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American moviemakers love to feed audiences feel-good sports stories about underdogs battling the odds. Judging from the endearing “The Fencer,” the appeal must be universal.
Like most of its U.S. cousins, “The Fencer” takes inspiration from a reallife story. In this case, it’s based on the life of Endel Nelis, an Estonian fencing master who died in 1993. The film is set in the early ‘50s, after he flees Leningrad to avoid the Soviets.
On the lam in rural Estonia, Endel (Märt Avandi) moves to a depressed small village, Haapsalu, and lands a job as a physical education teacher. He quickly learns how little emphasis is placed on athletics. The school shares its sporting equipment with the military, so supplies are scarce. And fencing, sneers the school principal (Hendrik Toompere), isn’t suitable for the workingclass children Endel will be teaching.
But once Endel sees how the sport piques the curiosity of one of his students, Marta (Liisa Koppel), he decides to form a fencing club. He expects a few interested pupils to show up. Instead, he gets a couple dozen.
Without equipment, he fashions foils from twigs. The students, who range from grade-school age to teenagers, are fascinated, even though he is a bit brisk with his charges. “I’m not good with children,” he says, and Avandi is quite strong as someone whose natural reticence with kids is compounded by his fear of being discovered. It’s a graceful, understated performance.
Director Klaus Härö creates a striking atmosphere that is brushed with tension. It’s a politically unstable time, and many of the children have no fathers. Endel is often on edge; he gets nervous after he sees a shadowy figure walking down the street: Has he been discovered? Or is it someone completely benign? Adding to the overall mood is the film’s wintry look and the director’s inventive visuals — an early sequence, in which we follow Endel from the rear, is particularly compelling.
There is also a quietly electric moment when the importance of the fencing club is debated during a meeting with parents and staff. The principal wants to kill the program while the parents meekly try to be heard. “Karl Marx was a fencer,” one offers, and it’s both funny and sad.
Endel’s success leads the principal to look deeper into his background (in a misstep, the principal is drawn simply as a one-note villain). This dovetails with a national fencing competition which the youngsters want to enter. That also means a return to Leningrad, where the contest will be held, and Endel’s possible discovery by the secret police. His dilemma: Risk his safety or disappoint the