• Spalovač mrtvol (The Cremator)

5/19/21 (Wed)

Juraj Herz’s long-banned film of 1969 was part of the Czech New Wave, which largely disappeared when Soviet tanks rolled into Prague the previous year. The setting is the 1930s just ahead of the Nazi takeover of the country. The head of a crematorium adheres to the Tibetan teaching that death helps end human suffering and open the way to a new future life, making him feel good about preparing people for their end – both the dead bodies entrusted to him and the living humans that he took it upon himself to “liberate”. Ever conscious of his public image, he is constantly combing his hair (with the same comb he uses on the corpses) and gets checked regularly by the doctor after his monthly visits to the brothel in order to protect his beloved family from venereal disease. As the Nazis – referred to here only as “the Party” – gain influence, the cremator becomes increasingly enamored of his status and has no qualms about exposing or eliminating his Jewish relatives and colleagues, anti-German friends and others as needed. At first protective of his Czech heritage, he gradually comes to emphasize his supposed remnants of German blood. In the end, he proposes a giant device that will increase the scale of cremations exponentially from an individual basis to mass groups, catching even his German superior off guard. And we know where that leads.

The film portrays this mental breakdown from the protagonist’s perspective. That was especially interesting in the wake of The Father, a film now playing in Tokyo that took a similar approach (to much greater effect). Unfortunately this film was slow, dull and self-consciously artsy with strange fish-eye close-ups and attention-grabbing shots and transitions. It delighted in expressionistic touches like the opening juxtaposition of the family at the zoo with caged animals and the bizarre exhibition of human specimens ravaged by venereal disease, and threw in tired allegoric symbols like a mysterious girl with black hair. There were some odd touches that didn’t quite register, like the cremator’s nicknaming of his wife after the heroine of the opera Lakmé, who kills herself to protect her honor. Was that supposed to be a message of some kind? (He also likes to be called Roman rather than his actual name Karel. I don’t get it.) Some of the scene transitions were impressive, such as showing the cremator beginning a line in one location and completing it in a completely different location and context in a seamless shift. But the technical tricks are supposed to serve the story, not exist for their own sake. It’s easy to justify this by claiming it represents his mental state, but that seems a cop-out.

The film tried too hard to be shocking, calling attention to the filmmaker rather than the story. The cremator’s continual speech in that grating monotone made everything he said sound fake and insincere. While that may have been intentional, it only highlighted the artificiality of the scenes. I would have like to see a normal individual in the role, showing that anyone could fall into the same trap when surrounded by constant propaganda and personal opportunity. The idea that he would betray his colleagues and murder his own family is chillingly real in this context, and of course the reference to “the Party” can easily be applied to the Soviets, which is presumably why the movie was suppressed for decades. But it needs a better presentation than this.

Rudolf Hrušínský was creepy enough as the cremator, and I assume that his lack of facial expressions and passionless line delivery were a deliberate choice. But it was boring. With his passing resemblance to Peter Lorre, I kept wondering what that actor would have done with the part. The real problem was the script, which was not credible in the least. This is my third Czech film in a row to deal with the Germans in one way or another and the least effective. I don’t understand the film’s strong reputation among critics. Not recommended.