Tag Archives: film

What If Our World Is Their Heaven?

Although I’m not a big Science Fiction expert, occasionally I also read books of this genre. My preferences are here mostly with authors from Eastern Europe (Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Stanislaw Lem, and a few others), but now and then I also discover something new – lately often from the borderline between classical SF and “serious” literature or “speculative” fiction, such as the works of China Miéville or the novel The Future of Mars by Georg Klein, or works by authors who are brand new to me such as Arthur C. Clarke or Philip K. Dick.

If I say Clarke or Dick are new to me, then I have to admit that that’s not exactly true, of course. Every moderately informed moviegoer is familiar with their works in their respective cinematographic version. Especially Dick is particularly popular with filmmakers, just think of Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report, Impostor, Paycheck, or A Scanner Darkly, to name a few examples.

In January 1982, just months before his death, Dick gave a series of tape-recorded interviews that have been transcribed and published in the book What If Our World Is Their Heaven?

Two of the recordings deal with the movie Blade Runner, which is based on Dick’s book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? During filming, Dick was in the final stages of writing a new novel and so did not accept the invitation of director Ridley Scott to attend the shooting. The two interview clips in the book deal with the relationship between the original novel and the film, and with how Dick judged the result (he saw a not yet finalized version in a private performance, the film was not yet in the cinema at the time of his death). In short, Dick was strongly impressed by what he saw and had the highest praise for both the director and the film crew and performers. Although an essential part of the action of the original book was dropped in the film, Dick saw clearly that this was the only way to realize an adequate film adaptation of his material.

I was also interested in Dick’s co-operation with his agent and the sheer volume of inquiries from various merchandise producers he had to deal with – including a comic book version of Blade Runner. Although Dick didn’t live to see the great worldwide success of Blade Runner, he could at least be glad to know that it was a wonderful film adaptation. Until today, Blade Runner is a milestone in film history.

Of interest to me were also Dick’s comments on the creative process of an SF writer. Dick was at times an extremely prolific writer. When he had made up his mind about the concept of a new book, he sat down, and then literally worked day and night, neglecting everything else, including sleep and the intake of food. We can imagine him as an absolute workaholic, who felt completely drained after the completion of a book under such circumstances. The famous writer’s block, if it ever happened to him, was to Dick – contrary to most other authors – a blessing, not a curse. Literary works rarely served as a source of inspiration to him – he read hardly any novels -, but technical, philosophical or religious works – the latter in particular after a “spiritual revival experience” as a result of a serious illness of his son – triggered his literary output.

The transcription of the tape recordings is true to the original and virtually unedited. As a result, there are many redundancies, and every stutter of Dick or the interviewer is printed in the book. A careful editing would have made the text much more readable. In addition, the interviewer unfortunately repeatedly breaks off the conversation when it gets interesting, or interrupts Dick when he is in the process to explain something important. She is also occasionally inattentive and does not listen closely, often asks for things that Dick had said shortly before, and so on. It’s a pity that the interviewer is rather unprofessional and not very focused at times.

In spite of the above-mentioned objections, this is a book that I can recommend to all readers with an interest in one of the major SF authors of the 20th century. Contrary to my expectation, Dick comes over in these conversations as a rather grounded and sometimes self-ironic and warm person without the usual grandstanding attitude of many successful authors.

Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter (eds.): What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick, The Overlook Press, New York 2000

© Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki, 2014-9. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Christoph Hein und “Das Leben der Anderen”

Christoph Hein ist ein Autor, den ich sehr schätze. Über seinen Artikel in der Süddeutschen Zeitung vom 24. Januar “Warum ich meinen Namen aus “Das Leben der Anderen” löschen ließ” (ein Vorabdruck aus einem bald erscheinenden neuen Buch von ihm) habe ich mich aber sehr geärgert, beim zweiten Lesen sogar noch mehr als beim ersten.

