Autumn Spring (2001)

“Old men should be rich and respected.”

Autumn Spring is a marvelous Czech film that explores the relationship of Fanda and Emilie–an elderly Czech couple. Fanda and Emilie are opposites in many ways. Fanda is happy-go-lucky and open to all sorts of new experiences ( he’s learning French, for example). His wife, Emilie, on the other hand is obsessed with planning their funerals, and she even rather morbidly suggests that they clean and maintain their future burial spot. Fanda and Emilie don’t have much money, and they live in a cramped flat. Their selfish son, Jara, can’t wait to get his hands on the flat by moving his parents into a old-people’s home.

Fanda–a former actor hangs around with his old friend, Eda, and the two get into all sorts of trouble together. They concoct schemes that involve deception of others. The schemes can be fairly harmless–for example, at one point Eda and Fanda pose as ticket inspectors. But sometimes the schemes are far more complicated and potentially damaging, and one of these schemes leads Fanda to ‘borrow’ money from his wife’s funeral savings.

I was extremely impressed by this film. On the surface, the film deals with the husband and wife’s squabbles about money, and the husband’s refusal to face his death. Fanda’s personality is refreshing and charming, and yet at the same time, some of the games he plays are rather anti-social. Fanda capitalizes on his age to further his schemes, but he also risks being labeled incompetent and perhaps being deprived of his small freedoms. The film also examines the institution of marriage, and it does an excellent job of portraying the balance of power within the relationship. These two elderly people are still hashing out fundamental issues of control–Fanda’s smoking for example, and it’s clear that Fanda’s antics are his attempt to maintain a little independence while wiggling from his wife’s control. Unfortunately when Fanda’s schemes go out-of-control, Emilie is swift to wield her winning hand, punish, and exact control.

Another thing that impressed me so much about the film were the characters of Fanda and Eda. When confronted with reality (the truth), they never lost a beat, were never flummoxed and simply expanded their schemes. I found this quite fascinating.

I almost didn’t rent this film. I read the cover several times while trying to decide if Autumn Spring was going to be an awful sort of sentimental film–it certainly looked as though the story could be a tearjerker. But the film was much better (and darker) than that. This was not a syrupy sweet “Hallmark” film about how two old people face their deaths. The script was clever, the characters fascinating, and the acting quite superb. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

King of Thieves (2004)

 “Barbu–King of the Circus!”

The marvelously entertaining Czech film, King of Thieves begins in a small remote Ukrainian village as two village children–Mimma (Julia Khanverdieva) and Barbu (Iakov Kultiasov) entertain the locals with an amateur acrobatic show. But then in the distance, the villagers spot a white Jaguar which they recognize as belonging to the larger than life–Caruso (Lazar Ristovski). Caruso, apparently, periodically appears in the village to recruit children for his European circus, and this is how it works: Caruso spies a likely child, pays the acquiescent parents X number of rubles. He promises fame and fortune, and the child leaves never to return.

Barbu’s dream comes true when Caruso selects him, and he confidently talks Caruso into taking his adopted sister too. There’s a horrible sense that something is terribly wrong with this arrangement, but no questions are asked and a tearful Mimma and a triumphant Barbu leave with Caruso.

While it’s fairly obvious that Caruso is up to no good, ten-year-old Barbu is too young to read the signals. Even when he’s separated from Mimma, taken to a dilapidated Big Tent in a walled compound in Germany, and thrown inside a tatty trailer, Barbu still believes that he’ll be “the King of the Circus.” Caruso feeds this idea by sustaining Barbu’s faith with his gregarious demeanor and doing the odd magic trick. He’s teamed up with a tough Albanian boy named Marcel (Oktay Ozdemir) who teaches him the ropes, and soon Barbu is trained to steal from incautious shoppers and tourists. Barbu delights Caruso, and while Caruso’s vicious underlings spot the fact that Barbu is potentially trouble, Caruso has a weakness for the boy. Meanwhile Caruso loses Mimma in a card game to a revolting pimp.

King of Thieves works incredibly well–partially because the audience sniffs that Caruso is an utter rotter from the start, so we follow Barbu’s fate with baited breath, and a sense that we cannot abandon this delightful, bright, and persistent little boy. Also Caruso’s false world of the circus creates a layer of the phantasmagorical that is underscored by the scenes of Caruso’s past as a trapeze artist with his now crippled partner Julie (Katharina Thalbach). Julie–who looks as though she just stepped from Weimar’s Berlin–is also attracted to Barbu’s spirit. And in many ways to the twisted couple (Julie and Caruso), Barbu represents their lost idealism.

The film includes some painful scenes of abuse of the children enslaved by Caruso’s net, but this is a riveting tale, and it deserves a much wider audience. It’s the sort of foreign film that people who don’t like foreign film would find themselves enjoying. The DVD extras include an interview with director Ivan Fila in which he explains the difficulties he had completing the film–as well as the real life incidents behind the story. In German with English subtitles.