The Teacher: A Little Bit of Power can be a Dangerous Thing

During the Communist era, teachers were supposed to serve as the state’s first line of indoctrination. Of course, most disbelieved the propaganda they repeated by rote. However, Maria Drazdechova, teacher of history and Slovak, also serves as the local party chair. That makes her uncharacteristically zealous and decidedly dangerous, so when she makes it clear she expects favors from her students’ parents, most of them simply comply. Unfortunately, her abuse of power causes a tragedy that will force the parents to choose a side in Jan Hrebejk’s The Teacher (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York, at Film Forum.

On the first day of class, Drazdechova has each pupil stand and tell her what their parents do for a living. The purpose is obvious. She wants to know what they can do for her. The repercussions are also quickly apparent. The parents who deliver goods and favors receive tips as to which study problems their children should give special attention to. Those who cannot, will see their children punished, like Danka Kuncerova, a bright student-gymnast, who is regularly shamed and belittled in class, because her father, a back-office accountant at the airport, is unable and unwilling to call in favors on her behalf.

When the pressure finally breaks Kuncerova, it gives the decent head teacher an opening to call an emergency parents meeting. As they argue and deliberate, we witness Drazdechova’s tyrannical classroom behavior in flashbacks. However, the Communist teacher’s partisans clearly have the advantage. Besides the Kuncerovas, her most vocal critics are the highly problematic parents of Filip Binder, the wrestling prodigy who has a crush on Danka. The unlikely wildcard might turn out to be Vaclav Littmann, a former academic reduced to menial labor after the defection of his wife. Much to his discomfort, Drazdechova has made her romantic interest all too evident, but that also put him in a position to witness her full manipulativeness.

The Teacher is an emotionally grueling film, because it shows how Drazdechova strikes at her victims’ weakest spot: their children. It is one thing to stand up to do the right thing when you will be the only one to face the consequences and quite another when your son or daughter stands to take the punishment. They end up with a classic prisoners’ dilemma—it is in their collective interest to stand against Drazdechova, but individually, they each have an incentive to knuckle under.

Zuzana Maurery is absolutely chilling and enraging as the venal Drazdechova. One minute she adopts a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth façade and the next she lashes out at her young charges with emotional savagery that will turn your stomach to ice. Frankly, it is such a disturbing performance, because it is so true to life. Likewise, it is truly harrowing to watch Tamara Fischer’s breakdown as Danka. Yet, the film’s real heart and ethical soul is supplied by Martin Havelka as Filip Binder’s gruffly remorseful beat-first-and-ask-questions-later father Jaroslav.

For his first film in Slovak, Hrebejk channels Twelve Angry Men and similarly claustrophobic morality plays. Essentially, it combines elements of his critical examinations of the Communist experience, like Kawasaki’s Rose, with his domestic dramas, such as Honeymoon and Beauty in Trouble. Although Hrebejk has positioned Teacher as a universal exploration of the dynamics of powers, the thornier aspects of Petr Jarchovsky’s uncompromising screenplay, such as Littmannova’s defection are very particular to that dark era. It is a razor-sharp film that is almost unbearably gripping. Very highly recommended, The Teacher opens this Wednesday (8/30) at Film Forum.

Panorama Europe ’14: Honeymoon

Usually, couples keep the wedding simple for second marriages, but not Radim Werner and his fiancée Tereza. At least when you keep a low profile, it makes it harder for unwelcomed guests from the past to crash. There will be no ex-spouses arriving uninvited, but one mystery guest will thoroughly destabilize the celebration in Jan Hrebejk’s Honeymoon (trailer here), which screens during the rechristened Panorama Europe at the Museum of the Moving Image.

As fate would have it, Werner’s thirteen year-old son Dominik breaks his glasses seconds before the wedding ceremony. Fortunately, there is optometrist-in-the-box right on the church plaza. Werner does not think much of the man behind the counter, but he instantly recognizes him. Calling himself Jan Benda, the mystery man crashes the ceremony and hitches a ride to the reception in the country. He claims to be Werner’s old boarding school friend, but the groom pretends not to remember him. The kids take to Benda, but he unnerves both bride and groom.

