ALOIS NEBEL B
Czech Republic
Germany (84 mi) 2011
d: Tomáš Lunák Official site [cz]
Eastern European films often reflect a grim interior mood,
especially when rooted in history, where living under the boot of military
occupation, an imposed Soviet communist dictatorship and political repression
only describes the tip of the iceberg, where a closer examination often reveals
scathingly inhumane details. This film
marks Tomás Lunák's feature debut as a director and the first rotoscope
animation done in The Czech Republic, an interesting technique to use for such
a realistic historical overview. Just
the opening few shots set the tone for the film, where from out of total
darkness comes the first glimpses of light, soon recognized as a train heading
down the tracks. Set in a small town located
near the Polish border in a peaceful area of Czechoslovakia’s Jesenik Mountains
in 1989, just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are quickly
introduced to Alois Nebel, the stationmaster at a remote countryside railway
station. Just as we think not much
happens in this isolated region, a stranger appears out of the darkness, seen
earlier hanging around the railway station, and he appears to be making a
desperate attempt to cross the border, though he may have had other intentions,
without much luck apparently as he is quickly captured. This incident seems to trigger something in
Nebel’s mind, where the German translation for the word nebel is fog, as he
inexplicably becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative, as if retreating into a fog. He is sent to an asylum where he witnesses
the torture of the captured man, who appears to be a mute, so it’s impossible
for him to confess, which triggers childhood flashbacks going back to the end
of World War II.
Without offering any historical backdrop, the director
assumes Czechs are familiar with their own history, where the mountainous
border regions of Czechoslovakia were largely comprised of a German-speaking
population, known as the Sudetenland, where it was actually part of Germany
until the end of World War I when it became part of Czechoslovakia. Germans continued to live in the region
without incident, but with the Nazi threat to invade Czechoslovakia, Hitler got
Britain, France, and Italy to sign the Munich
Agreement in 1938 returning the Sudetenland to Germany, a bone of
contention with the Russians who occupied the Eastern Czech territory at the
end of the war, ruthlessly expelling all the Germans, totalling a half million
just from this region, including a young German girl Dorothe, who befriended
Nebel as a young boy, emblematic of a larger injustice imposed by the Soviet
Red Army, placing the Germans in concentration camps where many died of
starvation and disease. It’s interesting
to see the Germans portrayed in a sympathetic light during World War II,
especially since they occupied Czechoslovakia during the war, but it’s the
Russians that occupied the country militarily ever since and are seen in the
present still running corrupt black market businesses, cheating the locals out
of potential income, hoarding it all for themselves, seen as drunken louts
maintaining a monopoly on all incoming goods.
The picture of state repression, seen by the ruthlessly brutal way they
run the asylum, is reminiscent of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1975), an
Academy Award winning film and Best Director for Czech compatriot Milos Forman,
whose parents were both killed in Auschwitz.
The mute prisoner escapes, having his own traumatic war
story, and shortly afterwards Nebel is released, only to discover he’s lost his
job at the station, so he makes his way to Prague, which is undergoing a
bureaucratic restructuring under the newly elected democratic leadership of
Vaclav Havel. But Nebel is homeless and
destitute, sleeping in railway stations until he’s befriended by the widow of a
former railway man, Kveta, who respects the work ethic and commitment of
railway workers, always standing up for them, including a few free meals for
Nebel. It’s amusing to see the Russians
moan about being left out of the democratic picture, soon forced out of their
jobs, eventually forced to exit the country, which allows Nebel to have his
former job back in the countryside. The
film is told much like a historical fairytale with grim references to bleak
times under Soviet domination, which are never clearly explained and are simply
woven together into the multi-stranded narrative. Nebel’s own mental disintegration reflects
that of the nation which must come to terms with their own dark history. The film offers a quietly reflective tone
throughout, featuring pensive characters often seen staring out of windows, where
an unusual guitar score from Petr Kruzik is reminiscent of Neil Young’s
haunting score of DEAD MAN (1995). In a
gorgeously designed storm sequence where nature batters the mountainous region,
what stands out is the recurrent snow and rain continually pelting the countryside,
expressing the severity of existential alienation, a tone of Dostoyevskian
angst, given a psychic electro shock, where the audience may feel as discombobulated
as Nebel. Lunák attempts to combine many of the thematic elements reflective of
the freedom and optimism of the Velvet
Revolution, where having finally gotten rid of the Russians, people are
given the opportunity to simply live their lives.
