Pouta
Directed by:
Radim ŠpačekScreenplay:
Ondřej ŠtindlCinematography:
Jaromír KačerComposer:
Tomáš VtípilCast:
Ondřej Malý, Kristína Tormová, Martin Finger, Luboš Veselý, Lukáš Latinák, Barbora Milotová, Oldřich Kaiser, Ivana Uhlířová, Iva Pazderková, Jana Janěková (more)VOD (1)
Plots(1)
Czechoslovakia, 1982. The totalitarian regime seems to be endless and impossible to end. Antonín, a member of the secret police, is restless in the inside, maybe even a psychopathic violent man full of unarticulated rage and despair. Bored with everything around him, he directs his demons to a seemingly clear but rather an unseizable point – to a young woman called Klára. It is not love or any other kind of pure passion – just a burning desire for an illusion of escape from the grey cage and boredom. Antonín´s absurd effort to get Klára for himself not only turns him against traditional enemies of the regime but also against his own people and the system itself. But if Antonín breaks the rules of the organization in the service of which he is, it is not a civil or political gesture – it is a clearly personal and frantic revolt. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (10)
Strong Czech drama. I was actually quite surprised that I hadn't heard much about the film. Yes, it's from the time before the revolution and it might bother some that there are so many similar films here, but it beautifully portrays the paranoia of the time and what a person could do when they were in the "right" place. Excellent performances by the actors and a great psychological human drama.
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Through Štindl's magnificent script, precise and detailed production design (it brought back memories of the ticket punching machines in trams, etc.) and an inventive soundtrack, Špaček tells an interesting, weighty and well-crafted psychological portrait of a brooding bastard who plays at being a demigod from his position as member of the secret police. I consider the final meeting in the dissident's flat to be the best executed and acted scene in a Czech film last year. Ondřej Malý can already prepare a shelf for the Czech Lion.
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After a long time (since Ševčík’s Normal the Düsseldorf Ripper), I didn’t have trouble forgetting I was watching a Czech film while watching a Czech film and didn’t have to be lenient in my rating. Ondřej Malý is brilliant in the role of that secret police asshole, you can feel the character boiling within him. As a whole, however, Chains felt a little disarrayed; there was something missing for a 100% experience, but great satisfaction nonetheless.
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The film Walking Too Fast is not about the StB. That’s merely the main character’s starting point. Walking Too Fast combines two themes in the main character, namely the well-known burnout syndrome and the referenced inability to apply absolute power. Antonín has gained the maximum, but basically has nothing. He's made it to the top, but he's been climbing for so long that he's unable to remember what it looks like beneath him. So he fixates on the farthest possible goal so that he can keep going, but even that is approaching dangerously fast. I could have complained about the ever-scratchy post-synchronization work that Czech films suffer from terribly, I could have sputtered about the unnecessarily undynamic direction again, except for a few moments (the scene in the forest), but all that pales in comparison to moments that you simply won't see elsewhere.
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One would expect a 2.5-hour film to have enough space to satisfy the viewer with a solid and meaningful finale with the stories of all (or at least most) of the characters wrapped up. Alas. In this regard, Walking Too Fast failed in its entirety. That’s a great pity, especially considering the performances that Špaček's film has (the great Ondřej Malý, the woefully, egregiously underused Oldřich Kaiser and others).
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