Kolya (1996)

Kolya (Jan Sverák, 1996)

Early in the film, crusty fifty-something year old musician Louka (screenwriter and the director's own father Zdenek Sverák) finds a lovely trinket in the gutter of her mother's house. Somehow, the exquisitely crafted costume piece fortuitously lands inside the rundown gutter. Louka goes to a jewelry appraiser and discovers that the trinket has limited monetary value. Nevertheless, he keeps the trinket and holds it for the important person he deems worthy of it.

It's a funny thing that there is a beautiful but mostly worthless trinket in Jan Sverák's highly conventional Kolya, a film the Academy deemed worthy for one of their gold-plated statues. If there's one thing to describe this sentimental feature, it is that, a finely manufactured bauble. Kolya, like that ornament brought by good fortune, is a beautiful thing but once appraised, is really nothing more than that, a shiny little thing that is easy on the eyes, light for the heart, and worthy of a well-earned smile. I have no doubts of the filmmakers' sincerity in crafting the film. In fact, the father-son team completed the script during a nine-month period which drew from them life-stirring or everyday experiences to be translated to film. Predictably, the product is adorable, exactly the kind of film I've trained myself to resist.

Louka, expelled from the Philharmonic Orchestra, plays for funerals and to earn more money, gets jobs restoring tombstones. Deep in debt and in need of a car, he accepts a lucrative offer by his friend to fake a marriage of a Russian woman, who after the wedding, immediately left for Germany leaving her son Kolya (Andrei Chalimon) under his dissenting wing. Louka is affiliated with those wanting to overthrow Russian political influence over the Czech, making the burden of taking care for the foreign child tougher to bear.

Louka isn't exactly the most endearing of old men. In fact, he is depicted as obnoxious, steadfast and sure of how he will live his life, mindful of the fact that to lead a musician's life, one cannot get married and maintain a family. It would take something drastic and effective to modify his stance about life and that's where Kolya comes in. Kolya is carefully written with an earnest admiration, probably keeping in mind the perfect son, unbearably lovable and made even riper for adoration by his vulnerability, being alone in a foreign land, unable to speak or understand the local dialect, and naively proud of his currently useless heritage. He is also played by a young actor perfectly plucked from the hundreds of photogenic children in Europe, physically capable of turning the hardest hearts into warm jelly. Kolya is the perfect kid to change Louka.

That's exactly my problem with this film, it is just too perfect. Everything fits wonderfully into their respective slots, that it is almost impossible to care for the film's characters in any other way that is not within the expectations of the plot. Louka is nothing more than an old guy desperately trying to make something out of his miserable existence of playing for funerals, calling ex-girlfriends during lonely nights, and frequent visits to his mother's house. Kolya, on the other hand, is a mere impetus and gives the audience no opportunity to actually care for him or know him above his role as a goodlooking pet or the cinematic wallflower.

No wonder the Academy loved this film, it's too easy. All you have to do is sit and pray that you're able to stay concerned after the string of maudlin affairs is served with extraordinary finesse. It has absolutely nothing for you to invest some part of yourself for, exactly like the cheap jewelry Louka fortuitously found while cleaning the gutter. It's entirely a one-sided affair, the art film you should seek out for if you vastly enjoyed the syrupy feel of films like Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful (1997) or Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso (1988). In my case, I like my films partly sour, bitter, or salty. Sugar can certainly get tiring after a while.

Closely Watched Trains (1966)

Closely Watched Trains (Jirí Menzel, 1966)
Czech Title: Ostre sledované vlaky

Jirí Menzel's Closely Watched Trains opens with a narrated history of the Hrma family (it's a very amusing montage detailing the several unlucky circumstances that have surrounded the clan --- how his great-grandfather spent his riches on alcohol and tobacco, or how his grandfather met a brutal death trying to hypnotize Nazi tanks). The youngest Hrma, goofy-looking Milos (Václav Neckár), is off to apprentice as a train dispatcher in a remote station, following the footsteps of his father who has retired very early and earns pension money without doing anything. He dons his uniform like a royal robe and wears the dispatcher's cap like a crown. In full attire, he looks older than he really is. You can barely tell that underneath the overcoat and the boots, is a young man anxious to get laid for the very first time.

Menzel tells his story with a lighthearted daze. Jaromír Sofr's black and white cinematography, curiously soft and lovely in its simplistic elegance, lends an air of ease to the darkening narrative of our virginal hero suddenly awakening to the fact that there's a more conflicted world beyond his pitiful premature ejaculation. Menzel populates his film with comedic instances and charming visual cues (that famous shot of a little kiss with Milos' conductor-girlfriend stolen by her train's abrupt departure); it's really very easy on the eyes and undeniably adorable, even when events start getting drearier.

That remote station, depicted by Menzel with fanciful commitment to the absurd (the denizens of the station from the pigeon-loving station manager to Milos' oversexed superior and all the females in between), is more than Milos' place of employment, it is his personal train station to his coming-of-age. He enters that stage in his life by disappearing in a mass of dark engine smoke. There's more to watching trains regularly than pulling levers and reading telegraphs, it also involves being stuck in an office simmering with pheromones and sweaty memories of playful nights where rubber stamps serve a steamier purpose bigger than officiating documents.

The film seems ridiculously naive, as if Menzel is invoking the Milos in his world-view of a nation invaded. But this placid depiction of war, far from being childish and immature, is more childlike than anything. The reason Closely Watched Trains is so refreshing, so genuinely watchable, is that there's a fathomable transition from lighthearted to fatal, from coming-of-age to daring heroics, from quotidian comedy to utter pathos.

Milos grows up way before he realizes it. We see the world, currently being overwhelmed by violent battles, through the eyes of Milos who is bent on ridding his blossoming masculinity of a minor inconvenience, allowing him to finally consummate that mildly amorous feeling he has for his girlfriend. The film's biggest conceit and in my opinion, its claim to greatness, is its elegiac ending which not only satisfies Milos' interrupted coming-of-age but also his place in his war-torn country. Much like the way he disappears in the thick engine smoke to the duties of apprentice train dispatcher and the accompanying pressures of adulthood, he again disappears from a former life, this time through a powerful gust of darker smoke coming from an explosion he caused out of both extreme happiness from his recently consummated manhood and that fleeting, brash and almost unnoticeable sense of patriotism.