Slovak – The Movie Gourmet

Stream of the Week: THE TEACHER – a peek into communist dread

July 10, 2018 by movie gourmet

In the superb drama The Teacher, it’s the mid-1980s and the Iron Curtain is still defining Czechoslovakia; (The Teacher is a Czech movie in the Slovak language). The title character’s position as a high school teacher makes her a gatekeeper to the children’s futures, and she’s unaccountable because she’s a minor Communist Party functionary. Wielding blatant academic favoritism and even overt blackmail, she uses the advantage of her political status for her own petty benefit – coercing shopping errands, car rides, pastries and other favors from the parents of her students. Finally, she causes so much harm to one student that some of the parents rebel and seek her ouster.

Will the other parents support them? What of the parents who benefit from the regime? And what of the majority of the parents who must decide whether to risk their own futures? The risk is real: the regime has already reassigned one parent, a scientist, to a menial job after his wife had defected.

The Teacher benefits from a brilliant, award-winning performance from Zuzana Mauréry in the title role. What makes this character especially loathsome is that she’s not just heavy-handed, but grossly manipulative. Mauréry is a master at delivering reasonable words with both sweet civility and the unmistakable menace of the unspoken “or else”.

The acting from the entire company is exceptional, especially from Csongor Kassai, Martin Havelka and the Slovak director Peter Bebjak as aggrieved parents. Writer Petr Jarchovský has created textured, authentic characters. Director Jan Hrebejk not only keeps the story alive but adds some clever filmmaking fluorishes as he moves the story between flashbacks and the present.

The Teacher was the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest. It can now be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.

Cinequest: THE LINE

May 13, 2018March 11, 2018 by movie gourmet

In the neo-noir Slovak thriller The Line (Ciara), Adam’s (Tomas Mastalir) life is about to be changed by history. The Schengen agreement, which opens the borders between the European nations, is about to be implemented. That’s a problem for Adam, who leads a crew of smugglers who sneak Ukrainian cigarettes through Slovakia to Austria and other European markets. First, there’s no longer going to be any market for smuggling anything out of Slovakia. Second, the border between Slovakia and the Ukraine is going to be hardened, so he’s no longer going to be able to source anything from the Ukraine. What was going to be his last big job goes awry, leaving him in hopeless hock to a ruthless Ukrainian gangster. So he’s going to have to take a chance on a very dangerous job.

We see Adam’s crew equipping vehicles with hidden compartments and making bribes at the border. One crew member sends off a load of bootleg cigarettes with “Cancer is headed to Austria”.

Adam is one tough mother, a guy who is exceptionally tough even by the standards of movie crime bosses. But he’s under increasing pressure, and that same pressure is incentivizing people he relies on to go sideways on him. At its heart, The Line is a film about betrayal.

It turns out that Adam runs a business started by his mother (Emília Vásáryová), who is herself the most formidable and lethal granny since Livia Soprano or Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter. There’s a great scene near the end where Adam and mom experience a shared memory of what happened to his father.

Adam’s wife (Zuzana Fialová) knows him very well. She also knows when to hold her cards and when to fold them.

The Line keeps getting darker – and then even darker – until a major veer at the end. It’s an effective character-driven thriller.

The Line was directed by Peter Bebjak, who acted in the best foreign film at the 2017 Cinequest, The Teacher. The Line was Slovenia’s submission to this year’s Oscars.

Cinequest: THE TEACHER

February 26, 2017 by movie gourmet

The Teacher is one of the highlights of Cinequest 2017.

Cinequest – Visible World: creepy, even for a voyeur movie

March 1, 2014March 17, 2012 by movie gourmet

In the unsettling Slovak film Visible World (Vidite ny Svet), the protagonist Oliver lives by himself in a high-rise apartment building and trains his binoculars on unsuspecting people in the high-rise across the street. The tag line is “There’s a man with binoculars at the window, watching the people across the street. And he’s definitely not James Stewart.”

It’s an uncommon voyeur film. First, the voyeur isn’t looking at any bad behavior by the people across the street. Second, although he is compelled to spy, he isn’t getting any apparent sexual kick out of what he sees. Instead – and this is the really, really disturbing aspect – he is using what he sees to interfere with their lives – and to insinuate himself into their lives.

Most women like a guy who makes that extra effort to find out what she likes. But going through a woman’s garbage to see what products she uses – before he has met her – that’s pretty high up on the Creep-O-Meter. “I like Chilean Carmenere. You do, too? Imagine that!”

Oliver is played by Ivan Trojan as an extremely terse and focused guy, but one who can surprise the audience by putting on an act of affability to get what he wants. He is an odd duck, for sure – often rudely abrupt with people who wander between him and his obsessions. But he is that unusually high functioning crazy who can hide how very, very sick he is.

I saw Visible World at its North American premiere at Cinequest 22.