Havel Review
Havel: The "Es" have it!
Engaging: The best movies - and this is one of those -- engage the viewer with a captivating experience that allows us to believe we are part of the action. With dialogue, music and structure, Havel creates an instant and passionate contract with the viewer and never lets it go through every second of the film.
Enchanting: The cinematography, wardrobe and various settings -- intense secretive political organizing meetings, after play parties, stage cut-outs and simple cottage moments -- bring us excitingly close to actual involvement with the time and place of post-war Czechoslovakia.
Educational: My lifelong interest in and multiple intersections with the Czech Republic (and Czechoslovakia) came back in overwhelming waves of nostalgia and delight with Havel. As a baby boomer in Canada after the War, I was aware of the many immigrants from Europe who fled their homelands - Italian, Hungarians and Czech -- who choose Canada as their new home. Among the first was Stan (nee Stanislav) Mikita, who, as part of our extended family was known to us as Uncle Stan. He went on to be the first Czech to play in the NHL and one of the best ever to play the game. Except for mostly whispered asides we never really knew the oppression of life there. Havel cleverly dramatizes for the viewer what it means to live in an oppressive society.
Entertaining: Who said education has to boring. In Havel we learn but are willingly seduced into to a rollercoaster ride of sadness and elation as the movie moves from its darkest scenes in prison to its triumphant balcony scene where Havel embraces his future not just politically but personally in the taking the hand of his wife. The several seconds scene is extraordinary in capturing the macrocosm of world changing events and microcosm of personal healing.
Emotional: Like da Vinci's Mona Lisa with her commanding eyes and enigmatic smile, Havel is a work of art that is at once both rational and emotional. The guise seems real but the gaze is mesmerizing. With the film's carefully plotted story-telling, the rational in us gains an acute appreciation of the reality of Havel's time and talent. But it is the cinematic technique, with close-ups of Havel's eyes and face, so intensely captured on this film, that creates an emotional attachment to the achievement of his goal.
Empowering: The film's powerful depictions of Havel's inner most struggles and frailties, and then, the final emergence of his unshakeable will, but with humility and grace, leave us empowered and believing. Havel forces us to understand and examine our own most important life challenges - even if not as consequential as his.
Ephemeral: Havel took me back to one of the most seminal and moving moments of my life - and while it occurred in Czechoslovakia, it was just few years after Havel assumed power. In the Spring of 1993, I was a professor teaching a graduate course on global events. A key part of the course was to travel to a part of the world where dramatic events were unfolding. As such, I lead a group of students to Prague and had arranged a meeting with a senior government official. As we walked along a corridor with him to his office, we were amazed that a major effort was underway to move desks, equipment, phones, even paper and supplies, into two separate areas. As it turns out, it was the moving day for the Slovakian share of all government properties to be patriated to Bratislava. It was at once a poetic but profound moment. As somewhat who was so inspired by the movie, I hope the cast and crew cam someday reunite to bring us the inside story of this most important event in the life of Havel and the Czech Republic.