It will become obvious the lens crafter is not really Benda, but he shares some complicated history with Werner and the real Benda. The truth is pretty ugly, especially when the newly married bride is forced to confront it. Honeymoon is considered the third installment of Hrebejk’s loosely thematic trilogy, begun with the excellent Kawasaki’s Rose, examining how the sins of the past continue to influence the present. While not explicitly political like Rose, it is worth noting Werner’s boarding school indiscretions indirectly involved his teenaged lust for Natassja Kinski during the height of her international superstardom, suggesting the 1980’s, perhaps thereby implying he was the privileged child of Party elites.

Regardless, Hrebejk successfully taps into viewers’ deep ambivalence regarding weddings and similar conventions. Somewhere deep within our inner Mr. Hydes, we resent having to dress up and be on our best behavior for people we only share an accidental relationship with. Like a Wedding Crashers from Hell, Honeymoon delivers the chaos we secretly yearn for at such times.

Indeed, Hrebejk deftly plays a dual game, creating suspense through not-Benda’s unsettling behavior, while dropping clear hints that he is more worthy of our sympathies. He rather risks undoing the balance act late in the third act, but he certainly keeps us on our toes. Ultimately, the messiness lends Honeymoon further credence.

As the respective nemesis-classmates, Stanislav Majer and Jirí Cerny play a dynamite cat-and-mouse game. They invest both men with sympathetic moments, as well as profound flaws, making it impossible to reflexively align with either one. Anna Geislerova initially seems to be problematically passive as the newlywed bride, but she more than holds her own during a pivotal confrontation with Cerny’s crasher.

Honeymoon is a mature film, in which karma packs a real punch. On one hand, Hrebejk challenges how well one can ever know a prospective spouse, while also questioning whether we can ever out live the moral statute of limitations for our mistakes. Good luck coming up with satisfying answers, but the resulting drama is quite compelling. Recommended for discerning adults, Honeymoon screens this Friday (4/11) at the Museum of the Moving Image, as part of Panorama Europe.

Truth and Consequences: Kawasaki’s Rose

Everybody despises collaborators and informers, but what of the secret policemen who press them into betrayal? That is just one of the difficult questions raised by Jan Hrebejk’s Kawasaki’s Rose (trailer here), the Czech Republic’s official submission best foreign language Oscar consideration, which opens this Wednesday in New York at Film Forum.

Pavel Josek was a signatory to Charter 77. A critic of the Communist government’s perversion of psychiatric medicine (his chosen profession), Josek’s dissident credentials are unimpeachable. As a result, he is seen as a logical choice to receive the annual “Memory of the Nation” award for demonstrating moral integrity during the oppressive Communist regime. However, while working on a television documentary on Josek, his estranged son-in-law Ludek (a child of Communist apparachiks) starts to unearth troubling questions about the great man’s early years.

Josek’s wife Jana had once been the lover of Borek, an artist too idiosyncratic and honest to prosper under the Communist system. It begins to look like Josek might have played a small part in the campaign against the sculptor that culminated in his banishment to Sweden.

Whatever Josek did, it was relatively limited and his motives were complicated. He was not the state security officer stubbing out cigarettes on Borek’s hand. Known as “Kafka,” he apparently pays no price for his crimes, smugly dissembling for Radka, Ludek’s television reporter lover. Conversely, Josek starts to slowly twist in the wind.

Martin Huba perfectly captures Josek’s complexity and contradictions in one of the year’s best screen performances. He has scenes discussing the perils of guilt with his mildly delinquent granddaughter that would be fraught with peril for lesser actors. Yet, Huba sells them perfectly with his understated world-weariness.

The weak link of the film is unquestionably the marital strife engulfing Ludek and Josek’s daughter Lucie. Frankly, the confrontation between husband, wife, and mistress makes no sense whatsoever, merely distracting from the more significant drama at hand. Indeed, there is a measure of closure to be found in Rose, when the audience finally meets Borek. Spiritually reborn during his time in Sweden, he has befriended Mr. Kawasaki, a Japanese artist who chose a self-imposed life of exile after his entire family was murdered during the 1995 Sarin gas terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway.

Though long out of power, the Communist regime continues to cause suffering throughout Rose. It is a deeply humane film, but not a completely forgiving one, as evidenced by the bitter irony of its coda. Thoughtful and challenging, Rose is most likely a long shot for Oscar recognition, but it one of the better films of the Award season, well worth seeing when it opens Wednesday (11/24) in New York at Film Forum.