Two sisters (Jitka Cerhova and Ivana Karbonova) decide that they are bored and unhappy with the world. So they launch themselves into a spree of bizarre and rebellious antics to spice up their lives.
Doug says...
Selecting a rather obscure surrealist film made in 1966’s Czechoslovakia, featuring two young women rolling around eating food and saying nonsensical things seems like an odd move. And truth be told, it was. I chose this film from a list of ‘Great European Comedies’ because I was sick of tragic dramas.
A normal comedy it is not. This is deep. So deep in fact that I’m pretty sure I only got about three layers in and yet felt like I’d missed everything. It’s not a chronological or indeed narrative-focused film, with flashes of colour and jaunty angles creating a whirlwind of movement and motion. It’s hard to write about what it’s saying or indeed even showing - because the whole thing is so random and fractured.
What I can write about though is the effect. The scene when the two women burst into a nightclub and drink and dance excessively, drawing the disapproval of the entire room - including the two professional dancers - feels wordlessly powerful. They are giddy with freedom (this film came two years before the country attempted to move against the communism that held it tight) but the other diners are trapped in pretending they aren’t there, and the two dancers are performing, their smiles ever-fixed but their eyes and movement showing unease and difficulty.
It’s moments like this in which director Věra Chytilová makes her mark. There’s constant waste, scenes where the women bite into apples and then discard the rest sit alongside others where they drink and plough through desserts on the account of rich would-be suitors who they later abandon on trains, laughing as they run away. Dialogue throughout is fractured and often meaningless. As a film it’s disturbing but captivating.
In the big climactic scene, they find a room laid for a state banquet and demolish it, breaking the glasses and plates as they munch through everything. There’s a feeling of boredom and restrictions breaking loose, leading them to wreak destruction on everything. Despite no links being made to reality, this feels intensely political, and without a greater understanding of the Czechoslovakian background, I can’t say that I got it. But I ended up thinking about it more and more over the following days.
Highlight
The scene when the two women launch into their complete free attack on the state banquet is extraordinary, with them literally swinging from the chandelier in uninhibited and destructive glee.
Lowlight
It takes more than a short time to get used to the fractured, disjointed style, but then this isn’t a regular movie.
Mark
I’m going to abstain. This is a piece of art not a film so I can’t judge it in comparison.
Paul says...
Yes, this is an odd little film. As Doug says, it’s a piece of art. It’s probably more at home in the Tate Modern (the sort of thing you skim past to get to Tracey Emin’s 'My Bed' before trotting off to the pub to congratulate yourself on how cultured you are. Oh yes, we’ve done that). The deliberately robotic acting, erratic changes in colour and pace, shots of train tracks and World War Two bombings interspersed at seemingly random times. All of these show that this is a film with a Point to it. And what that Point is has been a source of great debate amongst film students.
The film is associated with a cinematic movement of the time called the Czechoslovak New Wave. Very experimental styles of directing were employed, as well as amateur actors, to tackle controversial or at least hitherto untouched themes that censors would usually have attacked vehemently. Director Vera Chytilova is a major contributor to this movement, particularly in her contribution of the female perspective. She dispensed with lucid narrative and characterisation, and styled the film in such a disjointed, frantic manner in order to ensure her audience concentrated on the themes, rather than getting lost in the story. A very Brecht thing to do.
At roughly the same time (the mid to late '60s), in Communist-ruled Czechoslovakia, there was a period called the Prague Spring during which the Head of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, Alexander Dubcek produced a series of liberalisation reforms to ensure greater citizens’ rights and democratic processes. It is no wonder, then, that Czech cinema was also becoming more liberal, experimental and confrontational. Unfortunately, the movement collapsed suddenly in 1968 when a conglomeration of European Communist countries, called the Warsaw Pact, invaded Czechoslovakia, forced Dubcek to resign and maintained communism in the country until the early '90s. Vera Chytilova, as a result, struggled to find work and it seems she had to spend much of her life and career battling hard just to make her next film.
Bearing this in mind, I’ve formulated a vague interpretation of the film but I still have questions. The sisters’ adventures are, as Doug explains, peppered with symbols of food, especially food wastage. To me, they represent youth’s disenfranchisement due to a vague idea of the world being “bad”, and these feelings drive them towards a hedonistic lifestyle where they are amused and motivated by the irritation and fury of older, more powerful men. In almost all of these scenes, they consume vast amounts of food. But the wastage of the food seems to represent the carnage and damage that is left behind if youth were to lead such a lifestyle. The sisters seem to meet their comeuppance when they go too far whilst destroying a magnificent banquet, and they attempt to gain redemption by cleaning up their mess, muttering to themselves about working hard and therefore being “good”. Unfortunately, the plates they are reassembling are already broken- the damage has been done.
Is Chytilova presenting a stark warning to Czechoslovakian liberals about the perils of luxury, hedonism and self-absorption? Or is she warning the traditional communists about what will happen should they provide nothing for young, aspirational youths? I’m not really sure, but I think this is what the film is all related to. There are many other images, symbols, motifs and layers to dissect but I only have 500 words to work with here. Rest assured, Daisies is a cerebral 75 minutes that was hard-going in viewing, but fun to reflect on afterwards.
Highlight
The final scene does, indeed, complete the film, which is a relief because it’s so bizarre and hard to watch that some payout was definitely needed.
Lowlight
The first scenes are the hardest, because the film launches right into its modernist and distractingly fractured tone.
Mark
Unlike Doug, I am going to mark it. And I give it 6/10. It’s not accessible for everyone (avoid like the plague if you’d rather gouge your eyes out with plastic spoons than visit a modern art gallery), but it’s thought-provoking and can provide insight into a segment of history that is not often taught in UK schools.
No comments:
Post a Comment