I took a punt on this having heard of neither the film, nor the director, nor indeed the novel it is based upon, or the writer herself. Short, powerful, and broken into three parts that shift between two periods of time, it is that rare thing, a realist piece plain and simple, with none of the modifiers that trouble that term from time to time. The social realism of a Ken Loach, for example, may not be so oxymoronic as the socialist realism beginning to glut the cinemas in the Stalinist lands of the period on display here, but it is forced nonetheless, as would be immediately evident if the few short mentions of collective farming in Smuteční slavnost were compared to similar scenes in Land and Freedom or The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Here, the sparse dialogue appears at no point to serve any other purpose than carrying what the viewer feels to be these people's real intentions; and people, not characters or actors, they remain throughout. And who are these people? An admirably mulish widow, a craven priest, a handful of party functionaries, a crowd of farmers, a crowd of mourners, a handful of musicians, and one man who we see at first moribund, dead, and then vigorous with, though it may take a different expression, the same judicious defiance as his wife. They knew what they were doing when they banned it and since I walked out of the cinema less willing than ever to be pushed around or told what to think, I would say it has lost none of its force.
Reviews
3 Reviews
The Round-Up
(1966)
Raw, simple, visually stunning
15 April 2014
I took a punt on this one needing out of the house on a holiday Monday. It was short enough, ranked in certain quarters as a classic, and had made it onto those most worthy of cinéaste lists as an undeservedly overlooked masterpiece. It sounded like one of those films, like Koyaanisqatsi, that, like Twain's classics, everyone wants to have watched and nobody much wants to watch; one which I would sit through with a lot of deep and meaningful thoughts in my mind, which would stay with me for years but be approximately as enjoyable as the last three fifths of all those long form essays on climate change, crypto currencies or the situation in the Ukraine I mean to get round to. Some of the write ups on it made it sound as if there was barely any dialogue.
In fact, though the dialogue is reasonably sparse, there are few long scenes without any dialogue. Indeed it is important enough that the subtitles caused me problems. I have been watching films with Czech subtitles for a few years now and have few problems with that from a language point of view. What I do tend to notice, though, is that the comprehensibility of subtitles varies widely. Sometimes subtitles flash up and are cancelled so quickly you don't have time to scan them. This can be the case even where they are not replaced with others. The viewer in these films begins to distrust the subtitles and scans the text quicker than is natural, taking little in even in those moments where the subtitles remain in place. This is far more often a problem than the poor idiom often seen in Czech subtitles. I don't know much about the technology of subtitles, but it looked as if the text was applied to the copy of the film in this instance, probably many years ago, and being essentially burned into the film itself, parts of the text disappeared for a number of frames. I missed a number of exchanges because of this and would like to watch the film again with English subtitles for this reason.
I'm in two minds, too, about the need to read up on the background of the film beforehand. As with a Forward in a classic novel, I find that knowing too much about a film before first seeing it can detract from its immediacy. With The Round-up, though, I might perhaps have benefited from knowing a little more. At least with a film, and certainly a film of this length, I can see it again more easily than I might find time to read a Victorian novel.
Knowing as little as I did about the background, however, it is certainly true that was plenty to keep my interest, both on the human level (which in places I would have understood better had the subtitles been a touch better), and on the visual level. As far as the human level goes, there are scenes here that could gainfully be projected in lectures on game theory and the prisoner's dilemma. The psychological methods used by the captors are brutally effective and it is impossible to watch without thinking how well you would fare in such circumstances. Purely aesthetically, both the landscape here and the people are so full of character. János Gajdar's face is just one of those that fills the screen and though stoic, almost static much of the time, speaks of many years of rough breaks and a dangerous contained emotion.
They don't make films like this anymore in part because they don't make men like that anymore.
In fact, though the dialogue is reasonably sparse, there are few long scenes without any dialogue. Indeed it is important enough that the subtitles caused me problems. I have been watching films with Czech subtitles for a few years now and have few problems with that from a language point of view. What I do tend to notice, though, is that the comprehensibility of subtitles varies widely. Sometimes subtitles flash up and are cancelled so quickly you don't have time to scan them. This can be the case even where they are not replaced with others. The viewer in these films begins to distrust the subtitles and scans the text quicker than is natural, taking little in even in those moments where the subtitles remain in place. This is far more often a problem than the poor idiom often seen in Czech subtitles. I don't know much about the technology of subtitles, but it looked as if the text was applied to the copy of the film in this instance, probably many years ago, and being essentially burned into the film itself, parts of the text disappeared for a number of frames. I missed a number of exchanges because of this and would like to watch the film again with English subtitles for this reason.