Zunächst: ich will hier gar keine Filmkritik zu „Das Leben der Anderen“ schreiben. Wie bei jedem Film, Buch oder sonstigem Erzeugnis im schöpferischen Bereich kann man bei seiner Beurteilung zu unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen kommen. Ja, der Film ist melodramatisch – das kann man mögen oder auch nicht. Ja, in dem Film gibt es einiges, was sich genauso in der DDR nie hätte zutragen können. Auch das kann man verschieden sehen, entweder als fehlende historische Genauigkeit oder als künstlerische Freiheit des Autors, in diesem Fall des Regisseurs Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Ich fand den Film gut gespielt und unterhaltsam und sicherlich auch für Zuschauer außerhalb des deutschen Kontexts sehenswert. Aber darum geht es mir hier nicht. Es geht mir hier um Heins Text.

Der Text beschreibt eine offensichtlich sehr tiefe (narzisstische?) Kränkung, die der Autor Christoph Hein erlitten hat und für die er sich mit diesem Artikel mit sehr großer Zeitverzögerung rächen möchte. So lese ich es jedenfalls. Im Fußball würde man von „Nachtreten“ sprechen. Schon die Tatsache, dass er Henckel von Donnersmarck nie beim Namen nennt – es heißt durchgängig „der Regisseur“ – ist auffällig, besonders da er im Gegensatz dazu den Schauspieler Ulrich Mühe, nein seinen „Freund Ulrich Mühe“, mehrfach beim Namen nennt, obwohl dieser für den Sachverhalt von dem die Rede ist nicht von zentraler Bedeutung ist. (Allerdings frage ich mich auch, ob die Freundschaft wirklich so groß gewesen ist, da Mühe anscheinend nichts davon verlauten ließ, dass der Film nicht die von Hein erwartete Hein-Lebensverfilmung werden würde. Ein Freund hätte wohl im Lauf der Dreharbeiten oder schon vorher vielleicht mal angerufen oder darüber gesprochen, wenn – wie Hein es darstellt – klar war, dass dies ein Christoph-Hein-Film werden sollte.) Mit Verlaub, das ist unhöflich und wirkt arrogant, werter Christoph Hein. Sogar ein sehr großer und sehr junger Filmregisseur aus Westdeutschland (offenbar sind all das für den Autor Hein schwere Charakterfehler) hat es verdient, mit seinem Namen erwähnt zu werden. (Der einleitende fettgedruckte Satz stammt wohl von der Süddeutschen Zeitung, ebenso wie die Artikelüberschrift.)

Ich staune auch sehr, wieso Christoph Hein annimmt, dass sich Henckel von Donnersmarck mit niemand anderem als mit ihm unterhalten hat, bevor er den Film machte. Zudem muss man schon ein sehr großes Ego haben, um zu glauben, dass „Das Leben der Anderen“ als Christoph-Hein-Biopic angelegt ist. Henckel von Donnersmarck ist kein Breloer, und es ist für mich geradezu absurd, dass Hein uns allen Ernstes weismachen will, dass der Regisseur eine Verfilmung seines (Heins) Lebens in der DDR geplant hatte. Wenn er schreibt „Im Kino sitzend hatte ich erstaunt auf mein Leben geschaut“, dann nehme ich ihm dieses Erstaunen nicht ab. So grenzenlos naiv und unverständig kann Christoph Hein, der ein sehr intelligenter, kluger Mann ist, nicht gewesen sein. Ich finde diesen Satz extrem unglaubwürdig.

Ob Henckel von Donnersmarck tatsächlich davon gesprochen hat, dass er Hein „unsäglich dankbar“ ist, kann niemand entscheiden. Entweder hat sich Hein diese sprachlich missglückte Ausdrucksweise ausgedacht, oder wenn Henckel von Donnersmarck es so gesagt haben sollte, verstehe ich nicht, warum er diesen offenbaren Versprecher gleich zweimal herausstellt. Es soll wohl heißen: der Regisseur, der es nicht einmal wert ist, dass ich ihn beim Namen nenne, ist eben nicht nur ein sehr großer, sehr junger Westdeutscher – er kann auch noch nicht einmal richtig Deutsch. Mit so einem ungebildeten, unkultivierten Kerl hatte ich, der geniale, unfehlbare Christoph Hein, auf dessen Lebensverfilmung die Welt wartete, es zu tun.

