An interview with director Radim Špaček about the film Lesní vrah, the true crime genre and the fascination with evil – 2024-04-28 08:34:23

by times news cr

2024-04-28 08:34:23

Twenty years ago, he won the Do you want to be a millionaire? competition. Just one year later, he shot three bystanders in Brno and Kladno. He confessed to the acts, but did not reveal his motives to the police. Even the film Lesní vrah, made by director Radim Špaček about Viktor Kalivod, does not offer a clear answer. In the interview, he speaks of him as a lone wolf and compares him to the shooter from the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague.

The film Lesní vrah defies everything one would expect from the true crime genre. Viktor Kalivoda hardly speaks in it, we can read his inner demons only from his facial expressions. The motivations that drove him remain shrouded in mystery until the last shot. What should viewers take away from the film?

I think they could learn something about themselves, about their relationship to violence and to society. I hope they will then be more attentive to their loved ones. The whole misfortune of Viktor Kalivoda consisted in the fact that he was terribly lonely. It was the abandonment that probably led him to attempts to take his own life and subsequently to murder.

In the film, we see a handsome, athletic young man who came from a good family background. Viktor Kalivoda’s mother was a doctor, his father worked for NATO. Shortly before committing the crimes, he himself took part in the quiz Do you want to be a millionaire?, from which he won 320,000 crowns.

Yes, Kalivoda was above average intelligent, he had an IQ of around 130. He studied at several universities, he spent one year as a police officer by the way, but eventually left each field. In a letter from detention that he addressed to his parents, he mentioned that no school had anything to offer him.

Did he reveal in the letter what he was eating so much? He confessed to the murders to the investigators who arrested him, but kept repeating that they had nothing to do with his motives.

He did not write about any childhood traumas in the letter. So he probably grew up quite standard, like any of us. That’s why screenwriter Zdenek Holý and I didn’t want to make a classic biographical film that would go back to Kalivod’s adolescence, and we decided to capture only the last year of his life. It was this minimalistic form that appealed to me the most.

But coming back to your question, I would say that Kalivoda gradually got into a hostile relationship with the outside world. He decided to kill himself, but he could not take his own life. We therefore assume that he wanted to get into a desperate enough situation to be able to commit suicide, which he eventually succeeded in in the Valdice prison. He was counting on the fact that he would get a life sentence for triple murder, and then he would commit to the crime. For him, crimes were a means of self-destruction.

“When watching films and series based on real crimes, we can wonder if we ourselves would not be capable of something similar,” says Špaček. | Photo: Honza Mudra

You consulted the film with Colonel Michal Mazánek, who led the investigation of the case. Did he learn more during the interrogation than we see on the screen, or did the letter reveal his inner workings?

We capture the interrogation quite faithfully in the film. Kalivoda confessed to the police about the murders, he described exactly what, where and how he carried out, but they did not get the motives from him. Only when his father provided the investigators with a letter he had written to him did Michal Mazánek and his colleagues learn, for example, that Kalivoda first tested the weapon on cattle. He admitted that he had to overcome a lot the first time, and when he did shoot the cow, he didn’t feel good at all. A few days later, however, he repeated it on the other herd, found that it was getting better, and so he finally ventured onto humans as well.

Given the growing popularity of the true crime genre, the question arises whether we should even try to understand serial killers like Viktor Kalivoda and devote media space to evil. How do you feel about it?

There is a lot of talk about the danger of imitation, which of course is here. Kalivoda himself was inspired by Olga Hepnarová, who drove a truck into a tram stop in the 1970s and killed eight people. In a letter from custody, he mentioned that he wanted to complete what Hepnarová had failed to do. He apparently planned to shoot passengers in the Prague subway. According to Michal Mazánek, the police only prevented him from doing so by arresting him at half past eight in the morning, just as the armed man was leaving his apartment. That’s why we didn’t want to heroize Kalivoda in any way.

But I think trying to understand serial killers is important. Only then can we do something about evil. Similar acts usually arise not only from mental disturbance, but also from the social context. In my opinion, in the Czech Republic we do not place sufficient emphasis on prevention or psychological support. Psychiatric care is quite neglected in our country. In addition, nowadays people are becoming more and more alienated, spending much more time on social networks than getting together. It is also on the Internet that patterns of pathological behavior spread more easily.

