FIRST VIEW: The 12 months of the Gardener is a darkish change of householders – Information

The guide of the identical identify by Karel Čapek, who will accompany the gardener by means of the 4 seasons, is the narrative framework for the brand new characteristic movie Havelk. As well as, the principle character – the gardener performed by Oldřich Kaiser – says excerpts from bittersweet literary feuilletons in his thoughts. In any other case, he’s silent all through the movie, or reasonably his speeches are usually not heard within the image, however you’ll be able to think about them.

The hero is a barely gloomy countryman who solely needs peace and as few folks as doable round him. His home with a backyard is situated close to a ruined fortress, the place the brand new proprietor goes to settle. The glamorous lifetime of Kaiser and his movie and real-life associate Dáša Vokatá appears to be coming to an finish.

The personal proprietor of the monument wish to purchase the land belonging to the gardener, on which he’s going to ascertain a driveway. However he doesn’t agree with the sale.

When the mysterious man of the fortress, whose invisibility reminds the antagonist of Kafka’s well-known novel The Citadel, doesn’t come, he decides to resolve the case within the unsuitable means and make the lifetime of the gardener so depressing as doable – through the use of a safety guard (Štěpán Kozub), destroying the crops, and at last by violence.

Havelka tackles an nearly similar theme to his debut, Homeowners from 2019, specifically the construction of personal property in a home context. Its traps are well-known not solely to members of the neighborhood of unit homeowners, but in addition to individuals who dwell in small cities, the place everybody learns every part about about everybody over the fence.

Though it was very tough to not chortle whereas watching The Homeowners, and in any case, Particular Occasions, there’s solely a bit of humor in The 12 months of the Gardener. On occasion, the obstacles increase a couple of conferences of the hero with non-professional metropolis officers (Alena Mihulová and Petr Lněnička) or perhaps much more defenders of the legislation (Tomáš Jeřábek and Jiří Vyorálek).

The gardener’s yr is way darker and extra sinister in comparison with the filmmaker’s starting, primarily as a result of persistently gloomy Kaiser, who doesn’t bend an inch in his secrecy till the tip. On the identical time, he performs solely with calm grimaces, he doesn’t want a single phrase to convey the state of affairs of the previous man who’s erased. Once more, he proves his expertise for giant genres that we do not usually affiliate him with.

The silent gardener stands in stark distinction to the opposite silent characters, whose sentences are basically empty. The shortcoming to speak meaningfully is probably the strongest message in Havelk’s movie.