Ganz schlechter Stil, werter Christoph Hein. Ich wundere mich, dass Sie so etwas nötig haben!

Wenn Christoph Hein allerdings davon spricht, dass er vermeidet, Äußerungen von Henckel von Donnersmarck als Lüge zu bezeichnen, weil es neben der Wahrheit auch noch die melodramatische Wahrheit und „alternative Fakten“ gebe, so ist das kein schlechter Stil mehr, es ist infam. Und es fällt auf den Autor Christoph Hein zurück, der zwar behauptet, dass er seinen Namen aus dem Vorspann des Films löschen ließ, der aber jetzt eingestehen musste, dass das nicht stimmt. Diesen Vorspann gab es nie, und im Nachspann ist Christoph Hein als historischer Berater bis heute genannt, zusammen mit vielen weiteren Namen von Personen, mit denen der Regisseur in diesem Zusammenhang ebenso wie mit Hein sprach. Und auch der Dialog zwischen Autor und Regisseur selbst fand zu einem Zeitpunkt statt, als das Filmprojekt schon sehr weit fortgeschritten war. Eine “Kleinigkeit”, die Hein ebenfalls verschweigt.

Ob man den Text Heins daher als Wahrheit, melodramatische Wahrheit oder „alternatives Faktum“ bezeichnen will, ist jedem Leser selbst überlassen. Ich habe mir meine Meinung dazu auf der Basis der Fakten und von Heins Text gebildet.

Christoph Hein schätze ich als Autor nach wie vor, ein Autor allerdings der in diesem Fall jegliche intellektuelle Redlichkeit vermissen lässt; der Mensch Christoph Hein ist mir nach diesem Artikel deutlich unsympathischer geworden. 

© Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki, 2014-9. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Dovlatov – The Film

A film about the Russian writer of the same name, that depicts a few days of his life in Leningrad in the early 1970s. Beautifully shot, this film has received mostly positive reviews. Nevertheless, I am somewhat disappointed; the wit and the power of Dovlatov’s books are almost absent in the film, and the plot is a faint reflection of what the writer himself has described in his autobiographical books, especially in The Suitcase and Pushkin Heights. The Dovlatov in the film is a rather colorless character and the artistic milieu of the film is very clichéd. Who wants to know who Dovlatov was, must read his books. And they are anyway by far more entertaining than the movie.

Dovlatov – Russia, 2018, 126 minutes; Director: Aleksei German jr.; Screenplay: Aleksei German jr. and Yuliya Tupikina; Actors: Milan Marić, Danila Kozlovsky, Helena Sujecka, Artur Beschastny, Anton Shagin, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Elena Lyadova et al.

I read the following three books by Sergei Dovlatov recently, and I can recommend them wholeheartedly:

The Zone, translated by Anne Frydman, Alma Classics 2013

The Zone

The Suitcase, translated by Antonina W. Bouis, Alma Classics 2013 

The Suitcase

Pushkin Hills, translated by Katya Dovlatova, Alma Books 2013 

Pushkin Hills
© Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki, 2014-9. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and Mytwostotinki with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Post

Watched “The Post”, finally:

With routine, but somehow a little listlessly staged. A heroic story about brave journalists who, as good patriots, defend the constitution and selflessly follow their calling. A little dose of feminism, but not too much and not really provocative. An entrepreneur with a conscience, a nice fairy tale element for the kids among the spectators! The most intriguing character in the real story, Ellsberg, who was the only one who risked everything, and who must have been terribly lonely even in his later life, being de facto ostracised from society, is assigned an extremely marginal role, compared to the historical truth. But of course that’s a Hollywood movie, in which the traitor will never be the real hero. All in all rather mendacious, as it is usual in such films.

