Waves made waves at the Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film review)

  

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Waves (Czech Republic-Slovakia, 2024)

-  Jiří Mádl, director-scriptwriter

- Starring: Vojtěch Vodochodský, Ondřej Stupka, Tatiana Pauhofová, Stanislav Majer

- Part of the HKIFF's Global Vision program 

 

Another day; another Eastern European historical drama set in a time period which many people outside of the film's country of origin know was of major significance for its people, even if not knowing the exact details.  But whereas The New Year That Never Came (Romania, 2024) is set in the last days of a dictator's rule, Waves takes place over a longer period of time; one that saw both liberalisation and a political clamp down taking place.       

 

Jiří Mádl's film begins in 1967, when Czechoslovakia was firmly part of the Eastern Bloc and with hardliner Antonin Novotný as its president.  Repression is the order of the day but over at the International News Office of Czechoslovakian Radio, however, journalist Milan Weiner (portrayed by Stanislav Majer) is making waves by challenging the norm and seeking to broadcast the uncensored truth.

 

Before anything else, it should be made clear that Milan Wiener was a real life figure, and someone who -- this is not mentioned in the film -- was a survivor of Terezín and Auschwitz.  I think this is worth noting because it helps explain that he was a man who had already seen much horror in his life, and had experience with, as per the title of countryman Václav Havel's famous book, the power of the powerless.

 

Along with Weiner, the other journalists of the International News Office of Czechoslovakian Radio -- many of whom also were based on real people -- that he headed are presented as courageous individuals with no doubt that what they were doing was right.  And in all honesty, if Waves focused mainly on them, it would have made for a less complex film than that whose main character is a fictional Everyman who ends up working for there too pretty much by accident and, initially, actually against his will.

 

Tomáš (played by Vojtěch Vodochodský) is a technician and elder brother of Pája (essayed by Ondřej Stupka), an idealistic student who idolises Weiner and sought to work for him -- only for Tomáš to get chosen to do so instead!  Left orphaned after the untimely deaths of their parents, Tomáš worries that Pája will be removed from their home by the authorities.  And, in fact, Tomáš just comes across as someone who worries -- rather understandably, actually -- about a lot of things!

 

Tomáš' life gets more complicated after he is asked to leak information about his colleagues to the secret police.  Not doing so might affect his and his brother's living situation.  But doing so involved spying on, and even betraying, his colleagues -- whose work his brother thoroughly approves of and he does come across as actually also agreeing with, and being sympathetic to.  Adding to the moral dilemma that this involves, he gets into a romantic relationship with Věra (essayed by Tatiana Pauhofová), a worldly-wise -- she's returned from a stint in Africa -- colleague of his with a true passion, vocation even, for journalism.

 

Everything comes to a boil when the Warsaw Pact Invasion of Czechoslovakia takes place in 1968. After he learns about the tanks coming to his country and city, Tomáš has to quickly make a fateful decision as to which side he's really on.  And, frankly, even though we know how things turned out then, and over the years and decades, the developments we see unfolding over the course of the movie make for thoroughly engrossing, gripping even, viewing.  

 

To judge from the enthusiastic rounds of clapping it received at the Hong Kong International Film Festival screening I was at, Waves' salute to independent journalism absolutely resonated with the audience I was with -- for good reason!  For the record: while it's common to hear clapping at the end of the fest screening, there were not one but three distinct waves of applause for this film.  Much deserved, really, for a cinematic work that's not only well made but also has messages that are admirable and inspirational.    

 

My rating for the film: 8.5          

"The March on Rome" and "Eastern Front": the first two films I've viewed at the 2023 Hong Kong International Film Festival (Film reviews)

  

The 47th Hong Kong International Film Festival has commenced!

 

The March on Rome (Italy, 2022)

- Mark Cousins, director and co-scriptwriter 

- Part of the Hong Kong International Film Festival's Reality Bites program

 

It has Rome in its title and is an Italian production but this documentary about the rise -- and fall too, but to a lesser extent -- of fascism in Italy is primarily in English and narrated by its Northern Irish helmer, Mark Cousins -- whose brogue and speaking style some might find calming but I must admit to thinking was at odds with a lot of material presented!  With a far-ranging script co-written by Cousins and Italians Tommaso Renzoni and Tony Saccuci, it splices together such as archival and contemporary film footage, historical photographs and scenes in which actress Alba Rohrwacher playing an Italian mother who's enamoured by fascism before falling out of love with it to advance its arguments; some of which are more compelling than others.   

