The jury did not appreciate Kadrnek’s novelty, but there was still a lot of talk about it at the festival. This is again a film that will take the audience a lot, if they are willing and able to work with Kadrnka’s filmmaking to the very end. In this case, the otherwise very proportional ninety minutes is emotionally at least twice as long.
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Kadrnka was inspired by a story from his own family for the Report on the Rescue of the Dead. Also, their father, like the father in the film, once fell into a coma, and the family did everything they could to wake him up, despite the poor medical forecasts.
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The film does not copy reality literally, although it may seem so. It records in great detail exactly how the family, mother (Zuzana Mauréry) and son (Vojtěch Dyk) try to wake up their father from coma day after day, hour after hour. And they don’t want to give it up.
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“I hold your left hand, squeeze your left hand. You have the ball in your hand, squeeze the ball. ”These are the most common words that both characters say repeatedly. In addition, they play music to the patient, address him in abstract discourses, but above all they constantly issue the above-mentioned instructions in vain but tirelessly.
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It is these endless repetitions, long shots of standing or sitting figures, shot in a non-traditional vertical format, that acts as a mannerism, a pose that seeks to make the film art, that is, artistic. But art should not be synonymous with boredom. And she often gains the upper hand in the Rescue of the Dead. Mother and son speeches are not loving monologues, but rather philosophical rhetoric. In addition, Kadrnka led both actors to a completely minimalist expression, which in the end turned out to have practically the same expression, they look almost like motionless sculptures without facial expressions.
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It is known from interviews with the director that this was the intention that he wanted the actors to express emotions only with their eyes. But neither Maurery nor Dyk is enough for that, such acting is given only to the greatest masters in the profession. As a result, the mother and son do not express emotions and therefore cannot pass them on to the audience.
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Several times the camera goes out of the room, but no further than the cold hospital corridor, the waiting room where the son crosses, makes a phone call, watches the ball rolling down the stairs… This austere environment with seemingly uninvolved hospital staff and surrendered patients is finally only more eloquent than hospital bed scenes.
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Therefore, the creators can hardly achieve the spectator experience. But they can still achieve one thing. Given the theme of death, which, as Jaromír Nohavica sings, “cannot be reconciled”, and at the same time due to the stereotypical and boring events on the screen, the viewer has enough time to think about all his dead or sick, about his own fear of the end of life. , about what when and for whom he did or on the contrary did not do and could have done.
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The film The Report on the Rescue of the Dead thus became an opportunity for an hour and a half to question oneself, to think about which there is not much time in life until something serious happens. Maybe it’s not bad to make it here and there. However, if attending a film show is the right opportunity, each potential viewer must consider for themselves.
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| Dead rescue report |
| Czech Republic, Slovakia, France 2021, 90 min. Director: Václav Kadrnka, starring: Vojtěch Dyk, Zuzana Mauréry and others |
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