Lenin, Lord and Mother

It could almost be said that this is a Karel Kachyňa film. It is shot in his style with unique poetics in a tragicomic spirit and in black and white, which is meant to evoke a retro atmosphere. It is paradoxical that this little-known film, which appears on the screen only exceptionally, easily surpasses many titles that television airs after a few months. I would even say that it surpasses the overwhelming majority of films that want to deal with the past because it was created shortly after the fall of communism when the Barrandov studio's infrastructure and its creative teams had not yet disintegrated. It also does not have the cheap thematic opportunism present in its younger counterparts. It views the years of Stalinism through the eyes of a child, so certain simplifications and idealizations are not a problem. Overall impression: 85%. (19/03/2012)

Its structure resembles a handful of stones found from childhood. Just a few pieces from the pocket of an old coat, from which no one can piece together a complete mosaic anymore. As often happens, the naïve and beautiful ones remain, while the few heavy ones may have been worn down by the passage of time into more acceptable shapes. The backdrop of the Lenin-Stalin cult of personality and all-encompassing demagoguery then shows, in hindsight, how the child’s world, unlike that of adults, is better equipped against such crap with the defensive mechanism of innocence. Jan Schmidt's film has been overlooked for decades, but perhaps that's for the best, as its rarity won't wear out this way. By the way, among the now-banned butt-destroying weapons like a belt, a carpet beater, or an iron cord, one of the scariest couldn't even appear here due to the location. A rubber hose for siphoning Slivovitz... (13/06/2022)