I'm in two minds, too, about the need to read up on the background of the film beforehand. As with a Forward in a classic novel, I find that knowing too much about a film before first seeing it can detract from its immediacy. With The Round-up, though, I might perhaps have benefited from knowing a little more. At least with a film, and certainly a film of this length, I can see it again more easily than I might find time to read a Victorian novel.
Knowing as little as I did about the background, however, it is certainly true that was plenty to keep my interest, both on the human level (which in places I would have understood better had the subtitles been a touch better), and on the visual level. As far as the human level goes, there are scenes here that could gainfully be projected in lectures on game theory and the prisoner's dilemma. The psychological methods used by the captors are brutally effective and it is impossible to watch without thinking how well you would fare in such circumstances. Purely aesthetically, both the landscape here and the people are so full of character. János Gajdar's face is just one of those that fills the screen and though stoic, almost static much of the time, speaks of many years of rough breaks and a dangerous contained emotion.
They don't make films like this anymore in part because they don't make men like that anymore.
Grasp the Nettle
(2013)
A cinematic What Then Must We Do? For Liquid Modern Times.
9 March 2014
Dean Puckett took his camera to take a look at a group establishing an eco-village in a long disused piece of land in London. Seeing that the community and the questions it raised about the way we live, our relationship towards nature, the jobs and choices available to us, and those that are not, would be an excellent subject for what could become a longer film, he gave up his job and his flat, and moved in. Puckett is perhaps more apologetic than he has cause to be about the unconventional structure of the film since, though there is a certain change of focus at around the half-way point, this is a natural development of the community itself and detracts not at all from the issues the film raises. This is not, fortunately, a documentary that answers all the questions it raises (and the reference to one of Tolstoy's anarchist texts in the title is a little ironic for this reason), and, in refusing to condescend to its audience, it rewards the viewer who is able to bring their own experiences and thoughts to bear upon the material presented to them.
This is avowedly not a worthy film, though, and there are some hilarious moments which, for myself at least, had me laughing out loud in a way I rarely do at the cinema. Some of the characters drawn to the community would have been good for a cheap laugh, in the manner of some of the less generous moments in the films of Louis Theroux, but if that is how they are played in the first instance, I felt that the film later granted these individuals with being seen in a broader context, confronting the viewer with the extent of their own capacity to laugh at difference or misfortune, and allowing them to accept these misfits and unfortunates much as may have occurred in the community itself.
I watched the film as part of Prague's Jeden Svět festival of documentary films raising issues of human rights. Grasp the Nettle and the debate with the director following the film, was one of the most powerful cinematic experiences I have known. It is up there with any book I have read in terms of changing or crystallising my thinking, stimulating me to engage with the world around me, and, to take the message of the film as suggested by the quote from Gerrard Winstanley that opens it, to do something rather than nothing. It is deserving of a much wider audience than it has secured so far. I hope that it goes on to a slow-burn success involving many more indie cinemas and film festivals, and that Puckett may go on to make many more films. Indeed,I hope that I may have the chance to contribute to the crowd funding of some of them myself.
This is avowedly not a worthy film, though, and there are some hilarious moments which, for myself at least, had me laughing out loud in a way I rarely do at the cinema. Some of the characters drawn to the community would have been good for a cheap laugh, in the manner of some of the less generous moments in the films of Louis Theroux, but if that is how they are played in the first instance, I felt that the film later granted these individuals with being seen in a broader context, confronting the viewer with the extent of their own capacity to laugh at difference or misfortune, and allowing them to accept these misfits and unfortunates much as may have occurred in the community itself.
I watched the film as part of Prague's Jeden Svět festival of documentary films raising issues of human rights. Grasp the Nettle and the debate with the director following the film, was one of the most powerful cinematic experiences I have known. It is up there with any book I have read in terms of changing or crystallising my thinking, stimulating me to engage with the world around me, and, to take the message of the film as suggested by the quote from Gerrard Winstanley that opens it, to do something rather than nothing. It is deserving of a much wider audience than it has secured so far. I hope that it goes on to a slow-burn success involving many more indie cinemas and film festivals, and that Puckett may go on to make many more films. Indeed,I hope that I may have the chance to contribute to the crowd funding of some of them myself.
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