On New Year’s Eve, Czechs, Slovaks and a Canadian woman meet in one apartment. This is not the beginning of a joke about national stereotypes, but the premise of the Slovak-Canadian film And we got what we wanted, which rather avoids humor. A chamber drama from the night when the brotherly countries are definitively divided into two states, it wants to talk about the traumas of the past. From today, cinemas are showing it.
A large Czech-Slovak family is celebrating the last day of 1992 and also the last hours when together they form one republic. However, no one in the Bratislava apartment has any idea that not only the state will soon fall apart, but also that family relationships will begin to seriously disintegrate.
When one relative, the father of the newly born Zuzka, arrives late, he does not join in the fun and sipping the pine tree. Instead, he takes his father aside and confronts him about what he recently found out. Dad worked with StB. The senior’s heart cannot withstand the revelation and Zuzča’s grandfather goes to the hospital with a heart attack.
In the meantime, the son shares the news with his relatives, and debutant director Michal Kunes Kováč begins to develop a debate about morality, which fills practically the entire film. He does not leave the interior of the apartment for most of the story.
The creators partially promote the film as a kind of Slovak equivalent Beds. The star-studded “international” cast somewhat corresponds to this, the Czech side of the family is represented by Bolek Polívka and Eva Holubová, the collaborator is played by Ady Hajda, his wife is played by Anna Šišková. In one of the married roles, Jan Budař appears as an educated and university teacher, who here fulfills a particularly bizarre function of a sage – but we’ll get to that later.
The screenplay by Maroš Heček, Tomáš Dušička and David Cormican does not even manage to present the characters and their nature, let alone involve them in the tragicomic “Pelíškov” constellations. Much more likely from the beginning, he bets on dramatic suffocation amplified by Kováč’s direction, more confident in the silent scenes, where David Hofmann’s camera can stand out, than in the conversational passages. With them, the tension is often increased by theatrical raising of the voice rather than nuanced acting.
Ady Hajda plays Daniel, who is tormented by his conscience in his hospital bed. | Photo: B Production
The film And we have what we wanted does not want to be condescendingly nostalgic looking back at the past or cursing the “Bolshevik”, no matter how strong the opinion about the previous regime falls here several times. By setting them at a turning point in history, the authors want to talk about the present, about how to relate to the past today.
Most of the story revolves around a heated debate about why the grandfather, father and husband in one person signed cooperation with the StB and whether to condemn him for it.
His conscience is gnawing at him in his hospital bed and he confides in one of the doctors. However, he does not choose the most understanding one, because his father, a former prime minister, never turned his back on the regime – even if he was cornered.
The given floor plan opens up a question that, at least in Czech cinematography, is not addressed by many works.
Not the one about the nature of the previous regime, but rather about our relationship to the past. About whether to throw in one bag – and actually frame – all those who did not have the courage to defy the communist power, for whatever reasons. At its core, the thought-provoking reasoning is unfortunately lost in an unconvincing, literal execution and hurtful tone.
The movie And We Got What We Wanted will begin showing in theaters this Thursday. | Video: Etiquette film
If, for example, the film is to be an attempt to reflect the painful and emotional Slovak national nature, as the creators suggest, it does not seem like the happiest idea to cast Jan Budař in the role of a professor who, at the appropriate moment, appears almost like a Cimrman figure to give an interpretation of the situation or even history. In addition, he will play both hymns on the piano and between the lines will offer a definition of both nations based on the analysis of these two songs.
The interpretive framework is further strengthened by the presence of a Canadian girl, a friend of one of the Slovakian university students present here, who wonders here and there incomprehensibly – for example, why everyone was upset by working for the secret service, when it is a meritorious thing.
The picture shows Dávid Hartl as Michal and Judit Pecháček as Helena. | Photo: B Production
She is not the only one who is here for just a few sentences. The film is full of such sleight of hand, no matter how skillfully the experienced actors try to mask the unbalanced tone and weaknesses of the script. The film does not even manage to properly present the protagonists and the connections between them, nor their pasts and natures. Both are limited to a few snippets, needed mainly to reveal what is written in the agent’s grandfather folder.
At the same time, the actors are not included in the file itself until relatively late. It sits somewhere on the table for an absurdly long, unmotivated time, until not only detective lovers tear their hair out and say: here is the proof in front of your eyes, around which everything revolves, so why is no one paying attention to it? Simply so that there was a way to delay the dramatic discovery: what the reports for StB actually contained.
Important themes appear in the film, such as the fact that our society would benefit if it did not divide the world into only courageous dissidents and rogue communists. If only there was a will to perceive a slightly more varied ethical palette when evaluating not only our loved ones, without the need to relativize the monstrous nature of the previous regime.
After all, the effort to dig ditches and greater understanding is especially necessary today and does not have to take the form of conciliatory closing of eyes to the past and the present. But all this is drowned in the relaxed atmosphere of the evening, where a lot of pine wine is drunk, but the creators are unable to create a gradating atmosphere that would reflect, among other things, the rising blood alcohol level.
Bad jokes occasionally flash through the film, sometimes even unintentionally nonsensical – for example, when Budař, who in addition to his proficiency in history, French and philosophy, also has a wealth of mycological knowledge, asks if the mushrooms in the cabbage patch according to the family recipe are baldheads.
Eva Holubová, who of the entire staff most successfully imitates the state under the influence of brandy, answers mysteriously that she can neither deny nor confirm it. These are replicas from such a different genre that they cannot be described other than with the abbreviation “wtf”. Translated into the speech and time of the protagonists: what the fuck is this?
And we have what we wanted, which is – to put it bluntly – the kind of film about the past and the present that we deserve. More similar works would be needed, here everything remained in the experimental stage.
Film
And we got what we wanted
Directed by: Michal Kunes Kováč
Bontonfilm, in theaters from March 7.
2024-03-07 11:49:00
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