The Post, U.S.A. 2017, 113 minutes; directed by: Steven Spielberg; produced by: Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Amy Pascal; written by: Liz Hannah, Josh Singer; with: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-8. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 


Loving Vincent

Loving Vincent is the first fully painted animated feature film, and probably many of you have seen it. During my recent holidays, I had the opportunity to watch the movie with some friends in a Sofia cinema.

The story is of course about the painter Vincent van Gogh and the circumstances of his death, allegedly by a self-inflicted gunshot, but possibly that is not the whole truth, as the story of the film implies. A young man, Armand, the son of postman Roulin (who was a friend of the painter) is trying to deliver a letter of Vincent after his death and is meeting several people who were close to the artist in the last weeks and months of his life. He learns more about Vincent and about his relationship with these people as well as with his brother Theo, although the mystery regarding the exact circumstances of his death remains unresolved. 

Almost everyone I know and who saw the movie, and also the vast majority of reviews were raving about this film. Especially the visual effects of Loving Vincent are rather unique: more than 65,000 frames (based on van Gogh’s paintings) were painted by hand by a team of more than 120 illustrators; so when you watch the movie, you have in the majority of scenes the impression that you are actually within a van Gogh painting.

Of course, I was impressed by these visual effects, but it had an overwhelming feeling for me; and after 20 minutes, I had the impression that now it is enough already – the effect was wearing off rather quickly. Also the story was not at all convincing; the plot was rather flat and what different characters in the film say is frequently based on speculation rather than on historical facts. Van Gogh’s life is very well documented, not only because of the number of letters he was exchanging with his brother Theo, and in which he was confiding his very personal convictions, experiences, hopes and disappointments. Why these letters and other remaining documents and witnesses were not used in a more careful way, is beyond me – or was the aim of the film to spread a murder conspiracy for which there is no evidence at all, just to make the story more interesting? The Gauguin episode is just briefly mentioned at the beginning of the movie although it is central to the final crisis in the life of the artist, and a few other things seem not to fit at all to the life and death of the real van Gogh as well. 

The main point for me however for my dislike of this movie is something else. Let’s face it, but Loving Vincent is just terrible, for me almost unbearable, kitsch. A great artist and his suffering is being trivialized, Vincent van Gogh is killed again and turned into a pop art zombie; now we don’t have only the Gustav Klimt porcelain sets, the Andy Warhol bed covers and pillows, but also another kitschy movie as part of the “Vincent industry” (to which we owe already many similar movies, songs, etc.). 

The film is very clever in overwhelming its spectators with visual effects. But the impressive effects don’t make for a good movie in my opinion. 

Loving Vincent, Poland/United Kingdom 2017, 95 minutes; Directors: Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman; Written by: Hugh Welchman, Ivan Mactaggart, Sean Bobbitt; Starring: Robert Gulaczyk, Douglas Booth, Jerome Flynn, Saoirse Ronan, Helen McCrory, et al.  

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-8. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

A new Bulgarian movie: Voevoda

Voevoda. This movie is better than Vasil Levski (the film) – but that’s not difficult, almost all movies are better than the chalga version of the Apostle’s life. Is Voevoda a good movie? No, it’s full of cliches, and visually the film is rather weak in my opinion. I doubt that I will remember a single scene after a few days. I didn’t fall asleep, as I did while watching Gasoline, the most boring Bulgarian movie I watched since a long time. So it was kind of entertaining, but it is not that you really have to see it. 2.5 out of 5 stars IMHO.

Voevoda, Bulgaria 2017, 126′, directed by Zornitsa Sophia, written by Zornitsa Sophia (based on a story by Nikolay Haytov), with Zornitsa Sophia, Valeri Yordanov, Goran Gunchev, Dimitar Trokanov, Leart Dokle, Dimitar Selenski, Yordan Bikov, Vladimir Zombori

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A new Bulgarian movie: Gasoline (Бензин)

No, I will not become a customer of Bulbank, no I will not drink Spetema coffee, no I will never ever eat at McDonald’s. And no, I am not recommending the movie Gasoline (Бензин).

