Jaromil Jireš | Strejda (Uncle) / 1959

just a dream

by Douglas Messerli

 

Jaromil Jireš (screenplay, based on a story by Milan Simek) Jaromil Jireš (director) Strejda (Uncle) / 1959

 

Czech filmmaker Jaromil Jireš is often cited as the director of the first Czechoslovak New Wave film, The Cry from 1963, a work which was also shown at the Cannes Film Festival the next year.  In the brief years from the late 1960s, when Czechoslovakia underwent an economic decline, which they restructured in the 1965 New Economic Model which called also for political reform, the Czech writing and arts became more emboldened, creating dozens of new works that remain exciting even today.

     In Spring 1963, some Marxists, quoting the life of Franz Kafka, argued for cultural democratization of the country, which resulted, in turn, in the Prague Spring Uprising of 1968, which was, alas, suppressed in August 21 that year when the Soviet Union and other members of the Warsaw Pact invaded the country in order to halt those reforms.

     Accordingly, the New Wave filmmakers actually began their radical changes before the actual governmental reforms, from about 1960 on until August 1968, creating marvelously refreshing new works which often satirized the Soviet control of Czechoslovakia and even poked fun at authoritarian local governmental officials.

     Jireš was one of the foremost of these figures, following up his The Cry with his utterly embraced The Joke (1969), based on the Milan Kundera novel, and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970). Even though many of his films were later banned for life, unlike other New Wave directors, Jireš continued to produce less controversial films throughout the next few decades until his death in 2001.

     Uncle from 1959 is perhaps the simplest of the three short films I’ve reviewed, but it’s also one of his most delightful and quietly comic of films. Perhaps the quietude of which I speak has simply to do with the fact that the major adult figure in this short is a burglar, who as he begins breaking into locked drawers and other spaces of the room he has just entered, is suddenly made aware that he has broken into a child’s room, who standing tall in his crib, immediately begins to cry, demanding to know who the stranger is. “Your uncle,” the burglar quickly responds.

     Trying to quiet the child so that we will not awaken his parents, the disconcerted robber quickly hands the kid his squeaky teddy bear, upon which he has accidentally stepped upon entering the dark room.

     For a moment, the boy is quiet, but soon again begins wailing while announcing that his bear is broken, its head broken off of the rest of its body.

     Taking out his bag of tools, the magical “uncle,” quickly brings the two parts of the toy’s body together again, delighting the adult-like infant. But by this point, we recognize that this child is far more cognizant of the world around him and language than we might have imagined. Like a character in an O. Henry work he comes quickly to realize that his wails bring other rewards. He will not cry, he insists, if his uncle will also fix his broken toy truck. The “uncle” has no other choice but to oblige.

      The uncle repairs it, only to be told that the child’s father has lost the key to his piggy bank, the boy insisting that the intruder now open that as well. The burglar, of course, is a master at opening locks, and quickly springs it open, depositing a few coins into the delighted boy’s hand.

       In one of the loveliest scenes of this 6-minute work, the loveable monster attempts to award his magical uncle with the shining coins now returned to him. For an instant, it appears, the burglar contemplates the offer, before finally closing the boy’s fingers around his own treasure.

       At that very moment, the parents arrive back, having evidently left their more that capable child alone in the house. The former interloper, now recognized by the kid as someone he’d love to keep around, begins to flee, but not before the boy suggests that his mother has a drawer she cannot open.

       “Another time,” sighs the put-upon would-be robber, as he opens the window from which he has entered and, as the child imagines it later to his scolding mother, flies away, having become a truly magical guest. “You’ve dreamed it all,” scolds the mother, “go back to bed.”

        If any short myth can describe the imagination of the Czech people, the arrival of a mysterious being who can fix all in their broken world, it is this fable about an uncle suddenly appearing out of the air to save their lives. Yet they knew, in 1960, that it truly was just a dream.

 

Los Angeles, July 2, 2020

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2020).