Review: Does everyone know Janžurka? So that the girl’s document shows what it really is – News List

Among the sureties at the Karlovy Vary festival are Jiří Bartoška’s cigarettes, the humor of Marko Eben (un) and documentaries about domestic celebrities, which are at the top of the audience vote. On paper, the film about Iva Janžurová met all the prerequisites to get the same as the previous pictures of Jiří Suchý, Miloš Forman or the band PSH. True, at the premiere in the Karlovy Vary City theater, the audience gave a standing ovation, perhaps also out of respect for the acting legend who was present in person, but there was shame in reactions the audience afterwards. They say it’s long, boring, disorganized. Even at the ČSFD, Janžurka did not go into the red, as is usual with these films. Where did the mistake occur?

Above all, the film is not like many expected. Templates of biographical documents do not hold fast, there is controversy with it. On the one hand, there is a cross-section of a period of life, archival photos, film samples, and the director remembers how the filming happened years ago. However, Remundová is at the same time exploring, experimenting, trying to find out about her own way to get closer to her mother and at the same time one of the biggest acting icons we have after the war. Despite the danger that he sometimes stumbles or goes astray. It is an organic, malleable and imperfect entity that changes as an actor portrays different roles.

Iva Janžurová started acting in the 1960s and continues to do so successfully to this day. Wedding as a belt, Worlds, kerosene lamps, Morgiana, “Sir, you are a widow!”, Tour … In addition, dozens of TV series and plays. However, Remundová is very interested in the person behind these roles, in the breaks between performances. Although we will enjoy Janžurová for a while as Elizabeth II. in the popular play Audience with the Queen, but what sticks in our minds is a behind-the-scenes moment, when the make-up artist brushes her teeth, which has curds holding on to her.

Scenes from Ivy Janžurová’s daily life are mixed with a return to the past. Right at the beginning, for example, she visits the town of Žirovnice in Vysočina, where she was born in 1941, and remembers the turtle that used to walk in their garden. At the same time, Remundová is looking for the seeds of her future roles in her mother’s life story from the beginning. When Janžurová looks back on her childhood spent in the defense, scenes from the film Carriage to Vienna, which takes place at the end of the war, are different. Gradually, the biography of the actress consists of similar retrospective rounds. Studying at DAMU, working with Krejčík, Herz and Hanák, hope linked to the Prague Spring, the pressure of the power of convention, marriage to playwright Stanislav Remunda…

The aforementioned Žirovnica turtle will become the appropriate mascot of the documentary. We see many times black and white pictures of him walking on grass. Slowly, patiently and deliberately. As life goes. A relatively meditative pace characterizes the entire film. His uncontroversial feeling of nostalgia is confirmed by Remundová’s affection for her mother. The most private scenes, when Janžurová has her hair dyed, talking about the sausage waiting for her in the freezer at home, or attending a birthday party in the closest family circle, also contributes to the home atmosphere.

In fact, the single most impressive event of the entire film takes place in the first seconds, when we see a recording of Maria Stuartovna’s performance in the Estate Theater from April 2002. Janžurová was then knocked out to the ground with a heavy side set. There is an interesting response of the audience to the frightening event, after which the actress, according to her own words, was reborn. Even when Janžurová asks for help from the back, people continue to sit motionless in their seats, and no one wants to disturb the sacred space of the stage. There is still an impassable barrier between the auditorium and the stage.

Remundová’s film continues in the imaginative demolition of decorations. The person who has two Czech lions is not shown as an idol that no one wants to approach, but as she sees it herself (maybe that’s why the name “Ivuška” would be more appropriate) . As a caring mother with a sense of humor who goes to graduation parties and crochets gloves in her spare time. Even when he repeats earlier events, the director does not particularly focus on biographical facts, but on the emotions that color the individual memories. That is why it allows Janžurová to remember her mother, her brother or her lover from the first year, talking about her love letters.

But the most revealing thing is the close conversation that Janžurová makes during the film with Remundová herself. When talking about childhood, relationships and the fear of being useless, cracks appear in the self-deprecating protective shell of the acting nose, through which we see fragility and insecurity , no acting. From her directorial debut I have no regrets, Remundová has understood the truth in these unsettling scenes from family life. Perhaps more than the meeting with Alexander Dubček, which Janžurová remembers together with Marta Kubišová.

Archive clips with Dubček or Soviet tanks put the story of the actress in the framework of great history, but they do not reveal much about the Janžur family itself, and at the same time they are too short to shed light on the atmosphere or cultural climate of the time. . Above all, however, they undermine how closely and quickly they represent the main features of the film. Excerpts from Beckett’s play Happy Days, in which Janžurová plays a woman repeating her life, have such an alien effect. Apparently, the relaxed form should provide regularity and order, strengthen the feature of interweaving reality with actors’ roles, but instead they add too many layers of meaning and a changing rhythm.

Remundová discovers the normality and humanity of the main character best in the moments when she ignores the conventions of biographical documentaries and does not try for something “noble, or -sure” to express, as her mother says. Some people have such a personal charm and insight that being in the same room with them is enough. Thanks to the almost two-hour film, there are still plenty of moments in Janžurka. They are perhaps poorer in terms of truth than we are used to from more uniform but careful documents that follow well-trodden paths. On the other hand, they allow us to connect with Iva Janžurová in the same way that she has connected with her characters for more than 60 years.