The Painted Bird

After Tobruk, Václav Marhoul convinced me for the second time that he and I are simply not on the same wavelength. Now, after the almost three-hour ‘frantic ride,’ I can’t help but wonder what he wanted to convey with this film. Next to Come and See and Hatred, The Painted Bird feels rather underwhelming. The information that the story takes place during WWII came to me only in the form of a Storch flying over, other indications appeared much later. I still don't know where the story was set (Carpathian Ruthenia?). I also didn't understand why the little Jew was played by a Gipsy. The story unfolded in a very awkward way. Throughout the film I felt like it was weirdly cut, I was annoyed by its strange rhythm: boring, boring, boring - brutal violence - boring, boring, boring - brutal violence - boring, boring, boring – pedophilia - boring, boring, boring - zoophilia, etc. I also didn't understand why there was violence in the film in the first place when the creators were obviously more afraid of it than the viewers. That way, most scenes look silly bordering on ridiculous. For example, the completely pointless zoophilia scene had me in stitches, Václav Marhoul can't have been serious. On the other hand, if Fifty Shades of Grey gives you goosebumps, this will be a rough experience for you, which might even lead to some involuntary bedwetting. At least I already know what those awards were for. Wait... actually, I don't. P.S. Those bikini tan lines on Denisa Pfauserová sure looked historically accurate :-) (05/17/2020)

The Painted Bird is undoubtedly an ambitious filmmaking project eyeing festival awards, as evidenced by its strong theme and international cast. I welcomed the black-and-white visuals, which (as was once the case with Psycho) reduced the violence and atrocities presented by the absence of colour. I was intrigued by the episodic nature of the film, in which the young and initially innocent child protagonist meets various characters on his 'journey home' who influence, mark or corrupt him in different ways. By Czech standards, this is without question a supremely raw film featuring pervasive violence against humans and animals and an inhospitable landscape full of suffering, hopelessness and sadness. Of the individual episodes, the ones that stick out in my mind the most are those with the shameless Jitka Čvančarová, the transport of the Jews and the raid on the village. Although the film is nearly three hours long, it went by really fast in the cinema. As noted, the film lacks music alongside the colours - unless you counts the church scenes and the subtitles – which is a bit of a shame, as there is little dialogue and the music could have filled in and enhanced these quiet spots. (09/18/2019)

I think the controversy over The Painted Bird is largely an inflated bubble, and I think those leaving audiences in Venice were leaving mainly because they were bored and it wasn't the film for them, it's just that when someone asked them the reason, they just didn't want to be embarrassed and made excuses for the unbearable brutality and that was that. I'm not saying the film is a pleasant spectacle, it's certainly not, but it's a great spectacle and Václav Marhoul has a point. So while there are ugly things happening on screen, there's almost never a need to show them directly in an attempt to shock as much as possible; many times the silence before the storm is even more uncomfortable, or the mere sound of something just happening out of frame. Perhaps what I like most about The Painted Bird, though, is that it's entirely a world film, even though it doesn't try to be one. It’s not exhibitionistic, it remains focused on telling the sordid tale of a journey from darkness to light, aided by excellent actors as much as by Vladimír Smutný's breathtaking cinematography and Marhoul's beauteous direction. It's not for everyone, but that's okay. (09/16/2019)

I don’t watch Czech films these days, they don’t interest me and I don’t see in them anything original and authorial in terms of style and narration (when I happen to stumble upon them on TV). The Painted Bird is not the revolutionary and morally questionable movie the initial responses made us believe, but it’s nonetheless honest, intimate and thoughtful filmmaking of the kind other domestic productions can not match. There have been comparisons with Tarkovsky or Markéta Lazarová, but I wouldn't go that far; Marhoul is more sober and more naturalistic, and also more accessible from a narrative standpoint. The black and white composition is an understandable and correct step for such bleak material, while the taciturnity combined with the overuse of details and the sparse editing allow for a deeper immersion of the viewer in the atmosphere so they can be ready to react with empathy to all the horrors in front of them, which the camera tastefully hides most of the time, so the story will not feel gratuitously violent. The narration consists of simply intertwined episodes with the unifying motif of the complex development of the protagonist – complex only in the sense that each chapter shapes a different side of Jošek's personality and gives him experiences that help him grow up in that terrible environment without real love. Otherwise, the development is not too surprising, Marhoul relies mainly on changing of moral environments, which take second place to the objective statements of the cruelty of war, the misery associated to it and the religious fanaticism of the predominantly rural civilians. It is a pity that in the episodic structure this secondary function gradually becomes stronger than the repeated suffering of the main character. Overall, however, I must praise it, The Painted Bird looks beautiful, it doesn’t get boring despite its runtime and the repetitiveness, the performances and the casting of the repulsive village folk are perfect (even I could have had a small role), and it presents big ideas and a cruel vision of human nature with a strong author’s signature (though I couldn’t avoid laughing when I heard the Wilhelm Scream when someone fell off a horse). A case of impressive filmmaking that may not have that huge an impact on savvy viewers despite its great ambitions, but that with every shot and scene it screams that it should be taken seriously here and abroad – and that, fortunately, it doesn’t get too annoying even after two hours. (09/12/2019)