Coragem para Todos os Dias

If you have to explain to me what a film is about, then I quickly if not permanently lose interest. Such is with this movie. Without a background, political synopsis, this cinematic experience drifts slowly and permanently into a void.

Surprisingly, I couldn't advert my eyes from it. Yes, I saw it through until the end. Even then, I was left asking WTF did I just see. I'm left now wondering why I bothered.

In order to fully understand, one needs a pre-emptive history lesson. That's a sad prerequisite. Regardless, it's captivating.

This one's great for historians. If you're not one, the watch it solely for its film-making style even though you may well ask yourself why you bothered. Cast is superb.

(1964) Courage For Every Day/ K a z d y den o d v a h u (In Czech with English subtitles) DRAMA. SOCIAL COMMENTARY

Co written and directed by Evald Schorm that has warehouse worker,delník Jarda Lukas (Jan Kacer) or Jarout for short narrating his daily routine. He first meets before he makes out with long time girl friend, Vera (Jana Brejchová) in her rental apartment. Before she is then visited by the lady landlord, Byata (Olga Scheinpflugová) while corresponding with the senior tenant, Eduard Mrázek (Václav Trégl) who lives below her. And apparently Vera is not supposed to have J a r o u t in her little apartment, and she often sneaks him in anyway. On the following morning while J a r o u t is working, he is then visited by a journalist (Vlastimil Brodský) conducting random interviews we first notice a group of older teenagers following direction by a smut teenager, Borek (Josef Krames ) is also interviewed as well. With the help of the journalist's wife, O l i n a (Jirina Jiráskova) she often be the only one who appears to be the one who drives her husband around and they offer to drive Jarout, sometimes are dining or drinking beer with each other.

While watching this, is reminiscent to the Czechoslovakia equivalent of Saturday Night Sunday Morning" and that is sufficient enough.

"Everyday Courage" or "Courage for Every Day" is a beautifully made fllm of great poetic restraint about a young man living in Prague before the collapse of communism. It is best described as belonging to the school of realism which marked the Czech films of the sixties, and its director, Evald Schorm, was noted for his refusal to compromise the subject matter or style of his films with the regime which controlled the film studios. An admirer of the films of the British director Lindsay Anderson, "Everyday Courage" has similarities with"This Sporting Life", its hero striving to escape the repressive forces of a society against which he rebels, but which ultimately demoralizes him and undermines his personal relationships. The winner of the International Film Festival in 1965 it has been notably neglected, and was one of the most moving and lyrical films to emerge from the Czech school. One can only hope that a distributor makes it widely available.

When the Communists took over Czechoslovakia in 1948, Jan Kacer was the right man in the right place: a worker in a big industrial plant, he was also a youth leader for the Party, and so began his political rise. Now that Stalin is dead, however, things have changed, even though it's not clear how long Stalin has been dead when this movie takes place, or how things have changed. Now, however, his fellow workers don't seem to hold him in respect, and girlfriend Jana Brejchová doesn't seem as enamored of him as before.

Given that Stalin died in 1953, 1964 was a good year to start criticizing the dead dictator. You may, of course, view this as an early movie in the Czech Spring movement that would end rather abruptly four years later, when Soviet tanks rolled in. It's impossible for me to judge, sixty years later, just what pressures director/cowriter Evald Schorm faced, but given the current orthodoxy, he must have felt nervous, given that Kacer seems rather oblivious to the events, whether they are set in 1954 or ten years later.

Despite the uplifting title, which I take it is not ironic (Czechoslovakia in 1964 strikes me as an irony free zone), and the inspirational, optimistic quote at the beginning and end of the film, this is a fairly bleak, cheerless, hopeless critique of Czech society four years before the Prague Spring broke (and was then promptly broken by Breznev) with Communism played out and the younger generation similarly disaffected and bored. That it is not as powerful as it is pessimistic is due to its director, Evald Schorm's, centipede like pacing. You can almost hear him offscreen, whenever the film threatens to become dramatically compelling, shouting at the cast and crew to "slow things down, please!" Consequently we have too many repetitive scenes of the main characters engaged in aimless lovemaking and fighting and wandering around while miserable or alienated. (I bet Antonioni liked this film). C plus.

PS...Animal rights alert! Headless chicken! View at your own risk.