Protektor

As someone who has an interest in the Nazi period of European history the movie Protektor naturally attracted my interest. I especially enjoy watching foreign films of the period to see how those(and their descendants) who actually suffered under Nazi rule have dealt with the legacy of the period.

This film is unlike most films I have seen of the period in that both of the main characters are flawed--deeply flawed in fact. Emil, the husband, is an philanderer, who collaborates with the Nazis.He says that he is doing so to protect his wife, Hana, but we suspect that professional gain plays not a bit part in his motivation to broadcast the Nazis' propaganda.

Hana, meanwhile, cannot refrain from engaging in provocative behavior that put both her and Emil at risk for imprisonment in a concentration camp. Hana's obliviousness to the danger of her behavior is the weakest element of this film. From having her pictures take outside and inside of places where Jews are restricted to even harboring a fellow Jew, Hana insists on brazenly flouting the Nazi's regulations. One can sympathize with her to an certain extent, but it does make one wonder about her mental state. Surely no one who has Jewish would be so foolhardy to risk antagonizing the Nazis--especially so after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The Nazi response to Heydrich's killing was extremely brutal. The town of Lidice was leveled and all the males over the age of 16.(males 16 and over were also massacred in the town of Lezaky as well as all of their females)At least 1300 people were murdered in the aftermath of the brutal response to Heydrich's killing. In view of this, Hana's actions indicate an almost pathological desire to be arrested and deported.

In having said all that, I do appreciate the efforts of the filmmakers to display the complexity of behind the decisions people made to collaborate with the Nazis. The Nazis gave people only two choices: submit or you or someone you love, will be subject to arrest, torture, and death. This of course does not excuse their actions nor is it a blanket explanation for all who collaborated. Many did so for financial and/ideological reasons. But it does offer a different view from the normal depictions of collaborators we see in film.

My number one complaint with the film is that it never explores why Hana is behaving in the manner that she is behaving. While we all can appreciate the resentment at being excluded from society, Hana was not the only Jew to have suffer from oppression in Prague. Why was her reaction so different from the rest of Prague's Jews? Her actions throughout the film are never explained and for a person like me who is familiar with the Nazis and the Holocaust, her brazen behavior strikes me as unbelievable.

Viewed at the Festival de Cannes 2010

Protektor was the Czech Republic's official submission to 82nd Academy Award's Foreign Language in 2010. It didn't win.

Okay, if you want to know the plot go read the IMDb summary, that's what it's for. But if you can't be bothered: Czech radio journalist Emil starts to collaborate with the Nazis to protect his Jewish actress wife, Vera.

But Protektor is no Schindler's List and on the scale of Holocaust-themed films it comes way down, being essentially a relationship drama. His career takes off and hers, well, is over and if she's not careful, so is her life. But the unforgivable flaw with the film is that there is no tension here, no atmosphere. Everything unfurls in a drawn out and typically central European narrative manner. The film is simply flat and dull.

To make matters worse is the character of Vera, who is, quite simply, a preening and self- obsessed egomaniac. Don't think for a moment I'm saying she deserves what she gets because she is Jewish. But she does deserve everything she gets she embarks, among other things, on a highly visible and dangerous affair and then adopts on a course of behaviour that is quite literally suicidal. It is impossible to like or even sympathise with such an unpleasant individual.

Protektor wants to examine how people react under such circumstances but it fails with Emil too. The character is never properly defined. Does the film wish to say that many people also drifted into collaboration as opposed to embracing the enemy with love at first sight? I suppose so, but the director busks around the subject in such a way that his intent is never clear.

Visually, in terms of sets and costumes, camera-work and lighting, Protektor looks great. But unless you're a completist or fan of Central European cinema, or just want to see why the Czech Republic didn't take home the Academy Award, there's no real reason to see this film.

"Protektor" is one of the most unusual Holocaust movies I've seen. For starters, it takes a playful attitude--not quite dark humor but definitely quirky--with its plinky soundtrack (much of the music consists of a single staccato chord thrown in a scene) and with an odd fixation on bicycles. But what makes it really unusual is the complex, imperfect characters who serve as the protagonists.

