Duan Hanák is in the top tier of Slovakia's film directors of the 20th century, with several classics under his belt (_I Love, You Love_, to name an example). In this feature-length documentary, titled _Paper Heads_ (_Papierové hlavy_), however, he entirely abandons fiction for the sake of documenting his country's post-war history. He does it with the artist's touch; and what is the hallmark of all great art? It's ambivalence. And so, Hanák closes the documentary with a statement by an older gentleman, who says (in 1990) with the naive diction and tone of voice that was typical of previous eras (mainly the Stalinist one, richly represented in this film) -- to paraphrase --, "We elect these people (politicians) because they should take care of things on our behalf; and we trust that they will do so." That is an extremely naive thing to say; on the other hand, isn't that the very basis on which representative democracy operates? Hanák the director pronounces no judgments; he merely closes the film with that naive statement, leaving it up to the viewer to decide whether that statement is merely naive or whether it actually captures something potentially worth dying for: the freedom of choice -- an unheard-of privilege in post-War Slovakia and Czechoslovakia during the Communist rule between 1948 and 1989.
This document is merciless in showing human bestiality, stupidity, cowardice and conformism. It literally makes you ashamed of what was occurring in your own country for the stretch of decades. It begins right with the final minutes of World War II, as innocent civilians of German ethnicity are persecuted and beaten, and finally driven out of their former homes in Czechoslovakia. So, it's not as if people started behaving like beasts only after the forcible installation of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in February 1948. Promptly, Hanák includes a statement by an old person who vehemently denies that any atrocities were committed against German-speaking citizens; Hanák takes no sides, and simply moves on with the narration.
As to narration, there are scarcely a dozen sentences spoken by voice-over in the entire movie that is longer than 95 minutes; Hanák lets the protagonists (victims) themselves, and the propaganda newscasters, tell the story of the Communist era. The perfidious nature and character of the nation's leaders is illustrated in many scenes; one sound-bite particularly stands out: that of future hard-line Communist President Husák telling an enthusiastic audience of young people (at a time -- in the first half of 1968 -- when Husák was still pretending to be a liberal): "Do not judge me by my words; judge me by my actions a few years later." Well, he turned out to be a disaster of epic proportions, clawing onto power until the closing weeks of 1989 when he stepped down only after seeing the Communist regime collapse not only in Czechoslovakia but throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
Hanák's modus operandi in this film is juxtaposition: you are presented with dozens of minutes of official propaganda footage from the late 1940s to late 1980s; this is mercilessly mixed and combined with spoken memoirs by victims of the Communist regime; of these, there was a large variety, as the movie shows (and the movie only shows the tip of the iceberg). Although much of the footage included in _Paper Heads_ will be extremely familiar to Slovak and Czech audiences, the assembling of that documentation into one compelling entity makes this a worthwhile viewing experience for everyone, including Hanák's compatriots.
Perhaps especially the young ones, because in footage captured as soon as in 1990, Hanák interviews various people picnicking on the shore of the Danube river in Bratislava... and several young people tell him that freedom means nothing to them, and that the previous era would perhaps be preferable to them. That was back in 1990; but the same sentiment is echoed throughout large sections of Slovak population 22 years later, today in 2012. People ignore or forget all the bestiality as long as it does not touch them or their family and friends personally; human egotism wins; and among our few glimmers of hope are works such as this classic documentary movie: they can help us preserve our own national memory; they can -- perhaps! -- help us overcome egotism and consider the other side of things, the one we are not comfortable with looking at.
This document is merciless in showing human bestiality, stupidity, cowardice and conformism. It literally makes you ashamed of what was occurring in your own country for the stretch of decades. It begins right with the final minutes of World War II, as innocent civilians of German ethnicity are persecuted and beaten, and finally driven out of their former homes in Czechoslovakia. So, it's not as if people started behaving like beasts only after the forcible installation of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia in February 1948. Promptly, Hanák includes a statement by an old person who vehemently denies that any atrocities were committed against German-speaking citizens; Hanák takes no sides, and simply moves on with the narration.
As to narration, there are scarcely a dozen sentences spoken by voice-over in the entire movie that is longer than 95 minutes; Hanák lets the protagonists (victims) themselves, and the propaganda newscasters, tell the story of the Communist era. The perfidious nature and character of the nation's leaders is illustrated in many scenes; one sound-bite particularly stands out: that of future hard-line Communist President Husák telling an enthusiastic audience of young people (at a time -- in the first half of 1968 -- when Husák was still pretending to be a liberal): "Do not judge me by my words; judge me by my actions a few years later." Well, he turned out to be a disaster of epic proportions, clawing onto power until the closing weeks of 1989 when he stepped down only after seeing the Communist regime collapse not only in Czechoslovakia but throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
Hanák's modus operandi in this film is juxtaposition: you are presented with dozens of minutes of official propaganda footage from the late 1940s to late 1980s; this is mercilessly mixed and combined with spoken memoirs by victims of the Communist regime; of these, there was a large variety, as the movie shows (and the movie only shows the tip of the iceberg). Although much of the footage included in _Paper Heads_ will be extremely familiar to Slovak and Czech audiences, the assembling of that documentation into one compelling entity makes this a worthwhile viewing experience for everyone, including Hanák's compatriots.
Perhaps especially the young ones, because in footage captured as soon as in 1990, Hanák interviews various people picnicking on the shore of the Danube river in Bratislava... and several young people tell him that freedom means nothing to them, and that the previous era would perhaps be preferable to them. That was back in 1990; but the same sentiment is echoed throughout large sections of Slovak population 22 years later, today in 2012. People ignore or forget all the bestiality as long as it does not touch them or their family and friends personally; human egotism wins; and among our few glimmers of hope are works such as this classic documentary movie: they can help us preserve our own national memory; they can -- perhaps! -- help us overcome egotism and consider the other side of things, the one we are not comfortable with looking at.
