heart of darkness
by Douglas Messerli
Wiktor Grodecki (writer and director)
Andělé nejsou andělé (Not Angels but Angels) / 1994
According to The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical
History of the English People Pope Gregory I sent Augustine on his famous
“Gregorian mission” to Britannia because of an encounter in the Roman market
place where he saw fair-haired, fair-skinned Saxon slaves being sold. Asking
about their origin, he was told they were Angles, upon which, punning in Latin,
he responded, “Not Angles, but angels.” Even if the reason he sent Augustine on
his mission was for various other reasons, it is still commonly regarded that
this encounter is behind his decision to bring Christianity to the Angles, or
the angels.
Wiktor Grodecki’s first film in his Czech boy prostitution trilogy takes
this title in part to describe the beautiful faces—in a Prague filled will
sculptures of saints and angels—of the boys who, in the manner he will use
again in his second film, Body without Soul, introduce themselves by
name and age before revealing that they work as prostitutes or, as some
describe themselves, as hustlers. In this documentary, Grodecki introduces us to
15 boys in all (Joseph Gregori, Honza, Jarda, Joseph, Lada, Libor, Marcel,
Marek, Michael, Mirek, Pepa, Peter, Radek, Robert, and Roman) who range in age
from 14-19, most of them older than the boys in his second documentary.
Having not quite mastered his documentary approach, the director here
intercuts between the boy’s answers to several stock questions, not all of
which we hear, but which we can clearly discern: “What’s your name and what do
you do?”; “How did you become a male
prostitute?”: “Who are your customers and where do you meet them?” “What kind
of sexual acts do you perform with them and how much do they pay you?”; “What
is the best and worst thing that has happened to you as a boy prostitute?” “Do
you fear for AIDS or other diseases?” “What are you dreams for your life?” and
“Do you fear for your futures?”
As
if we needed further explanation of the rather straightforward, if varied
answers the boys provide, Grodecki also interviews a Pimp who works in the central Prague hot spot for homosexual
pickups, the main train station, where the
director receives rather clear cut and seemingly honest answers from a man
named Ondra.
If
the format works in general in providing us with an introduction into the
primarily Eastern Europe world of boy prostitution—although as we discover in Body without Soul this film fails to
discuss one of the greatest sources of these boy’s incomes in the making of
porno films and skirts the fact that a great many of the boys are as young as
12-15 or even younger—the work finally does feel, as Variety reviewer
Dennis Harvey describes it, “watchable but unenlightening, with glossy
presentation adding shock-value tenor that leaves a sour aftertaste.”
Although the answers vary somewhat, most of these boys, as we discover
in the second installment as well, come from outside of Prague, dissatisfied or
rejected with and from their families, arriving in the Czech capital hungry and
with no money. Most often they are first approached in the train station in
which they arrive, or are later encouraged by other boys of their age in the
several major Prague gay clubs, Peter Volk, Vladek, Mercury, Riviera, and the T-Club
to seek out a living by sleeping with paying men. Some pick up men at the
swimming arena at Polidí Park in the summers. Their johns are mostly Germans or
other Czechs, but Germans are definitely preferred since they pay better, up to
1,000 Czech crowns, but the payment varies greatly. One boy admits to have only
charged 35 crowns his first time out, knowing no better, but many describe the
going rate at 300 or 500. Some travel to Hamburg, Berlin, and Amsterdam to
increase their income, Hamburg apparently being the favorite of those who
travel. One boy describes how in Amsterdam he was forced to remain in a room
with others until called to perform sex acts with men in another room in which
all terms had been previously agreed upon without his involvement. Sometimes I
was forced to be fucked by 3 or 4 men in a single day. He claims he will never
return to Amsterdam.
Almost all the boys declare themselves to be heterosexual or, at the
very least, bisexual, many claiming to have girlfriends. A few admit to being
exclusively gay. And one young boy, Radek, adamantly declares his difference as
being a true bisexual who has the advantage on all the others because he
divides his time equally between male and female customers, although he doesn’t
give any specific evidence of his female audience and provides no real
financial figures.
Some are even married with children, but often they describe their
girlfriends as being unhappy with their selling their body to men, some of
their female lovers having left them in disgust. Few of these insistently
self-defined heterosexuals see the inconsistency of their having sex with males
three to four times a week, and almost all the boys seem to believe that
receiving anal sex is a perversion, despite the fact that if paid enough they
will provide that sexual pleasure to demanding homosexuals. It appears that
only a few have been able to totally resist being fucked.
Although several admit to robbing their clients, most state that they
are honest when it comes to their johns, Joseph even offering up his
identification card to be held by his client until they finish their sexual
encounter. Several boys describe their worst experiences as centering around
their encounters with Sado-masochists, one evidently being almost beaten, and
others finding the requests to whip, shit, and piss upon their customers as
disgusting, although one boy rather enjoyed the latter acts.
Almost all the boys insist they primarily wear condoms, but all almost
equally admit that when specifically requested by Germans, Swiss, or Austrians
to go without, they have acquiesced.
Several, of course, are frightened about AIDS, but almost all seem to
have come to a sort of acceptance of the fact that providing the services they
do they are always facing the possibility of death, and some play a kind of
bluffing game about the disease as if that will keep it away from their own
bodies. One talks of losing a friend to AIDS.
Strangely, when it comes to their future dreams, presumably when they
reach the age that they will no longer be desirable, their aspirations are
quite abstract, most of them simply defining themselves as finally working in
an office, or creating fantasies that they might find a rich man someday who
will take them away and keep them for the rest of their lives. One insists
someone he met from California will one day return to take him there. At
present, all insist that they are either unable to find jobs
without previous experience, but also that
they could never make the kind of money they do as prostitutes in regular
employment. As I mentioned above, most of these boys describe their standard
rates as being between 500 to 1,000 Czech crowns. Grodecki gives us some sense
of proportion by beginning the second work of his series with the fact that
1,000 Czech crowns amounts to about 35 US dollars. And the boys reveal at one
point that much of the money they do make is spent on slot machines and games
at the clubs. A great number of boys seem to use the trains station as their
nightly bedrooms.
Although Grodecki appears to be non-judgmental in gathering up this
information, in fact the way his camera hovers upon their often flinching and
confused faces or cranes in for a closer look when what one of the boys says
sounds suspicious or unconvincing, which almost has the effect of seeming to
stare-down his subjects for a truth they
are not providing, made even worse by his occasional but regularized insertion
of pixelated porno images of boys, the smug and fatuous faces of older johns,
and an entire scene when, inexplicably, he runs footage of a tattoo-covered
tramp who finally undresses and walks outside naked.
His
use, moreover, of carefully chosen music of Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion,
Mozart’s Requiem, and the Aria from Villa Lobos’ Bachianas
Brasileiras No. 5—all surely meant to underline the saintly beauty these
working boys—somehow sentimentalizes their chiseled but often pimpled visages.
These boys often do seem all at angles instead of simply appearing as
angels, the angles shot by cinematographer Vladimír Holomek becoming distorted
in the process.
Perhaps some of the best shots of these young hustlers are of the same
teenagers taken out of the dark shadows and the bubble-bath tub wherein they
are interviewed onto the dance floor of one of the many clubs they regularly
visit where they seem to be just a bunch of kids trying to have some fun.
Los Angeles, November 4, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November
2021).
.png)
No comments:
Post a Comment