 

Known for his works on film (notably the 15 hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey), Mark Cousins' The March on Rome discusses the role of cinema as propaganda in supporting the rice of fascim -- particularly by way of a close analysis and dissection of sections of a 49 minute work by Umberto Paradisi (1878-1933) entitled A Noi! Dalla sagra di Napoli al trionfo di Roma that mythologised the titular march of black shirts on Italy's capital in 1922 that led to Benito Mussolini becoming prime minister of the country.  But, actually, I found such as its shorter -- but sharper? -- discussion of fascist architecture, a surprising amount of which is still extant in Italy, to be more on point (along with "Il Duce" and his fellow fascist leaders' proclivity for making speeches from balconies)!

 

Benito Mussolini first appears in The March on Rome as a head floating in, and peering out of, the darkness.  There are scenes in the film in which he appears all powerful but also ones in which he does not appear in control -- and it is interesting to see that this was so even when he was supposed to be approaching or at his peak as well as after he had been sacked in July 1943 by the same monarch, Victor Emmanuel III, who had, Neville Chamberlain-like in 1922, allowed Mussolini to take command of the government.

 

After seeing so much of what Mussolini looked like in life in much of the film, how he looked in death can come as a shock -- even if one's seen the infamous photos of his corpse and that of his mistress hanging upside down in Milan. Seeing a small photo on one's computer screen or (history) book is inadequate preparation for seeing the same image on a big theatrical screen.  But all this is no where as chilling as seeing images of Mussolini and Italian fascism's victims in Ethiopia and Libya, which also appear in The March on Rome, along with horrific statistics of the numbers of people killed there, and by the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese military that Mussolini's Fascists were -- lest we forget -- in an axis of evil with during World War II.

 

These images, more than the footage from A Noi! ("Us!" in Italian), speak to the power of film for me.  Speaking of which: while The March on Rome has visuals which are hard-hitting at times and arresting at others, I must admit to thinking the overall work would have been better served with better audio -- including a narrator with a less laidback-sounding voice than its helmer!        

My rating for this film: 6.5

 

Eastern Front (Ukraine-Latvia-Czech Republic-U.S.A., 2023)

- Vitaly Mansky (who also is the scriptwriter) and Yevhen Titarenko, co-directors

- Part of the HKIFF's Auteurs program

 

"I'm sorry but I feel like throwing up!" Those were my first words to two friends after we got out of the screening of Eastern Front. It's not just that this documentary about the first six months of the still-ongoing war in Ukraine has harrowing footage along with motion sickness-inducing ones filmed by an iPhone of a man running in a battlefield; it's also that it is a psychologically intense watch.

 

This being said; I still want to highly recommend this amazing documentary work, one of whose co-directors, Yevhen Titarenko, is a volunteer paramedic whose battalion, the Hospitallers, have indeed served in the Eastern Front of the war.  (More than by the way: the film's other co-director, Vitaly Mansky, is a veteran Russian director who has spoken out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and and has been placed on a Kremlin wanted list for slander.

 

A good part of Eastern Front takes place at, as its name suggests, the Eastern Front.  We see footage shot from: inside a makeshift ambulance rushing patients to a hospital; inside homes where medics await to be called to duty and from where explosions can be seen and gunfire heard; from trenches that look like something out of a World War I movie (except they are real, and exist in 2022-2023) and where people have been recently killed; and muddy battlefields where the wounded lie and wait to be evacuated.  And we see bravery and caramaderie but also blood, destruction and lots of pain.

But Eastern Front also features talk as well as action, which helps to balance things and also contextualise events and stories.  Some of the conversations take place within war zones but many more take place over in the western part of the country, where there are opportunities for people to relax with a swim in the lake, hanging out with friends, see a comrade's child getting Christened, have dinner with relatives and relatives.  

It may seem strange but the peaceful, "normal" sections of the film actually strengthen it overall.  I think this is not least because it serves to remind the audience that few, if any of the people seen in Eastern Front in military gear and at the battlefront are, in fact, careeer soldiers or even paramedics.  And that they are human beings who have loved ones who care and worry for them and, also, people who they wish to protect -- which is why they are in the situation they are shown to be in but also hope will end before too long, in victory for their nation.

 

My rating for this film: 8.5