An old man's film with a retentive and youthful eye that carries with it the multiple benefits of hindsight. Director Jirí MENZEL possesses a fetishist's eye for tellingly erotic detail as well as painterly composition. This is, in essence, an elderly man reminiscing about his youthful sexual experiences while telling a quite savage political morality tale dressed – in litotes - as social satire. A difficult trick to pull off but he manages it rather well.
Every woman in this film is deliberately very good looking to express MENZEL's love of the feminine. And, moreover, of women's ability to distract one from anything one happens to be doing at the time with a posture, a gesture or a glance. Despite the copious nudity, the women are presented as human; the men as fools or, worse, hopeless slaves of their gender's apparent sexual limitations.
Despite the color of the political elite of a country in apparently constant social upheaval, the central character manages to survive and become rich – only then to be imprisoned by the communists for a being a so called parasite. This is an anti ideological (Make Love, Not War) piece that expresses hippy virtues without the long hair and appalling music. Critiquing National Socialism, Marxism, sexual repression & social conformity, it attacks White racism through the bizarre idea of racially pure breeding hotels where pure Aryan maidens are mated with wehrmacht troops of fully Germanic descent. This interestingly mimics contemporary European racism in its anti miscegenational concern that non Europeans be largely kept out of Festung Europa.
The characterization is a little weak as this is more a film of ideas than emotions; hence, the over the top and wickedly humorous style.
Copyright © 2009 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment