The screenplay was written by the 34-year-old feature film debut director Jan Haluza, who also inserted his own experiences of fatherhood into the adaptation. He invited another newcomer, cameraman Radim Střelka, and the father of two small children to collaborate. Let it be said that the debut is very successful, especially in terms of directing and cinematography, while the relatively fresh fatherhood of both main creators probably also contributed to a sympathetically believable atmosphere.
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In scriptwriting, the story is logically a bit poor, because the joys and worries around the first year of a child’s life, and thus the first year of parenthood, carry with them excessive stereotypes.
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In the book, which is told in their form, the humor lies mainly in how humorously the author recounts his experiences with little Čeňek. Other narrative techniques had to be chosen for the film. Incidentally, Jiří Vejdělek solved the same problem in The Last Aristocrat, when in the end the humorous book became a nice fairy tale rather than a comedy.
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Haluza kept the humorous side and filmed a comedy, which does not lack a little deeper place when he repeats some elements (baby Čeněk pisses in Dad’s face), but as already mentioned, these are exactly the stereotypes that accompany the first year of a child in real life. .
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Advantages of the Diary
The great advantage of the Diary of Modern Photography is that its heroes are nice people with whom one would quite like to be friends. This is a big difference from a number of contemporary comedies (the most recent of which include Mothers or Element, Shampoo, Dot and Charles), which gather silly, annoying and incapable of coping with everyday life.
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Dominik and Nataša are two young people from today’s world. She is a successful toy designer, he a budding writer who longs to go abroad for a creative writing course. However, their more or less accidental intimate encounter will not go unnoticed, to which Dominik will actually act responsibly. He agrees to take care of the child for the first year so that Natasha can continue to go to her beloved job, and then hand over the child to her and leave for her dreams. He approaches her with the naive idea that he will have plenty of time to write at home with his baby.
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The risk of that agreement is different, but obvious. During that year, how will the relationship between the child and the mother at work, the father to the parent, and between the two parents, who did not know each other before conception, develop with each other?
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With this plot, Haluza made room for the film not to be just about caring for a child, about whom Dominik says: “Welcome to my world. Welcome to hell. ”It tells the story of the relationship between the two young parents, where the quarrels of not sleeping alternate with the common growing love for the child.
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The development is predictable, but Ramba and Mádl manage their roles with bravura, which dampens predictability and allows the audience to form their own relationship with both (whoever thinks about paternity leave). The other characters are in the shadow of the central forming family, but they are present so that the viewer does not feel that Dominik and Nataša live in a vacuum.
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The director’s collaboration with the cinematographer resulted in a humorous, dynamic, visually imaginative film, in which Haluz’s acknowledged admiration for the work of Jan Svěrák and Steven Spielberg is recognizable. It’s definitely to the benefit of the cause, debutants who already have mastered the craft at the beginning of their work, there is definitely no abundance in domestic cinematography.
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This includes excellent work with the music of Ondřej Brousek, which after a long time is played by a live orchestra in Czech film, which supports the tempo and rhythm of the film.
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| Diary of a modern fotra |
| Czechia 2021, 101 min. Directed by: Jan Haluza, starring: Tereza Ramba, Jiří Mádl, Ondřej Malý, Pavla Tomicová and others |
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