is everybody happy?
by Douglas Messerli
Ester Krumbachová and Jan Němec (screenplay),
Jan Němec (director) O slavnosti a hostech (A Report on the Party and
the Guests) / 1966, released 1968
Perhaps better translated simply as The
Party and the Guests, since the word “report” does not really exist in the
Czech title, O slavnosti a hostech, Jan Němec’s 1966 film, A Report
on the Party and the Guests, is an allegorical work with truly Kafkaesque
elements, leading the Czech Communist government to ban the work. It was
released in 1968 during the brief Czech period of freedom, but was again banned
“forever” in 1973. It was released on DVD by Criterion three years ago, and I
watched it yesterday on the anniversary of Němec’s death.
On
the sly, so to speak, the film asks its viewers “how to believe.” But only one
guest attending the titular party, performed by Czech film director Evald
Schorm — whose own works had already been banned — actually seems to know the
answer to that, thus becoming the only party attendee to leave the affair
behind, an act for which is he horribly punished. The film begins with a group
of seven apparently bourgeois city-dwellers celebrating a day the country, much
like the characters in Jean Renoir’s Partie de campagne. After
picnicking, they spot a group of what appear to be wedding-goers and whistle
for them stop presumably to congratulate them, but these party celebrants just
as quickly disappear.
The
three women decide to bathe in a nearby stream, but as they return, a group of
thuggish-looking young men surrounds the men and women, ordering them to
separate by sex. One of the thugs draws a circle in the dirt, insisting that
they must remain within it. The group’s head, Rudolf (Jan Klusák) sets up a
desk in front of picnickers and interrogates them in the manner of K’s
interrogators in The Trial. When one of the picnic-goers breaks their rules by
crossing over the designated circle, he is grabbed by the henchmen.
A
sudden explosion stops these abuses, as a man, looking a bit like Lenin,
appears and scolds Rudolf — his adopted son, so he reports — and the other men
for their behavior, explaining that it was all an elaborate joke. Being the
father of the bride from the wedding party, he invites everyone to a party
nearby, at which he is also celebrating his birthday.
Confused and a little taken aback, the four men and three women
following the “host” (Ivan Vyskočil) and discovering in a nearby river cove
beautifully set tables piled high with food and wine; inexplicably even place
cards with their names upon them appear beside the plates. Several
conversations of little consequence follow: toasts, empty platitudes, etc. And
gradually we realize just how empty-headed the picnickers really are, awed so
easily by the bounty of the food and party presents.
After the meal, the host asks each of the guests whether he or she is
happy, and one by one each admits he has been won over, despite the confusing
situation — that is, all but one individual, who has silently departed, fed up
with the meaningless gibberish and imposed behavior.
Quickly, the host commands his henchmen to fetch his mastiff and guns,
and they move into the woods to track down the missing guest who has refused to
be happy with the situation. The other original picnic-goers quietly remain
behind, sipping their wine without seeming to comprehend the consequences of
their passivity.
Although Němec himself argued that the work was not a political
statement as much as a kind of allegorical fable about the society at large, it
is hard not to read A Report on the Party as an actual “report,” as in
its English title, on the behavior of the Communist Party or any totalitarian
regime wherein original thinking and disagreement are outlawed, and wherein a
pretense of happiness is paramount.
Long seen as the “enfant terrible” of Czech cinema, Němec constantly
found himself in trouble with Czech government authorities, and was almost
arrested for making this film. Almost all of his Czech films were banned, and
when he finally moved to Paris, other European cities, and later to the United
States, where he lived for 11 years, he found himself unable to work as a
filmmaker under the Hollywood studio stipulations. He returned to the Czech
Republic when the Communist government fell, but resented his country’s
admiration so late in his life, returning metals awarded him by then Czech
president Vaclav Havel.
Němec
died on March 18th of 2016 in Prague at the age of 79. If there was ever a
profound artist whose work was nearly censored out of existence, it is Jan
Němec. A Report on the Party is not only a testament to his genius, but
has now again become a highly relevant film.
Los Angeles, March 18, 2017
Reprinted from Hyperallergic Weekend,
February 4, 2017
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