THE PAINTED BIRD
War child…
The three-hour WW2 pic that’s shocking viewers.
He’s a vampire,” a nameless Jewish boy is told early on in Václav Marhoul’s ferocious adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s 1965 novel. After reported walkouts at festivals, Marhoul’s divisive World War 2 epic has also been called many headline-grabbing things – gratuitous, pornographic, unwatchable… but its severe selfpossession merits deeper consideration. As a harrowed meditation on how war erodes identity, innocence and humanity, its moral purpose is emphatic.
With unstinting focus, Marhoul locks on to a young orphan (Petr Kotlar) as he drifts through an unnamed Eastern European country in World War 2. After the boy’s screeching ferret is burnt to death before his eyes, things soon get worse when his aunt/carer dies. The adults he encounters on his subsequent journey into hell are variously cruel, savage, brutalised or deadened by experience.
Swiftly, the boy both witnesses and endures horrific atrocities. Udo Kier’s jealous miller gouges out his wife’s lover’s eyes, which is good news for the hungry cats nearby but distressing for everyone else involved, including the viewer. A priest (Harvey Keitel) entrusts a paedophile (Julian Sands) with the boy’s care; peasants accuse him of devilry and bury him neck-deep amid a circle of crows; and Júlia Vidrnáková’s young woman abuses him before resorting to bestiality to stoke his jealousy. One rare case of small mercies is the episode involving hundreds of hungry, teeming rats: this horror is heard rather than seen.
The lesson involving a painted bird’s suffering arrives loaded with cruel meaning, as does a sniper’s pitiless act of ‘generosity’: played by Barry Pepper, the shooter gifts the boy a gun. Meanwhile, the boy’s own behaviour after he witnesses the slaughter of a train-load of Jewish people shows what war might reduce someone to.
GOAT BUSTERS
Though it sounds like an endurance test, the controlled artistry of Marhoul’s direction holds you tight in its grip. DoP Vladimír Smutný frames the boy’s story in immaculate images, their beauty – reminiscent of arthouse giants from Andrei Tarkovsky to Béla Tarr - at pointed odds with the ugliness depicted within. The absence of a score adds to the austere pitch, as does the key of the performances. Despite several star cameos (including Stellan Skarsgård), this is no 1917: like the impressively grave-faced Kotlar, the stars submit any whisker of vanity to Marhoul’s stone-cold gaze.
The haul is undeniably long and a little repetitive, though it’s fair to say the film’s intention is to be just that: unrelenting, unyielding. At other times, the extremities depicted risk dipping into absurdism, particularly when a goat’s grisly fate enters an already unpleasant picture. But this at least suggests that the people the boy encounters have either become severed from recognisable norms of human morality, or surrendered to their worst urges – as the boy himself may yet do.
After 170 minutes of fearing the worst, the ending lands with an affecting yet ambiguous punch. Even if hints of hope run the risk of appearing glib in this context, Marhoul recognises the value of a little light to illuminate the shadows. Meanwhile, the closing shot itself suggests something equally powerful: a faintly restorative sense of identity, haunted by a clear awareness of how swiftly and cruelly it can be wiped away. Kevin Harley