The Painted Bird - 2019
Directed by Václav Marhoul
Written by Václav Marhoul
Based on a novel by Jerzy Kosinski
Starring Petr Kotlár, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Harvey Keitel
Julian Sands, Aleksei Kravchenko & Barry Pepper
Controversy has followed
The Painted Bird around ever since it was written and published in 1965 - with author Jerzy Kosiński very foolishly and falsely claiming that it was autobiographical. It paints a very poor picture of rural Poland, with superstition, cruelty and sexual deviancy running riot. If that weren't bad enough, Kosiński's troubles were deepened by claims of plagiarism. Fortunately, with a film based on the novel, we can remove ourselves from questioning the source and integrity and simply judge the story itself for what it is, and what it's trying to say. It's not an easy film to watch, for it's central character, young Joska (Petr Kotlár) is forced to suffer in one way or another throughout it's entire running time.
Joska lives with his elderly aunt in a fictional Slavic country during the Second World War, but her death, and the subsequent destruction of their house, has him on the road looking for food and shelter. Joksa's compatriots treat him with suspicion and ignorant paranoia, and he's lucky to survive their hostility when sold to an old folk healer who announces that he's in fact a vampire. She saves him when he falls desperately ill, but he's forced to flee and take refuge with a cruel and violent miller, an ill-fated birdkeeper, Nazi-collaborating Cossacks who turn him in as a Jew, a priest who adopts him out to a sadistic townsperson, a mean and nasty nymphomaniac, Red Army officers fighting the Germans and a horrible orphanage. Throughout all of this he learns to become as nasty, cruel and uncompromising as his fellow countrymen, despite his youth.
Right from the start we get a taste of what we're in for with this film, when a fleeing Joska has his beloved pet ferret forcibly taken from him and burned alive as he's beaten up. The film has already got me a little wary of what's to come, and kind of semi-traumatized right away. When you see how well the animals in this production were treated it's a load off my mind, but I hate to see that kind of cruelty depicted in film - and although there's nothing quite like that for it's remainder we do get to see a horse with a broken leg, chickens beheaded offscreen, a cow on fire and a goat's death serving as vengeance. There's a special place for human suffering in this though, and we'll get to see people burn, get shot, hang themselves, get their eyes gouged out, eaten alive by rats you name it - humiliation, torture and death are always just around the corner.
So, obviously this is a film about suffering and being ostracized from your own people - the lack of solidarity and cohesiveness that comes with a people under the strain of war and extermination. Everywhere this kid goes, he's met with hostility, cruelty and exploitation. I can see why the people of Poland were angry with the novel, which was set in their nation (director Václav Marhoul, who adapted the novel, decided to remove it from any specific place.) There's a frustrating amount of superstition, and mind-boggling propensity to violence in almost every character we happen to come across. When we do meet a kind character, the story wastes no time bumping them off by having them die from natural causes, such as happens to Joska's Aunt, and Harvey Keitel's kindly priest - who, although well-meaning, sets the poor kid up with a sadist and paedophile.
For a foreign language film, there are a surprising number of big stars from around the globe. Keitel is joined by Julian Sands, Barry Pepper, Stellan Skarsgård and Udo Kier, which makes the film a lot more watchable. Also appearing is
Come and See's Aleksey Kravchenko as a Russian officer who takes Joska under his wing. I'd only ever seen him as the lead in that notorious Russian war film, so I was really fascinated by seeing him play such a different role as a middle-aged actor now. Although the tone of the two films are poles apart, there's an obvious connection between the two, with the level of violence and the fact that both films feature boys having to fend for themselves in the East during the Second World War. Marhoul had no problem attracting actors of stature to this project, despite it's controversial source.
The cinematography is good, and the film has a sharp, black and white look. The aesthetic was decided upon while the director and cinematographer Vladimír Smutný were perusing old black and white photos relating to the war years , and they captured something of that look - much of the time I concur with black and white being used, but for some reason there's something inside of me that yearned to see this film in colour. We don't even get to fully notice the coloured ribbons which are used to ward off evil spirits in some parts of this region. One of the advantages they had, however, was that the filmmakers had control of how the sky appeared, using coloured filters, and this influenced the mood of the film at any particular time. The film has no score, so we depend on the contrast, lighting and framing to determine that subtle, subconscious mood of the moment.
It's important to note that along with having no score, the film is almost humorless. I can't think of one single light moment in the film, or many warm ones, so it's 169 minutes can be quite numbing and that can even go as far as to separate us a little from any human element in it. When Joska plays with a wind-up toy just as he's gone to bed at the start of the film, it's really the most pleasant moment he's going to have moving forward.
The Painted Bird is relentless in that regard - the title referring to how a bird is attacked and killed when it seems different, as happens when one is literally painted. We get to see this play out when the birdkeeper paints one and releases it, only to see that bird assaulted by the others until it falls from the sky, lifeless. It doesn't take much to realise the connection this has with Joska.
There are many scenes in
The Painted Bird that I think are really excellent, powerful and memorable - I really appreciate a lot of them, but sewn together they don't quite make a whole that's really satisfying. The relentless horror can't stir anything but a sense of anger, sadness and discontent within me, and there just wasn't much hope to cling on to. Nevertheless, that weakness of the film as a whole shouldn't detract from the acting and cinematography that rises to the occasion so often. It was a stupendous undertaking, adapting the novel and creating the film we get - working through tough conditions in Ukraine and the Czech Republic. I admire it, and I wish I could have walked away with the impression that I'd seen a great movie. To get this movie right you'd need to be a brilliant screenwriter and director, and Václav Marhoul - in conjunction with editor Ludek Hudec, couldn't quite get there, but they created something that deserves praise all the same.
I used to have a rule I always worked by, whereupon if a movie had Udo Kier in it, then it automatically got an extra point. That works fine for me here, because I just can't find it within myself to rate such an visually impressive and substantial film very lowly. I would gladly watch scenes from it over again, but it's not the kind of film I could sit and watch again from start to finish, where the mood is usually one of horror, which occasionally rises to neutral - and we stick to that for nearly 3 hours. If the protagonist had of been an adult instead of a child, then maybe I wouldn't have been as affected, but as it is I constantly feel pained by this poor boy set adrift in a land of monsters, losing a little of his soul after each and every encounter.