Direction: Ivan Ostrochovsky
Country: Slovakia / Czech Republic / other
Servants is a sharp, atmospheric arthouse thriller whose noir tone straddles between the classic Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951; Au Hasard Balthazar, 1966; Mouchette, 1967) and the contemporary Pawel Pawlikowski (Ida, 2014; Cold War, 2018). Shot in 4:3 format and exhibiting a dazzling visual austerity for each impeccable black-and-white frame, Servants can be suffocating at times in its denounce of the church involvement with the Czech Communist regime in the early 1980s during the Cold War.
Slovak director Ivan Ostrochovsky (Goat, 2015) co-wrote the scrip with regular collaborator Marek Lescák and Ida’s co-writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, with the purpose of depicting on screen a few real events that mirror the bleak, oppressive atmosphere lived by the clergy at the time. Staged with virtuosity, the tale focuses on theology students Juraj (Samuel Skyva) and Michal (Samuel Polakovic), and their moral dilemmas when it comes to serve the Communist regime with information instead of focusing on their true vocation.
The quiet, toxic battle that takes place in the shadows between the religious doctrine and the political ideology is a chilling, enraging exposition of years of abuse, and the film has absolutely no qualms about saying that leaders of Theology University were conniving with politics to save their school from closure. Ostrochovsky puts on display the ways found by some students and priests to resist.
Servants could have been tighter in its final stage, but it’s still a rigorous, peculiar journey of faith that entangles in a slow, sure-handed fashion. Here, the enemy is not the devil or ‘witches’ or anything supernatural, but rather a human-made political system that operates in silence.
