Made in Ash

Until I got to the city of Aš, it felt like an amateur, at best semi-amateur film full of non-actors from the beginning. And so I approach it because it's hard to talk about the screenplay and any solid plot development. Some shots are successful, others less so, I consider a few images as creative, which tell the story through drawings, I found that very nice. But overall, the film would need a dramaturge. And I don't know if it was intentional for the German to be terrible and full of gross errors. (08/22/2015)

Thank goodness the sex scenes were blurry. Otherwise I would have to honor our dear Dorota with an even more satisfied evaluation. In the end, of course, it is necessary to shed a tear in Silvia's fashion. (11/21/2012)

I admire the courage with which the young director and screenwriter wagered on veristic observation, but that’s where my respect for this film begins and ends. The raw style, which in places blurs the line between documentary and fiction (like the line between muted and no dramaturgy), serves the story, whose direction and (insipid) outcome will be figured out in advance by every viewer who has ever seen a social drama. The film isn’t fully polished in conceptual terms. The introspective animated sequences, fondly used in performative documentaries, clash with the unempathetic protagonist in the live-action scenes. The director’s attitude toward Dorota embarrassingly alternates between “she is to blame” and “others are to blame”. In this respect, Petr Václav’s The Way Out is more clearly and more impactfully expressive even at the cost of certain simplifications. With the exception of one unpleasant, though in no way explicit sex scene, the film does not let us experience the mange and filth into which the protagonist descends. As a statement on aimless adolescence, Made in Ash doesn’t come close to the Serbian film Clip or the Israeli Six Acts. In the context of Slovak-Czech cinema, it is a praiseworthy attempt at something different; in the context of contemporary festival dramas, it’s nothing new. 50% (07/21/2014)

When the movie ended, I thought that it was more of a documentary than a film. Then I read the fun facts about the movie and it was actually supposed to be like that. If I were to rate this as a movie, I’d rate it two stars or maybe even just one. Especially since there was nothing going on, the characters were bland, the (non)actresses were mostly just present in the scenes and it didn’t have anything a good movie should have. But once I reimagined it as a documentary, it made me sad; sad that Aš was represented this way and sad that these things happen over there. Many people view Aš as the westernmost Czech city and not much else. After watching this drama, I’ll view it as a city of dead hope for eastern girls. Sad, heavy and incredibly rough reality that has opened my eyes about the story of Aš. (07/21/2014)

I'm not sure exactly what this was supposed to be. A pseudo-documentary? A supposedly authentic record of how people live? The problems of our society? I find the amateur camera work annoying because what we're watching looks recorded at first glance. That authenticity is suppressed, so it just becomes a showcase of non-actors trying to demonstrate that our world is in a real mess. Well, it is, but what difference does it make? It's probably good that attention is brought to it, but it could be done differently without this pseudo... something. (12/31/2013)