Nabarvené ptáče / The Painted Bird

Václav Marhoul: Nabarvené ptáče / The Painted Bird (CZ/UA/SK/PL 2019) starring Petr Kotlár as Joska.

The Finnish edition of Jerzy Kosiński's The Painted Bird (Kirjamaailma, Rauma, 1967, translated by Asko Salokorpi).

Kirjava lintu / Kirjava lintu – The Painted Bird / Den målade fågeln.
    CZ/UA/SK/PL © 2019 [10 companies]. PC: Silver Screen / Ceská Televize / PubRes / RTVS / Directory Films. Supported by: Ukrainian State Film Agency / Státní fond kinematografie / Audiovizuálny fond. P: Aleksandr Kushaev, Václav Marhoul.
    D+SC: Václav Marhoul – based on the novel (1965, original in English) by Jerzy Kosiński – Finnish translation by Asko Salokorpi (Kirjamaailma, 1967). Cin: Vladimír Smutný – negative: 35 mm – b&w – 2.39:1 – release: D-Cinema. PD: Jan Vlasák. Cost: Helena Rovna. Makeup: Ivo Strangmüller. Prosthetics designer & special makeup effects artist: Rene Stejskal. SFX: Martin Kulhanek. VFX: David Vána. AN: Jaroslav Polensky. M: no original score composition – soundtrack listing: see after the jump break. S: Pavel Rejholec – 12-Track Digital Sound. ED: Ludek Hudec.
    CAST from Wikipedia:
    Petr Kotlár as Joska
    Nina Šunevič as Marta
    Ala Sakalova as Olga
    Udo Kier as Miller
    Michaela Doležalová as Miller's Wife
    Stellan Skarsgård as Hans
    Harvey Keitel as Priest
    Julian Sands as Garbos
    Júlia Vidrnáková as Labina
    Lech Dyblik as Lekh
    Aleksei Kravchenko as Gavrila
    Barry Pepper as Mitka
    Petr Vaněk as Nikodém
    Radim Fiala as Cossack
    Jitka Čvančarová as Ludmila
    Alexander Leopold Schank as SS Officer
    Alexander Minaev as Red Army officer
    Pavel Kříž as Avid man
    Zdeněk Pecha as worker
    Milan Šimáček as Horse owner
    Martin Nahálka as Red partisan
    Dominik Weber as Captain
    Andrej Polák as Doctor in orphanage
    Filip Kaňkovský as Merchant
    Lukáš Hložek
Loc: Poland (Dolnoslaskie), Ukraine, Czech Republic (Brno), Slovakia.
Wikipedia: "It is the first film to feature the Interslavic language; Marhoul stated that he decided to use Interslavic so that no Slavic nation would nationally identify with the story."
169 min
Festival premiere: 3 Sep 2019 Venice Film Festival.
Finnish festival premiere: 21 Nov 2019 Night Visions International Film Festival.
Czech premiere: 12 Sep 2019.
Finnish premiere: 6 Nov 2020 – released by Night Visions Distribution with Finnish / Swedish subtitles n.c.
    Corona emergency security: 25% capacity, face masks, distancing, hand hygiene.
    Viewed at Kinopalatsi 10, Helsinki, 13 Nov 2020.

AA: Václav Marhoul's The Painted Bird is a brilliant, impeccable and constantly disturbing account of a little Jewish boy's ordeals in Eastern Europe during the Nazi Feldzug im Osten (the Eastern Campaign), also known as Operation Barbarossa.

It is based on Jerzy Kosiński's acclaimed novel that was believed to be autobiographical until it turned out that Kosiński's family had been rescued by a courageous Polish Catholic family that risked their lives by helping them.

Yet Kosiński's novel is based on personal experience in a wider sense. The atmosphere of unimaginable cruelty and terror is something that he had observed first hand and gave expression to. Perhaps the connection between truth and imagination in this Bildungsroman of childhood is not so different from Dickens's David Copperfield or Tolstoy's Childhood.

The title of the novel and the film refer to a bird painted by children. When it rejoins its flock, other birds peck it to death.

Marhoul's film belongs to a distinguished cycle of Eastern European Holocaust films of the 21th century. Roman Polanski's The Pianist was the true story of the persecuted Wladyslaw Szpilman, supplied with the director's personal memories. Lajos Koltai's Fateless, based on the novel of the Nobel laureate Imre Kertész, boasted perhaps the strongest performance of all in the leading role, that by Marcell Nagy, and went further than any other in the sense that the most disturbing part of the story starts only after the liberation of the concentration camps.

I have not seen Saul fia / Son of Saul by László Nemes, because something in the universally laudatory reviews seemed to betray that this is not a film that I need to see. The same warning feeling I felt also with The Painted Bird.

I admire the impeccable period reconstruction and the astounding cinematography. But I cannot relate to the way in which the depressing cavalcade of sadism is being displayed. I do not understand the approach, the selection of the observation point or the inner core of the director Václav Marhoul in all this.

A controversial book by Norman Finkelstein is called The Holocaust Industry : Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2000). I distance myself from Finkelstein, and his book has nothing to do with novels and their film adaptations.

But "a Holocaust industry" and "an exploitation of Jewish suffering" are also phenomena in culture in a wider sense. There is something unsavoury in the flood of publications about Nazi atrocities. They don't increase our understanding, but they often sell well and win prizes and awards.

These things are complicated. I'm grateful for The Painted Bird the movie for making me think about the mysterious lives of Jerzy Kosiński and Norman Finkelstein, the former a Holocaust survivor and the latter a son of ones. Their works are complex houses of mirrors like the life of The Man in the Glass Booth.

The movie was brilliantly shot on 35 mm black and white stock. In the digital transfer the ultra-sharpness makes nature seem denatured, which may be intentional.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Soundtrack credits from IMDb:

Für Elise
Music by Ludwig van Beethoven

Es muss was Wunderbares sein
Music by Ralph Benatzky, lyrics by Robert Gilbert
Performed by Leo Moll

Cerná vrána
Music by Petr Ostrouchov

Duso moja
Music by Petr Ostrouchov
Lyrics by Tomás Hanák and Vojtech Merunka
Performed by Petr Ostrouchov

Maximova písen
(Traditional)

Procházka sadem
Traditional
Performed by Anton Aslamas

Horchat hai caliptus
Music and lyrics by Naomi Shemer
Performed by Jitka Cvancarová