Panorama Europe ’14: The Bucuresti Experiment

Just what was the bad old Romanian intelligence service willing to do for the sake of power? The answer is deceptively obvious, but it will be obscured by layers of meta-reality or un-reality in Tom Wilson’s The Bucuresti Experiment (trailer here), a documentary, mockumentary, or something in between that screens during Panorama Europe at the Museum of the Moving Image.

To this day, the “truth” of the Romanian Revolution is clouded with uncertainty and dogged by conspiracy theories. According to commentators assembled by British ex-pat Wilson, the secret police read the tea leaves and realized Ceausescu’s days were numbered. To maintain their positions of privilege, they would have to adapt to capitalism, but the average Romanian’s brains were too thoroughly conditioned by socialism. A little mental re-alignment would therefore be necessary.

Supposedly, Romania’s leading captain of industry, Andrei Juvina, was the first to undergo the “Bucuresti Experiment.” However, it seems the clinical trials changed his personality, slowly rupturing his relationship with college girlfriend, Carmen Anton, a former Romanian teen idol. As the film progresses, Wilson focuses more on their personal issues, building up to their climatic reunion. However, Wilson springs a surprise third act-coda that completely alters our perception of the film, restoring it to the ranks of straight talking documentary exposes.

At the risk of being spoilery, the Romanian intelligence service was capable of far worse crimes than simply making future oligarchs adept at business.  Frankly, the real reality will make viewers somewhat ashamed they bought into all the meta-meta narrative game-playing. Yet, Wilson is remarkably sure-footed building the ostensive drama throughout his set-up. In fact, there is something particularly moving about the charismatically mature Anton’s performance as herself.

Given the film’s ultimate gravity, Wilson’s liberties with the documentary form feel rather disconcerting in retrospect. Yet, there is definitely something to his larger point. In former Communist countries like Romania (and Lord knows Russia too) there have not been the sort of truth commissions and legal tribunals necessary to expose and bring to justice all those complicit in the crimes of the Communist regimes.

Frankly, The Bucuresti Experiment is likely to stir contradictory responses within most viewers, but it is a challenging film, produced with a serious purpose in mind. At a succinct sixty-eight minutes, it is also a decidedly less taxing exercise in post-modern historical analysis than most of the doc-hybrids playing at another mini-fest now underway. Recommended for the intellectually adventurous, it screens tomorrow afternoon (4/13) at MoMI, on the concluding day of Panorama Europe.

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.

Panorama Europe ’14: Cinematic Inclusions (including The Black Box)

The Lithuanians did not take to Soviet domination, culturally or politically. In strange ways, they cultivated their rugged, taciturn image to help sustain their distinctive national identity. One can see this strategy at work in a series of short documentaries restored to commemorate Lithuania’s EU presidency. Collected under the title Cinematic Inclusions, these often abstract films screen together for adventurous viewers during Panorama Europe.

In observance of strict chronology, the most accessible (and longest) Inclusion is the final film of the program. Not so surprisingly given their non-conformist nature, hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians were deported to Siberia during the Communist era. The exile experience was especially painful when family members passed away, because Lithuanian customs highly value burial in one’s homeland. As the rotten Communist system started to crumble, many repatriated Lithuanians returned to Siberia in hopes of smuggling loved ones’ remains back home. Algimantas Maceina followed his father on one such mission in The Black Box.

In part, Box is like a time capsule of the early days of newly independent Lithuania, but it is also an ethnographic record of Lithuanian funerary customs. However, it is not included in Inclusions merely to represent the mid 1990s. While Maceina faithful records the trip, as well as the subsequent wake and funeral for his grandfather’s recovered remains, he plays the footage as if on an accelerated fast-forward. At least, you cannot say he does not respect the audience’s time, as he documents a significant phenomenon largely particular to Lithuania.

Before going further, it is worth remembering American experimental film icon Jonas Mekas is Lithuanian. Indeed, he would most likely appreciate the avant-garde aesthetic of the rest of the Inclusions. As much cinematic essays or visual tone poems as they are documentaries, they are remarkably consistent in tone and subject matter, despite spanning twenty-seven years of frustrating national history.

