Thursday, December 20, 2007

Czech Dreamin' On Such a Capitalist Day


I can't really remember a film with two introductions and a prologue until Czech Dream. This DVD starts out with an introduction by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock (Supersize Me) shopping in a grocery store. He kind of comes off a little like a left wing version of Walt Disney on Wonderful World of Advocacy Film: International Edition as he gives a brief summary of the film. Then the credits and prologue: three provocative montages of Czech life in the past thirty years: 1972 food lines, 1989 liberation riots, and mob scenes outside the opening of a electronics store in 2002. The second introduction is a static shot in a open field where two shaggy Czech film students (Vit Klusak and Filip Remunda) introduce themselves and explain what we are going to see, how they pull off a large scale on the population of the Czech Republic.

Their stunt is to promote an opening of a megastore, or hypermarket as it comes out in translation. But the store doesn't exist. It is just a storefront in an open field. Klusak and Remuda don't tell you what their point is in doing this, they want the audience to figure that out for themselves.

They first make over themselves: there are before and after corporate photo sessions and reporting to a Hugo Boss in their underwear where after a ten second spot, the Hugo girls get them looking very executive. There are some sad interviews with Czech consumers where they use words like oneness, love and harmony to explain the feelings they get when shopping at a hypermarket.

Then the advertising juggernaut is put into full effect. The advertising team they work with has their limits on the project. They don't want to include "On opening day you won't go away open handed." The filmmakers try to make the case that folks who show up will come away with an experience, but the advertising agency folks aren't buying it. "We don't lie in advertising. Its surprising but we don't." one exclaims just before the meeting breaks up. Later some focus group coordinators get very defensive about their role.

A large structure in a field is somehow quite cinematic, Fellini's 8 1/2 comes to mind as do concert films. And, shit, there is, of course, Field of Dreams. So it would be easy to summarize this film as "Vit and Filip didn't build it and they came anyway." And that is pretty much what happens. It is seduction by wacky ads, goading messages, and children's choir promising the harmony, love and oneness that the first focus group was blathering about earlier. I think McLuhan would have loved this film. The medium of advertising was the message and therefore, the Czech Dream.

In final analysis, was this a simply mean trick played on a public who wants to believe or did the means justify this as a forum for for commentary? That will depend on the individual viewer. Several Rotten Tomatoes critics took the latter conclusion. I maintain there is enough craft in how the message was executed and the question many of the potential Czech Dream customers had was justified---If the ministry of culture is paying for the advertising dollars in a grant for this film reality show, as it is described in the credits, then why is the state spening outrageous amounts for advertising to get Czech citizens to vote for inclusion into the European Union?

In "He's Not Here" at least one of the Dylan's complained about being pigeon-holed by "finger pointing songs" of the Hattie Carroll, Davey Moore variety. I see films by Kit and Filip, Michael Moore, Spurlock, and Al Gore's Powerpoint as their equivalent: Stir it up cinema. They should not carry the full definition of documentary filmmaking anymore than those Dylan songs defined what folks music was in the early sixties, but in a time when serious non-fiction (the Tipping Point, give me a break) is not likely to see a Silent Spring or Guns of August (Blowin' in the Wind contemporaries) I am pleased to be able to find these films and know there are many of thinking folk not of my generation finding them too!
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:42 PM
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