Benzin, Bulgaria 2017, 110′, directed by Assen Blatechki and Katerina Goranova, written by Alexey Kozhuharov, with Assen Blatechki, Snejana Makaveeva, Veselin Kalanovski, Kalin Vrachanski, Liliana Stanailova, Plamen Manassiev, Vasil Banov, Michael Madsen

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Contempt

Riccardo and Emilia are happily married for two years in post-war Rome. While Riccardo, the intelligent and likeable, though slightly narcissistic and delusional narrator, works as a journalist writing film critics to make a living, his dream is to become a serious writer and novelist. His beautiful wife Emilia, coming from an impoverished family, dreams on the other hand of living in their own house and of creating a comfortable nest for them, something much better than the rented room in which the financially struggling couple lives. When Riccardo is offered work as a screenwriter by the film producer Battista, he decides to accept despite serious reservations. He considers this kind of work as a waste of time and talent, but since it is comparatively well paid, he can fulfil his wife’s dream and buy a small flat; at a later stage, also a car, another sign of his growing success in the eyes of society. But on his way upward in the social hierarchy, something happens to the relationship between Emilia and Riccardo: Emilia becomes reserved and grows cold toward her husband, love turns into indifference and even into hatred and contempt. Contempt is also the title of the novel by Alberto Moravia that I am reviewing here.

Moravia has been praised for his elegant prose, and I can see why, even when I read the book in German translation. The prose is flowing effortlessly, the dialogues of the tormented Riccardo who wants to find out the reason for the growing alienation between him and his wife, and Emilia sound very real and convincing. Another thing I admire especially in this book is his talent to keep the reader’s interest in a seemingly rather trivial story of alienation and estrangement between husband and wife by adding some other interesting aspects. 

Some of the issues that play a major role in the novel, are the relationship between success and money, and the real needs and wishes of people; the characters are forced to do things that are in contrast with what they really want in order to make a living, or to satisfy the (vain) dreams of their partners, or to be perceived as successful and dynamic in a capitalist society. That’s not only true for Riccardo and Emilia, but also for the other two major characters of the novel, Battista and Rheingold, a German film director who is commissioned by Battista to make a monumental movie adaptation of The Odyssey. (In Jean-Luc Godard’s film adaptation of the novel, this character is played by Fritz Lang!)

Battista and Rheingold have strongly opposing approaches to the movie and Homer’s epic. While Battista wants to produce a monumental adventure movie, Rheingold on the other hand is only interested in the psychological conflict that he sees as the reason for Odysseus (Ulysses) participation in the War of Troy, and his delayed return to Penelope. According to his Freudian reading, Odysseus participates in the war because he wants to escape an unhappy relationship: he feels not loved by his wife. For the same reason, it takes him many years to come home. While Riccardo rejects Rheingold’s in his eyes simplistic psychoanalytic approach to Homer’s work, he understands reluctantly that what Rheingold says for the relationship between Odysseus and Penelope is like a mirror regarding his own and Emilia’s relationship and the reason for the obvious alienation between the partners may be a very similar one.

While Moravia is showing us a rather bleak picture of the modern Western world, where money, success, and sex serve as substitutes for a more meaningful existence, his reference to Homer seems to say that it has in principle been always like this. Emilio’s (and Moravia’s) membership in the Communist Party may be more inspired by a vague Utopian hope of a better future than by a real wish for a social revolution or dictatorship of the proletariat. In the meantime, it is best to acknowledge the mechanisms of the inherent contradictions of capitalist society. If Riccardo would have had more time to resolve the basic conflict and predicament of his life with Emilia, it would have been best to divorce and focus his future life on what he really aspires to be, a novelist and serious author. A sudden blow of fate spares him from actively taking this decision on his own.

