be justice for all living things!" 

Grade:++

Ćaća

Ćaća; documentary short, Croatia, 2025; D: Matej Beluhan, S: Ivo Sanader

The film chronicles the career of politician Ivo Sanader, member of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), who was elected as the Prime Minister of Croatia in 2003 and 2007. However, he suddenly held a press conference and announced his resignation in 2009. Later, he was indicted for corruption, including through rigging public tenders, illegally selling Croatia's oil and gas company INA to the Hungarian company MOL, and taking a bribe to allow the foreign Hypo Bank to enter the Croatian market. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

One of the best films from Kino Klub Zagreb, excellent satirical documentary "Ćaća" (Croatian slang for "Pops") is a grand analysis of corruption, political pliability and that effect of 'rise and fall' of an influential figure. It's all archive footage, there is not a single word of a narrator nor any new scene intended to be a direct intervention, but through its suggestive images and playful re-arrangement of some scenes everything is clear to such an extent that no commentary is necessary for the viewers to understand what the author wanted to say. The unwillingness of politician and former Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to star in the film and be its "protagonist" is inversely proportional to the fun of this whole 13-minute movie. The director Matej Beluhan initially only presents political campaign ads in the first five minutes of the film, such as they were broadcast on TV, in all their propaganda. In the first ad, an old man points to a giant poster of Sanader in a park, and says: "I believe this man!", while a lad with long hair cheerfully replies: "Me too, my friend!" In a house, Sanader's speech is seen on TV, as a man with a goatee, sitting on a couch, scratching his chin, says: "Grampa, I believe this man", as the grandpa, with big moustache, just nods. 

In another public speech, Sanader is speaking: "Where are all those HDZ thieves? Why are they not in prison? It can't be that there are none!" In the second political ad, Niko Kovač, a football manager born outside Croatia, but allowed to vote in Croatia, looks into the camera and confidently says: "Precisely because of that, HDZ and Dr. Ivo Sanader." In a third political ad, the most surprising of all, the German Chancellor at that time, Angela Merkel, also promotes him: "Croatia is on the good way to become a member of the EU. All this was achieved under the leadership of HDZ and Ivo Sanader". Then the movie starts its deconstruction of all this. New inserts show how Sanader was indicted for corruption, and all those previous ads are now intermittently played again, gaining a new, comical conext, as if they drive in reverse: Merkel again repeats "all this was achieved under the leadership of HDZ and Ivo Sanader". At a court hearing, Sanader announces he is rejecting the accusations with disgust, and this is followed, indicatively, by the repeat of the ad where the lad with long hair says: "Me too, my friend!" A judge reads out the first degree verdict finding Sanader guilty, and the clip with Kovač is repeated: "Precisely because of that, HDZ and Dr. Ivo Sanader." When a news anchorman says Sanader was sentenced to 18 years in prison, the grandpa with the moustache is seen noding again. All the previous statements now sound incriminating and farcical. That everything is understood just through these subtle re-arrangements just shows how cleverly set-up and edited this whole film is.

Grade:+++