Direction: Vaclav Marhoul
Country: Czech Republic
The Painted Bird gets my prize for best cinematography 2020, a feat by Vladimír Smutny. Yet, this bleak war tale is also one of the most difficult watchings I’ve experienced, depicting the agonizing hell lived by a young Jewish boy forced to endure abuse in its physical, sexual and mental forms. Czech director Vaclav Marhoul (Tobruk) adapts Jerzy Kosinski’s novel of the same with rawness and spunk, making prevail all the desolation, creeds, alienation, atrocities and indecency described in the book.
In the midst of WWII, the young Joska (Petr Kotlár) goes to live with an aunt in a remote village in Eastern Europe while his parents attempt to escape the Nazis. After her death, the boy becomes a victim of agonizing incidents that will take his innocence away. At the outset, he is considered a demon and a vampire by an ignorant rural community and sold to an esoteric woman; he then witnesses the wrath of a jealous man; joins a drunk bird catcher; is sexually abused by a religious man and a nymphomaniac, and falls into hands of the Nazis and the Red Army alike.
I know... it’s like having all the torments in the world, scene after scene, in a single flick. And what bothers me most here, is that Marhoul seems to take a strange pleasure in shocking us with sickening, detailed scenes. While some images are too painful to describe, others can be beautiful in its horror - like when the boy is attacked by a group of ravenous crows - or even touching, like the memorable finale.
Even touting a repulsive spectacle for most of its duration, the film, immaculately acted, oozes an aching sadness expressed through precise camera shots that often recall the work of masters Andrei Tarkovsky, Larisa Shepitko and Bela Tarr. Definitely not for the fainthearted.