In the 1960s, Robertas Verba established a template with The Old Man and the Earth and The Dreams of Centenarians, celebrating the salt-of-the-earth while explicitly rejecting Socialist Realism. Poring over every wrinkle and imperfection, Verba’s films have a clear inclination towards grotesque fetishism. Not very doc-ish, they present a rather surreal perspective that becomes even more pronounced in films like Almantas Grikevičius’s Time Passes Through the City. The ambivalent attitude towards industrial “progress” reflected in Henrikas Šablevičius’s A Trip Across the Misty Meadow is also clearly out of step with Socialist propaganda. Yet, it is hard to get any less Soviet than the jazzy interludes that make their way into several of the films’ soundtracks.

Its execution might be a bit eccentric, but just about any viewer will get something out of Algimantas Maceina’s The Black Box. While the rest of the constituent films are decidedly more demanding, they represent a fascinating episode in cinematic history. It is good to know Lithuania values its heritage enough to preserve them for posterity. Recommended for hardcore fans of experimental film, Cinematic Inclusions screens free of charge this Wednesday (4/9) at Bohemia National Hall and Saturday (4/12) at the Museum of the Moving Image (free with regular admission), as part of this year’s Panorama Europe.

Panorama Europe ’14: Dream Team 1935

Evidently, they come pretty tall and well coordinated in the Baltics, considering their success in the European Basketball Championship (now known as EuroBasket). Lithuania won twice in the 1930’s and took gold again in 2003, but the very first champion was Latvia. Profoundly unheralded, the scrappy long-shots shocked the continent in 1935. It was a great Latvian triumph on the eve of great tragedy for many nations, Latvia included. With Russia once again menacing its neighbors, it is a fitting time to revisit one of the greatest moments of Latvian sporting history in Aigars Grauba’s Dream Team 1935 (trailer here), which screens during Panorama Europe at the Museum of the Moving Image.

It was a different game in 1930’s Europe. A jump ball followed every successful bucket and free throws were shot granny-style, but it was still handy to have an enforcer on the team. Vlademars Baumanis understands this only too well. Initially, the player-coach loses the Latvian championship because of some thuggish play. However, the victorious coach declines to take his team to the European championship, because the corrupt national sports committee has already squandered the ear-marked funds. While protesting to anyone who will listen, Baumanis accepts an instantly regretted dare to cobble together his own national team, trading in his uniform for a suit and tie.

Bitter rivals from both the Army and University Clubs will come together to represent Latvia, but it will take time to congeal as a true team. At least they will be in the best shape of the careers, thanks to relentless conditioning coach Rihards Deksenieks. Baumanis is a master strategist (at least by 1930’s standards) and the Latvia team has considerable skills, but just getting to Geneva will be an adventure thanks to the obstructionist sports committee.

Dream Team is a reliably entertaining underdogs-triumphant sport story, with some nicely rendered period details and a peppy big band soundtrack. Many basketball fanatics will probably be amused by the decidedly less glamorous style of play. Yet, Dream Team features one of the most devastating series of what-happened-to post-scripts of nearly any film. It turns out nearly every coach and player met a tragic end either as Soviet or National Socialist conscripts (sometimes both) during the war or in Soviet gulags afterward. (Nearly eighty years later, history threatens to repeat itself, as Russia once again casts a covetous eye on the Baltic Republics.)

Janis Amanis is a bit stiff as Baumanis, but he certainly looks earnest. In contrast, Vilis Daudzins plays Deksenieks with hardnosed charisma, while Marcis Manjakovs convincingly portrays the maturation of Latvia’s star player, Rudolfs Jurcins. Unfortunately, there is not much for Inga Alsina to do as Baumanis’s wife Elvira, except sitting around, having faith in him.

As a sports film, Dream Team is more successful than most. Despite the end never being in doubt, it moves along briskly and captures the tenor of the game as it was then played. It also suddenly feels uncomfortably topical given the ultimate fate of most of the team. It would make a good narrative companion to Marius Markevicius’s uplifting documentary, The Other Dream Team, chronicling the 1992 Olympic run of newly independent Lithuania’s men’s basketball team. Recommended for basketball fans and those who closely follow political and cultural developments in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Dream Team 1935 screens this Sunday (4/6) at MoMI as part of Panorama Europe.