Prague
was the home of Franz Kafka, but the old Communist regime was never really sure
what to make of him. Apparently, they were even less enthusiastic about
Jonathan Swift, judging from the lifetime filmmaking ban they imposed on Pavel
Juracek after they got a load of his Kafka-influenced dystopian riff on Gulliver’s Travels. Of course, there is
no better recommendation for a film than the crude use of censorial force. Poor
Lemuel Gulliver is in for quite an excursion down the rabbit hole in Juracek’s freshly
restored Case for the New Hangman, which screens
during this year’s Panorama Europe at MoMI.
There
is a lot going on in New Hangman, but
it is hard to really pin down the plot. Frankly, that is far too prosaic a
concept for this Gulliver’s misadventures. After his car breaks down, largely
out of its own subversive willfulness, Gulliver is welcomed to Balnibarbi by
some ghosts from his past. Once he breaks out of his own personal Hell, he
quickly runs afoul of the local authorities by talking on a Monday, their
designated silent day of the week.
He
will sort of acclimate to dubious laws sets forth by the scientific society, at
least for a short while. However, his guileless will lead to trouble. Indeed, his
invitation to the cloud city of Laputa will be rather timely, arriving right
before his appointment with the titular hangman. However, their interest in him
stems from the vain hope he might have encountered their prodigal king, now
working as a bellhop at the Monte Carlo Carlton Hotel, during his stay there.
Or something like that.
In
any event, it is easy to see why the socialist censors took one look at New Hangman and said “oh, Hell no.” It is
not a strong one-to-one allegory, but it is clear as day every authority figure
in the film is cruel, arbitrary, corrupt, unstable, and looney as a jaybird. Plus,
it is just light years removed from the official sanctioned style of socialist
realism. You will not find any rough-hewn but dignified laborers digging down
deep to make their production quotas and hasten the building of socialism here.
Visually,
New Hangman is wonderfully baroque and
trippy. Balnibarbi is a cluttered place, but the sets and settings are often
quite imposing. It certainly looks like Juracek was processing influences from caricaturists
like Honoré Daumier and J.J. Grandville, as well as the films of Wojcieh,
particularly The Hourglass Sanitorium.
Lubomir Kostelka also rises to the occasion. As Gulliver, he looks like a
composite of Graham Chapman and Roman Polanski and acts like a much less
passive everyman than we might expect. He is often believably freaked out by it
all, but he can also lose his patience and his cool.
The
work of cinematographer Jan Kalis and the entire design team is always
strikingly cinematic. Juracek also nimbly walks a tightrope, keeping the
audience baffled and somewhat unnerved, without ever truly menacing them or
leaving them unmoored in a surrealist maelstrom. Even if you are not sure what New Hangman all adds up to (which is
highly likely), it is a rewarding
film to parse, ponder, and generally try to impose meaning on. It should be
seen on a big screen, like movies were meant to be seen, so real cineastes should
definitely make an effort to see it when Case
for a New Hangman screens this Saturday (5/5) during the 2018 Panorama
Europe, at MoMI.