Moravia knew the film business well; he worked also as a script writer and met probably people very similar to those described in his novel. Contempt describes an at that time thriving film industry in Italy as he experienced it, and the picture he is painting is not a particularly flattering one. Moravia had also a house on Capri similar as the one owned by Battista in the novel, where the final crisis takes place (the Godard movie was shot partly at the Casa Malaparte, another rather famous villa on Capri). And it is also known that at the time he published Contempt, his own marriage with novelist Elsa Morante was in a crisis that ended in divorce a few years later. So, while the novel is not a strictly autobiographic one, Moravia knew about what he was writing and was able to transform this into a rather short, fascinating novel. While some other so-called “existentialist” novels have not aged very well, Contempt was a surprisingly fresh book to me, and I guess I will soon read more by this author.

A word about the movie Le Mépris by Godard, which I have mentioned above: overall a good movie in my opinion, and the fact that Godard made a few major changes compared to the novel doesn’t distract from the quality of the film. The setting, particularly the scenes at the Casa Malaparte, is next to perfect for this movie. However, I had the impression that Brigitte Bardot and Jack Palance were not really the right choices for two of the major roles (while Michel Piccoli is brilliant); therefore, it is for me a good movie, but not the masterpiece it could have been with a more adequate cast of characters.

Contempt was also published in English as A Ghost at Noon.

Alberto Moravia: Contempt, translated by Angus Davidson; with an introduction by Tim Parks. New York Review Books, New York 2004

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-7. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 


The Sinking of Sozopol – film

A man is drinking ten bottles of vodka and it is raining a lot in Sozopol.

The sinking of Sozopol
http://programata.bg/img/gallery/multy_2943/mid_1.jpg

Bulgaria, 2014, 100′
Director: Kostadin Bonev
Writing credits: Ina Valchanova, Kostadin Bonev
Cast: Deian Donkov, Snejina Petrova, Svetlana Iancheva, Stefan Valdobrev, Vasil Gurov, Leonid Iovchev, Veselin Mezekliev, Miroslava Gogovska, Petia Silianova, Biliana Kazakova

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-5. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Judgement

A few days ago, during my last visit in Sofia, I had an opportunity to watch an interesting Bulgarian feature film (co-produced by Germany, Croatia and Macedonia); therefore today a film, not a book review.

Borders are a sad reality for many people; especially for those who want to cross them and can’t – but frequently also for those who protect them or live near a border. It is one of the twisted ironies of recent European history that just when we all thought that with the fall of the Iron Curtain barriers that prevent people from traveling freely (and where you are shot at or even killed just because you want to exercise an elementary human right) are a thing of the past, new obstacles are being erected and sometimes even in the same places where the old borders were.

But now, the direction from which people want to cross to another country is frequently reverse: while the Southern border of Bulgaria to Greece and Turkey was heavily protected in the time of communism in order to prevent people from leaving the Eastern block via the Rhodopi mountains, the same area is now guarded and fenced against refugees from Syria and other Mediterranean and African countries who desperately try to come to Bulgaria and the European Union.

Stephan Komandarev, a Bulgarian film director best known for his adaptation of Ilija Trojanow’s novel Die Welt ist gross und Rettung lauert überall (The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner) tells in his new movie The Judgement (Съдилището) the story of a man whose life is virtually destroyed by the border.

Mityo (Assen Blatechki), a widower in his 40s, lives alone with his son, 18-year old Vasko (Ovanes Torosian) in a small village in the Bulgarian Rhodopes, near the Greek and Turkish border. Fanka, Mityo’s wife died after years of illness, and the relationship between father and son is strained for various reasons which become clear while the story unfolds.

