A Piada

In the early 1950s, Josef Somr was a university student and a member of the Communist Party. Then he was denounced by another student for being a pessimist and a Trotskyite. He was expelled from the Party and University and sentenced to a work brigade that nearly broke him. Now he lives somewhere, but is visiting his old town, seeking revenge. He finds that things have changed, but he has not. He tries to get his vengeance by sleeping with his accuser's wife, but nothing he does seems to have any effect.

It's a sad movie, with a strong subtext about the futility of vengeance, that occasionally breaks surface, along with a strong religious sense. It's also a bit of a diagetic musical picture, with modern march tunes which praise the workers and their allies, alternating with old folk tunes closer to the characters' hearts. It's a late entry in the Czech Spring movement that somehow escaped the censors.

"Optimism is the opiate of mankind. A 'refreshing spirit' stinks of stupidity. Long live Trotsky! Yours, Ludvik". With this sarcasm, Ludvik (Josef Somr) has insulted his lover, a loyal Communist, who brings this blasphemy to the attention of the Party. In a public vote, he is unanimously condemned, expelled from the Party, the University and required to serve under harsh conditions in the military for six years. In mass egalitarian states, leadership is impelled to guarantee happiness and his "joke" is seen as a serious attack on what is nowadays called "The Politics of Joy." We see the Czechs celebrating their glorious government building a glorious future, while Josef Somr, projects cynicism and detachment skillfully, as he plots revenge. Milan Kundera's novel was a surprising and popular revelation from behind the "Iron Curtain," making this adaptation inevitable.

Kundera is one of the most enjoyable Central/East European authors of the post-war period and that is because he wrote a number of books with a very simple, and flavorful, message: we fight totalitarianism by simply not caring about it; adultery is one very good way to be a dissident. Ludvik Jahn served in a non-combatant military unit, then spent a year in a prison (without conviction) and had to work for six years in the mines (for lack of university degree) just because his colleagues and Party comrades took very seriously a stupid joke he wrote to his beloved for absolutely personal reasons. Jahn's revenge had to take the form of a joke because his major concern was namely that: how could these men take so seriously an innocent charade? Yet, his joke turned out bad: instead of humiliating Pavel, the once leader of the students' party organization, by seducing his wife, Jahn humiliated the innocent, and naive, woman, broke the heart of her young suitor and, most unfortunately, had to realize that Pavel, the allegedly serious communist, fared much better in the field of adultery: enjoying the company of 20-year old attractive students who have absolutely no notion of Marxism and the construction of socialism. It is through this realization, and not so much through his earlier ostracization, that Ludvik is confronted with the consequences of his own misplaced joke. His lonely protest against the system failed.

ADDED IN 2009: now, that Kundera was revealed to have himself denounced a "capitalist spy" to the police authorities and thus contributed to the long-term prison/correction camp sentences of several people, this book/movie develops in an unexpected dimension. Was it a deliberate, or subconscious way for Kundera to deal with his own guilt, a way to explain to his younger self that what he did, apparently out of good faith and sense of civic duty, at the age of 20, seemed nothing but utter stupidity at the age of forty?

A movie adaptation that succeeds by remaining true to the novel's theme while telling the story with an exciting new structure and style. As opposed to the novel's use of more conventional flashback passages, in the film the past seems to attack Ludvik Jahn -- played brilliantly by Josef Somr of CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS -- from all sides, as the past echoes inescapably through the world of the present. It also doesn't hurt, I suppose, that Kundera himself co-wrote the screenplay.

Finally got to watch the film, based on Milan Kundera's wonderful novel--a film banned in the former Czechoslovakia for some 20 years after its initial release in theatres...thanks to a kind soul for uploading it on utube. The tale is a scathing indictment of Communists and Leftist totalitarian regimes worldwide, some existing to this day. Director Jiromil Jires and Kundera who was the co-scriptwriter, left out some minor details from the book relating to the actions of offspring the protagonist Ludwig's main tormentor and classmate. The film is aided by an amazing performance by the lead actor Josef Somr (who died last year), perhaps more famous for his turn in Jiri Menzel's "Closely Watched Trains" (Oscar winning film for Best Foreign Language film). The film belongs to Kundera, Somr and Jires, in that order.