Kouř

A rhythmical that became the testimony of a generation. Today, in retrospect, it is clear that one current was replaced only by sobering up, and just as the heroes of Smoke struggle with their demons, the hero of The Stone Bridge fell into a much more severe depression, and Vorel thus copied the less popular side of the development of Czech society at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s. He was not caressing, but rather just commenting on the condition in which he himself was living. (25.06.2015)

Given the frequency of its appearance on TV, this film is a bit of forgotten normalization satire. It goes about its work cleverly via wacky slapstick in which all the screws are tightened to the max with such vigor that it gives you the chills. Perhaps too much. I’ll give it a full review after watching it again, which I am not opposed to given the number of killer catchphrases. (18.02.2010)

Let's roll up our sleeves when the wheels stop! The absurd logic of the industrial age, thanks to ossification in the form of an authoritarian regime that couldn't separate itself from the era in which it originated and developed, and therefore couldn't preserve the industrial machinery along with itself, only postpones the moment when everyone realizes that the wheels have truly stopped. At that moment, a new generation comes to spin the new star wheels: against the steel rigid trusses, chimney smoke and cigarettes, acids in pipes, and alcohol in the blood, a new generation comes: flexible, agile, both in the spine and in the legs, disco dancers who drink Coca Cola and think about ecology. On one hand, the logic of the past taken to the absurd, on the other hand, an uncertain future that doesn't promise much better tomorrows, and in between is another absurdity as a connector, dividing two shafts that will eventually click into each other and the world will continue in continuity, just on a different level. The future doesn't look so sharp in this way and mainly serves as a brilliant comedy analysis of times lived. Well, none of us are masters of our own work, to which a slightly different meaning is always attributed retroactively, and yet there is something instructive in that too: in the intoxicating victory of rock music over normalization disco, when in the 1990s it seemed that freedom had already won, the heroes of Smoke are actually still partly in the defeated era: cigarettes, alcohol, a fortress... The future belongs to others, because history still prefers the same values, even though it changes facades: so, history, I'm still driving with you and we know where the roads lead - to our flexible, perfectly adjusted, soy milk-drinking and now always sustainably developing (as long as they're still on board), conscious, disk jockeys of our upcoming era. (20.07.2020)

As someone who has been watching Smoke every week for years, I can't hide my excitement at the fresh remaster, which reveals not only various additional details in the already complicated mise-en-scene, but also new story plans. Smoke is nowadays almost exhausting to watch with how much is going on in each scene and on so many levels (and yet it's fucking hilarious the whole time). I hope after its well-deserved revamping that Smoke finally makes it out into the world, because applying this distinctive allegory with its unique genius loci to a foreign audience could be quite entertaining. (15.07.2020)

I read somewhere that we don't have a film to balance with normalization. What about Smoke? This unique "musical", which, in the condensed environment of one industrial complex, offers reflection of almost all the essential components of totalitarianism! It is a pity that this Vorel film fit in so well, because among the flood of demented capitalist satires, it was a well-done project in every way, which easily processed normalizing morality and aesthetics and effectively transferred the poetics of the Sklep theatre into film life. At the same time, Vorel, with a penetration so typical of the masters of sarcasm, revealed the then almost neglected tones of false theatre in enthusiastic velvet-revolutionary code and incorporated them into the script during filming. One cannot overlook the clairvoyance of the film finale, in which the old mixes with the new according to a strangely harmonious script, and the swine suddenly put on masks with a human face. The revived air of the factory still carries a strong smell of totalitarian smoke. An unpleasantly far-sighted vision of the future. I'm sorry, but compared to Smoke, Pupendo's message feels like a cheap band of humor for the whole family. A film that should not be forgotten. A film that should be REMEMBERED! (27.01.2004)