You also like the true crime genre as a viewer. Didn’t we like him because deep down we are fascinated by evil?

Sure, but the fascination with evil has been here since ancient times. It may seem like more serial killer stories are being filmed now than ever before. In the past, however, war films were the most successful, films about Hitler and other criminals of world history were shot. But also films about deranged individuals, such as Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. So it’s nothing new.

We wouldn’t enjoy looking at only positive heroes who don’t have any problems for a long time. We are looking for stories that also have some darkness or pain in them. When watching movies and series based on real crimes, we can wonder if we ourselves would not be capable of something similar and where does evil come from in a person.

You started working on the film Forest Killer eight years ago. Coincidentally, however, it is released four months after the shooting at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague. Are you worried about the timing of the premiere, or do you see it as an opportunity to reflect on the tragic event?

We had the April premiere planned even before the shooting at the philosophy faculty. Of course, the December events shocked us and we discussed how to deal with them. That is also why we have combined the Forest Killer screenings with discussions in which both Michal Mazánek and psychologist Karel Netík, who dealt with Kalivoda, participate.

I think it is obvious that we are not concerned with any sensation, rather we want to search for more general questions that the case of the forest killer can raise. Naturally, the topic of the December shooting also resonates in the debates, and we do not avoid it in any way. I myself see similar features between the two perpetrators. Both were lone wolves, Kalivoda could have done something similar in the Prague subway if the police hadn’t arrested him.

An interview with director Radim Špaček about the film Lesní vrah, the true crime genre and the fascination with evil
– 2024-04-28 08:34:23

“If lone wolves decide to do something and have it well planned, there is no way to detect them in advance and how to prevent their actions,” says Špaček. | Photo: Honza Mudra

In the film, you very suggestively suggest Kalivod’s loneliness and his futile efforts to separate himself from the world. You yourself went through an unsuccessful suicide attempt in your youth. Did that give you some understanding of his desperation?

Yes, I have some basic understanding of his experience. After all, many people go through a phase of depression and grief in their youth. Between the ages of, say, fifteen and twenty-five, we have quite mixed feelings about the world around us, many of us at this age are not completely balanced mentally. Rarely, however, does our lostness translate into such pathological behavior. Most people, including me, come to terms with their own demons over time, learn to work with them and take control of their lives, even if it is sometimes difficult.

This brings me back to the lack of psychological support. If Kalivoda had confided in someone, maybe nothing would have happened. But he was a lone wolf, and if lone wolves decide to do something and have it well planned, there is no way to detect them in advance and prevent their actions.

In an interview with Český rozhlas Plus, you admitted that you have been fascinated by the topic of death ever since your feature-length debut Mladí muži knožnáj svět, which you filmed in besieged Sarajevo in the mid-1990s. What drove you to the war-torn territory of the former Yugoslavia?

Lack of self-preservation. Even as a little boy, I was naughty a lot, I was unruly in my teens, I left home at sixteen and I always wanted adventure. At the time of the war in the former Yugoslavia, I was currently studying at FAMU and made friends there with classmates from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. I was nineteen and did not understand at all how the conflict could arise. Watching everything just on TV news didn’t satisfy me, so I took the opportunity to join the Italian peace march that was headed there.

I ended up spending a year in Sarajevo and decided to make a documentary about young people who wanted nothing to do with the war. I felt like one of them and I could not imagine that we would face something similar in the Czech Republic. But a person can do such a thing once in a lifetime, I wouldn’t go into it today.

The idea that today you would go to Ukraine with a camera and map how the young people there are experiencing Russian aggression, has it not crossed your mind?

I shot a documentary in Ukraine in 2015, shortly after the annexation of Crimea, and I was looking for the historical roots of the current relationship with Russia. But I wouldn’t jump straight into the war today. After all, I already value my life a little more than when I was twenty, and I prefer to leave it to younger people.

Watch the trailer for The Woodland Killer:

The Forest Killer, as he is nicknamed, worked as a police officer, won the “Want to be a Millionaire” competition and had an above-average IQ. | Video: Vernes

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