The film takes its time to show Mityo, Vesko, and the other villagers in their daily life. The village is poor, and when the local dairy factory for which Mityo is collecting the milk from the local farmers with his cistern truck is closing and leaving him jobless, the situation becomes pretty desperate for him. That the electricity is switched off because of his unpaid bills is a very small problem – but how he is supposed to pay back the mortgage on the small house where he is living with his son which he took years ago to pay for Fanka’s unsuccessful medical treatment, is something about which he has no idea. An attempt to sell his truck fails and when someone turns up to prepare the house to be auctioned off in a few weeks time for the bank, it is obvious that Mityo is in dire straits. Finally he gives in reluctantly to work for a man that everyone knows as The Captain (Miki Manojlovic), since he is a former commanding officer of the border troops in that area during the time of Communism.

The work Mityo has to do is to help to bring illegal immigrants over the mountains to Bulgaria, a work for which he is paid well because it is rather dangerous. Not only because of the danger to be spotted by the border guards, but also because the path through the mountains is rather challenging, especially the area near by a dangerous cliff that is also known as The Judgement.

As the story advances, Vesko finds out that his father was as a young man not only serving in the border troop unit of the Captain, but also that he is hiding a dark secret. Once, in 1988, he killed a young East German couple that tried to flee over the mountains, exactly at the spot called The Judgement.

The movie focuses strongly on the father-son conflict and I found it psychologically very interesting how Mityo tries to come to terms with his past. The Captain forced him at gunpoint to shoot at the refugees and to toss the bodies over the cliff (while the girl was probably still alive). After this traumatic experience, Mityo had a mental breakdown but was saved as he describes it by his future wife Fanka.

Finally, when his son presents him the evidence of his involvement in the killing of the young couple, Mityo reveals everything to his son and it seems a kind of relief for him. When he is going on a last dangerous assignment, things go terribly wrong in the moment when the group (this time with the Captain and also Vesko, who was called for help by his father) arrives at The Judgement cliff.

I liked about the movie that it starts comparatively slow-paced. Although the father-son conflict and later the conflict between Mityo and the Captain are the most important lines of the story, there are also some other credible and interesting characters that add to the flavor of this movie. Vesko develops a close relationship with Maria, a girl in his class. There is also the old doctor, a friend of Mityo who plays a small but somehow important role. There is Kera, a lonely woman living next door to Mityo and his son who tries to get closer to the very distanced Mityo. And there is Zhoro, another mountain guide, who provides the refugees with tea and wafers and who is smart enough to get out of this dangerous business with the Captain in time.

The Captain, Mityo’s nemesis, is a typical product of the times: he was a fanatic in the time of communism who took pride in “defending” his country by shooting those who tried to flee, and now he is a “businessman” with a big brand new car and an impressive fortress of a house. For him, the refugees that he is smuggling across the border are a source of income only. He is without respect for these people he calls contemptuously “garbage” (боклуци), and when the last group reaches The Judgement while fleeing from the border guards, he asks Mityo to throw a sick child down the cliff because it slows down the group too much. But times have changed now, Mityo is not the same person he used to be as a young recruit…

Shooting Stefan Komandarev’s the Judgment Photo BGNES

Actors and dialogues in this movie are excellent (I hope also the translation/dubbing will be very good). You will see also breathtaking panoramas of the Rhodopi mountains, a truly magical place.

The movie asks very interesting questions about – not only – Bulgaria’s past and shows how ordinary people are burdened by it (even the generation that was born after the changes); how to come to terms with personal guilt and how to learn to talk about the most haunting experiences in life with those who are closest to you. A deeply human story that you shouldn’t miss when you have the opportunity to watch it. I can strongly recommend it without reservations.

The Judgement starts in 60 movie theaters in Germany (the biggest number of copies ever for a Bulgarian movie in Germany) under the title The Judgement – Grenze der Hoffnung on April 23. The film will be distributed hopefully also in your country. It was recently also screened on many international film festivals, so chances you can watch it soon are probably not so bad.

I watched the movie in Bulgarian without subtitles – and I had the whole cinema for myself, there were no other people. Quite an interesting experience.

The official website of the film: http://www.thejudgementmovie.bg

© Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com, 2014-5. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without expressed and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Thomas Hübner and mytwostotinki.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. © photo BGNES