The story spans 1938-1942 during the Czech occupation by Nazis. Our heroes are Hana, a Jewish movie star, and her husband Emil, a radio announcer who is not Jewish. Right at the outset we see that their marriage is not ideal. Emil is violently jealous of her flirtations (and possible infidelity) with other men while he himself gets involved with indiscretions with other women. I did not find either character particularly likeable, and this may have been deliberate on the part of the director. What follows once the Nazis take over is a slow escalating tension as Emil fraternizes with Nazis, supposedly to ensure is wife's protection but possibly also to further his selfish interests. Meanwhile Hana begins sneaking around with a mysterious young man who photographs her doing illegal things, flaunting her rebellion toward the Nazis.

So you see, it's not your standard Jewish victim vs. Nazi bad guy story. While there's no doubt that the Nazis are the brutes, there's a more subtle antagonsim between Hana and Emil which provides the real conflict amidst the backdrop of the Holocaust. There is also a cleverly-spun subplot of an assassination attempt against a high-ranking Nazi, and we don't get that full story until the end.

Visually, "Protektor" is very stylish, presenting a nostalgic 40s prism without the obvious clichés like black & white. Instead certain colors are muted while others pop out. There's a lot of high contrast which is pleasing on the eye, and there are a few moments of surrealism that add a nice original touch.

If you think you've seen all the Holocaust flicks out there, check this out. Or even if you have just a casual interest in Europe under Nazi occupation, this provides a great window on how life changed in the early years. If you don't necessarily like Holocaust flicks and just randomly picked up this movie based on its striking DVD cover (like I did), you may find it frustrating at first but ultimately it's a worthwhile experience.

"Protektor" is fortunately not just another Holocaust movie. Since "Schindler's List", most of other attempts to grapple with this horrible blight to humanity, fell short. Perhaps Steven Spielberg made the ultimate Holocaust movie. Director Marek Najbrt, luckily comes up with a fresh idea. His stylish film-noir, filmed beautifully, is more than anything else, a treatise on the nature of collaboration. It is easy to simplify matters and judge with the righteous indignation those who served the losing side. People do it for variety of reasons, fear, money, blackmail or the sweet arousal of power. And some, like increasingly, as movie goes, dis likable Emil, manage to convince themselves that there is no other choice. But, there always is, even if it means pain and sacrifice. Some other Emil will ardently serve similar masters in different uniforms, only few years later. Alas, that is the nature of humanity. As long as there is, a heavy boot of oppression, there will be enthusiastic servitude of shoe-shiners.

This is a review I posted on another forum.

Let me get the beauty of it out of the way first - it looks astonishing. The colors are fantastic, the highlights are beautiful and the shadows are surprisingly tense and deep. Take a classically beautiful noir film and make it even more beautiful, on better film stock, and add a better DP. Whoa man! However, with the editing, it throws you into many different spirals always wondering what is actually happening to the man, changing which characters you care about more and changing how you think a character is going to act - sending all of your ideas about what could happen next all over the spectrum.

My one complaint about the editing was that sometimes to relate scenes (relating scenes as in the way Tarantino did it with Pulp Fiction by having diegetic music in one scene that spills over into the next scene. It's done very often), the editor would show clips from the next scene in the current scene. Now it's very interesting, because it doesn't give you any idea what's going to happen next, it just adds to the emotion you are supposed to feel during that scene. While it adds a lot to the storytelling, it is noticeable. Like sound design, 99% of the time, good editing should go nearly unnoticed by the viewer. It's not at all that I don't like the editing, I just found it awkward at some points.

I won't even get into the score and music. See the movie! There was also one big problem with the ending - and I won't give any important information away, it's just that there should be no credit music. Once you see it, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Now maybe it won't win Best Foreign Film, but I'll be surprised if it isn't nominated.