Nuda v Brně (Bored
in Brno) (2003),
directed by Vladimír Morávek
Nuda v Brně, the film
debut by an experienced theatre director Vladimír Morávek, was hailed by some Czech critics as the best Czech
movie of the previous decade. The film is a remarkably mature homage to the
Czech New Wave of the 1960s, especially to Miloš
Forman (in particular to his Černý Petr [Peter and Paula], 1963 or Lásky
jedné plavovlásky [Loves of
a Blonde], 1965). At the same time it is also a profound testimony to the
Czech present, which it depicts with an understanding, full of humour and
irony. Nuda v Brně
interprets the classic Czech film heritage of the 1960s with an ironic twist.
The film is a statement about how people behave in contemporary Czech society,
at the same time it has a general meaning, relevant for people anywhere, that
is why it is attractive even for the international public.
The fact
that Nuda v Brně
has been shot in black and white (the authors did not have sufficient funds
to purchase colour film stock because the project failed to receive a subsidy
by the Czech government´s State Fund for the Development of Cinematography)
hints at its connection with the heritage of the 1960s Czech “New Wave” – whose
films were also mostly shot in black and white. However, Nuda
v Brně looks at the same themes from the
point of view of the much more cynical and much more “informed” 2000s. We
realise that the insight into the personal psychology of young people, their
youthful fumblings, disorientation and clumsiness was
far more innocent in Forman´s films of forty years ago, in spite of his alleged
“cynicism”, than it is now.
Apart
from offering a profound insight into the behaviour of contemporary Czechs, Nuda v Brně is
among other things, also a parody of pornography, which is now omnipresent in
the Czech Republic.
Some
things do not change even after forty years. The world now seems to be much
tougher, much more controlled by manipulative commercial pressures and by much
more sophisticated hypocrisy, yet the (young) people remain just as
clumsy and confused, as documented by Miloš Forman
four decades ago.
Nuda v Brně confirms that what matters most in life
is interhuman relations. Without them human beings do
not thrive. The absence of a satisfactory emotional bond frustrates and
dehumanises people. Individuals are also often hampered by being forced to live
side by side with impaired or undeveloped individuals who are unable to commit
themselves emotionally, usually as a result of their
fears or an inferiority complex.
Nuda v Brně argues that what people need
first and foremost is to create an intimate and satisfying emotional
relationship. Male weakness is a very frequent theme of contemporary Czech
cinema. The Czech male is an antihero. He almost always moves on the borderline
of adulthood and infantility. He almost always
disappoints all expectations of his female partners. Pater absconditus, absent father, is a common feature in
today´s Czech film. Men fail and leave their families. In Nuda
v Brně most of the women live on their
own. In spite of that, people, full of hope, keep trying, over and over again,
to strike up erotic relationships.
Men are
weaker than women. Women have much more energy and initiative. Yet, Nuda v Brně is a
profoundly “male” film. Morávek sensitively analyses
the most intimate human weaknesses of which, it seems, men have many. They are
afraid: will I make a fool of myself if I fail during my first erotic
encounter? Or else: horror of horrors, what if I am a homosexual? These male
“worries” are an instrument for penetrating deep inside the souls of Morávek´s heroes.
In the
main narrative in this film, two young lovers are preparing for their first
erotic encounter. They are both slightly mentally retarded. This is for us a humble
reminder: none of us is perfect, each and every one of us who lives in this
world is a blundering, imperfect individual – yet we are all endowed with
humanity. Morávek bows down before humanity. The film
presents itself as a “comedy” and the audiences laugh at the Formanesque irony and the absurd behaviour of many of the
characters. The director makes gentle fun of them, but he does not cruelly mock
them – the film elevates his characters beyond their weakness and their limitations.
Nuda v Brně examines the experiences and
events in the lives of a number of characters of both sexes during a single
evening and night in the Moravian regional capital of Brno. All these events
take place at the same place or in the close vicinity. Morávek
often includes them in the same shot. However, they are rarely interconnected.
Several
couples are trying to strike up erotic relationships. Some of these attempts
fail right at the begining. For instance, Miriam Šimáková, the mother of Olga, the main female protagonist
in the film, sets out to meet a potential partner in a café, a person whom she
has contacted by means of a newspaper advert, but immediately she arrives she
changes her mind. The story of psychologist PhDr. Vlasta Kulková-Jará is
tragicomic. She teaches women how to behave assertively, but she herself is
incapable of initiating a relationship. She brings an aging provincial actor Miroslav Norbacher (Miroslav Donutil) to her flat, but
Norbacher fails to get an erection. The Tibetan
music, a feeling of guilt towards his wife and Vlasta´s
exaggerated, stilted behavior (modelled
on psychology textbooks) make him
nervous. He feels bad about having a fling on the night of his wife´s birthday.
