4/26/2015

Toward Rustic Mind (Religiosity in Kachyňa's Night of a Bride)

Just a brief note on religiosity in Czech movies. The Night of a Bride (Noc nevěsty, 1967), a film directed by Karel Kachyňa (based on a novel by Jan Procházka), is a dark story set in 1950's Czech village. One of the movie's protagonists, the "lady" (orig. "slečna", starred by Jana Brejchová), is an extraordinary nun returning home. We can see her when she arrives in the village at the moment of a suicide of her father during the times of Soviet-style collectivisation in Czechoslovakia.

The story is set in Christmas Eve and its night. The "lady" is the antagonist of Picin (Mnislav Hofmann), the leader of the collectivisation in the village. Karel Kachyňa presents a specific kind of magic realism herein. Kachyňa's poetics is based on a thorough portrait of the characters with a wide use of symbolic shots and dream-like cuts. Nobody is a positive character, everyone has his personal vice or sin. But Picin and the "lady" are a distillate of rustic mind. They are individualistic, proud, die-hard but devoted. He is a Communist, she is a Catholic, both of them fully disperse their selfs in ideology.


The "lady" is a nun of a very extraordinary kind. She leads villagers to a semi-illegal night mass like a mystical prophet. Her image of a saint is almost perfect, including bleeding stigmata. But there is a profane power, a priest, who does not allow her to perform her role utterly. When she tries to get the wine during an Eucharist, the priest stops her and in the climax of the story he deprives her of her symbolic power. We can see that she is far behind the borders of a Christian devotion, she performs idolatry of herself. She really wants to become the bride of Him (not "Christ", but the absolute "Him") and to be integrated into the Divine. When villagers introduce her into the village church, they carry her on their shoulders like Divine Lady.

In my viewpoint this narrative is not a schematic duel of two fanaticisms (communism and religion). It is better to understand it as a manifestation of rustic mind. You can hardly understand the mind's actions, because despite of its eccentricity it is introvert. They reminds me the characters of stories by Veljko Petrović. The hearts of the both of protagonists are wild but obscure, never opened to a confession. They are condemned to psychical insulation, where no dialogue with God is possible. This is the reason, why the movie has to end in blood: the eccentricity of their characters (and their "fanaticism") is only a manifestation of their introversion and solitude.

In the movie, the eccentric religiosity is used as an instrument for better understanding of 1950's collectivisation of Czech village. It is not a critique of fanaticism (in such a manner argues "Bonjour Tristesse" for instance) but an outstanding portrait of rustic mind.


4/24/2015

Theatre as Applied Phenomenology

I have just started my work on a new research project, a reconstruction and analysis of a theatre performance Písek (The Sand) by Arnošt Goldflam, staged in 1988 at HaDivadlo (abbreviation for Hanakian Theatre) in Brno. The lead was performed by Miloslav Maršálek. This my research is a part of a wide project focused on documentation of Czech alternative theatres in recent history. The project is directed by Josef Kovalčuk at Theatre Faculty, JAMU in Brno.

The piece was well appreciated by critics at that time: Jaroslava Suchomelová recognised some parts of the perfomance as "the best spectator's experience in the last years" (Suchomelová, 1988), a reviewer in Brněnský večerník recommended it to reader with a note that the perfomance had to be viewed attentively as an artwork full of complex meanings (ej, 1988). Even the calmest response by Jaromír Blažejovský appreciated it at least as a piece of "honest work" and the reviewer mentioned that it served "a strong tea" to spectator's soul (Blažejovský, 1988).

The work on the research is exciting in a special way for me. Alongside this project I am working on my longstanding concern, a conceptual analysis of mimesis from a viewpoint of phenomenological hermeneutics. I am focused on Gaston Bachelard's phenomenogical reduction now (in his Poetics of Space and Poetics of Dreaming) and it seems to be a good opportunity to rethink Bachelard's concept in the light of the performance.

Arnošt Goldflam widely used a motif of childhood in the play and the protagonist was set to a situation akin to Bachelard's "naive state" of phenomenological reduction. As a methodical lone the protagonist falls to his memory and imagination being a permanent day-dreamer and he even reaches his own childishness. Therefore I hope that the analysis of the performance may be worth while for the reflection of Bachelard's concept of phenomenological reduction as well - as an example of particular phenomenological approach in artwork (as an artistic method).

For more information about the play in English see a brief analysis in Burian, 2000: 170-172. 

References


ej [an acronym] "Hra o tom, co bolí" in Brněnský večerník, Brno 7. 11. 1988.
BACHELARD, Gaston. La poétique de l'espace. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1961.
BACHELARD, Gaston. La poétique de la rêverie. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1968.
BLAŽEJOVSKÝ, Jaromír. "Nová hra Arnošta Goldflama" in Rovnost, Brno 10. 3. 1988.
BURIAN, Jarka M. Modern Czech Theatre: Reflector and Conscience of a Nation. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000.
SUCHOMELOVÁ, Jaroslava. "Z dílny HaDivadla" in Zemědělské noviny, Praha 4. 10. 1988.