Norbacher pays for his attempt at adultery by losing his
life. Drunk, he makes his way home in the early morning walking in the middle
of the carriageway through a road tunnel. A bakery delivery van, driven by Beďura and Velička (Pavel Liška and Filip Rajmont) knocks him down
and kills him. Maybe, Norbacher´s death is just an unlucky coincidence, as so many things
in life.
The
narrator tells us about Norbacher´s death in advance,
thus fulfilling the role of an ancient Greek chorus. The film´s narratives thus
acquire a subtext of inexorability: everything is “fixed in advance”. The mesage of the filmmakers seems to be: This is a semi-ironic
testimony to the life of people in contemporary society, based on an analysis
of their attempts to create relationships.
Most of our characters are behaving ridiculously because they are
afraid. Nothing can be done about their imperfections. Everything is fixed, we
cannot change it, all we can do is report on the
current state of affairs.
As far as
relationships are concerned, the character of Jaroslava
is also in trouble – she always picks up a “failure”. Her latest discovery
Richard Klech, unsurprisingly, also has problems with
getting an erection. Men are horrified by women. This is underlined in the film
by the frequently repeated visual motif of various ways in which penis-like
shapes are being destroyed. A Czech bread roll, rohlík,
functions as a fallic symbol in this movie. At the
beginning, rohlík is being used as an erect
penis during a training session where one brother shows the other how to put on
a condom, then we see rohlíks being
energetically cut up to pieces when canapés are being made for a party, an old
woman eats a rohlík with ham on a coach
in which the brothers Pichlík are travelling to Brno,
after the accident in the Brno tunnel which kills actor Norbacher,
the tyres of passing cars crush rohlíks
which have been scattered all over the carriageway. “Emasculation, the film
concludes, is the truth of sexuality and this emasculation seems to be
particularly related to the fact that all women will, one day, become the
castrating mother that nearly scuppers the one positively presented sexual
relation,” says
David Shorfa. Jaroslav Pichlík gives his younger brother Stanislav
(Jan Budař) detailed instructions how to use a
condom and pretends in front of him that he is a sexually experienced man. But he isn´t. Even he ends up on a window ledge without
anywhere to escape when he is trying to run away from a woman who demands sex.
Collectivism,
a very familiar feature of life in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and
1980s still survives in this film into the 2000s. We see one of
a regular meetings of female friends in the tenement in which Standa and Olga are preparing for their first erotic
experience. The “team” of female “experts” gives Olga a lot of
advice, in a way which parallels
the instruction “seminar” given by Jarda to Standa before they set out for Brno. On arrival in Brno, Standa is duly introduced to the group of Olga´s friends
and “evaluated” by them. In spite of all this “advice”, Standa´s
and Olga´s relationship turns out to be the only authentic and satisfying bond
that comes into being in this film – it is lyrical, unpretentious and fresh.
An
absurd, fictitious Czech Television play is a point of departure for Nuda v Brně.
At the beginning of the film, scenes from this play are being shot (not
terribly successfully) in a TV studio. The play is an affectionate parody of
some of the most stupid programmes put out by Czech Television. In the play,
the hero puts a light bulb in his mouth and then cannot take it out. En route
to a hospital´s emergency department, people talk in the taxi about the fact
that approximately 150 000 sex acts allegedly take
place in Brno in a single night. Actor Norbacher
who is supposed to say this in the shot, cannot: he thinks the number is exaggerated.
The scene must be filmed over and over again. The filming of this scene
functions as a kind of motto in Nuda v Brně - thereafter, the film
examines the encounters of several couples, trying to find out whether at least some sexual liaisons did
indeed take place.
A couple
of young men who deliver bread rolls to bakery shops in the morning drink in a
local bar and complain to each other that they cannot pull a girl. Only as a
consequence of the drastic experience of the car accident during which they
inadvertently kill actor Norbacher, they realize that
they are in fact homosexual – and that they have fallen hopelessly in love with
each other. (Earlier in the film, one of the young men has given clear
indications that he is homosexual.)
The
structure of the film is compact as a result of the fact that that the film
observes the classic unity of time and place. All the narrative strands take
place at the same time and in the same locality, the small and photogenic city
of Brno.
Nuda v Brně is valuable as a study of
contemporary mores in the Czech Republic where the imperfect nature of humanity
has been seen for many decades as a major characteristic of our existence. It
is as a result of this humanity, perfect or imperfect, that people manage to
survive even in contemporary times.