2024-04-30 08:54:09
A man walks along a track over a railway bridge that is not intended for pedestrians. He climbs over the railing, and the camera, which before was winding around his legs, now examines his maneuvering over the abyss from a long view. In the end, he doesn’t jump. The creators of the film portrait of one of the most mysterious Czech serial killers, Viktor Kalivoda, do not try to find motives, they remain mere observers.
These opening shots of the film Lesní vrah, which has been shown in cinemas since Thursday, suggest that producer and screenwriter Zdeněk Holý and director Radim Špaček had considerable ambitions. The long scenes do cause suffocation and restlessness, but gradually. Romanian Oleg Mutu, the author of one of the best European dramas of the previous decade, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days or The Death of Mr. Lazaresco, is behind the camera. But as the recent Czech film Hadí plyn, in which he also participated, showed, the presence of a star cameraman does not necessarily lead to an excellent work.
The creators – similar to the authors of the film Manželé Stodola about another pair of Czech serial killers – decided to get rid of any biographical sauces and throw the viewer right into the middle of the action. However, the result is diametrically different.
While director Petr Hátle watched two people living on the fringes of society get involved in more and more robberies, violence and murders in Manželí Stodolový, Lesní vrah takes a closer look at roughly the last year of Kalivod’s life. This includes both completely mundane activities such as shopping in a convenience store, as well as much less mundane ones, such as riding along line C of the Prague metro with a pistol wrapped in a newspaper.
In the case of the Stodols, the result was a dynamic film based on the complicated “toxic romance” of the two protagonists, Lesní vrah focuses on relatively random scenes from an individual’s life.
The authors refer to the minimalist tradition of cinematography, for which the term empty narrative was coined. This style, which places emphasis not on telling a story, clear twists and turns, but rather on the viewer’s stay in the film space, from which they have to read and interpret small nuances of possible meanings, began to be talked about and written about in the middle of the zero decade. That is, precisely at the time when Kalivoda was murdering.
Viktor, played by Michal Balcar, remains a mystery even after watching the film. | Photo: Vernes
It would seem that a similar filmmaking method might be the most suitable for investigating a man who has never clarified the motives of his murders. But the creators do not present the audience with an unknown world with an unknown protagonist. On the contrary, they show the most well-known information: that Kalivoda was from a middle-class background, that he had depression and suicidal tendencies. And we all know where the plot will go.
It can be appreciated that the filmmakers are not trying to turn Kalivoda into a monster. The story of an above-average intelligent person who wins 320,000 crowns in the then-popular knowledge contest You want to be a millionaire and buys two Glock 34 pistols with which he wanders through Prague traffic could easily be tempted by a similar interpretation.
At the same time, the creators are not consistent in their minimalist aesthetics. After all, the director Radim Špaček, the director of the dramas Pouta or Zlatý podraz, never really subscribed to a similar style. The calm rhythm of the observation is soon disrupted by a long passage from a television competition, where the tempo and jovial presentation are adapted to local customs. After this strange rapture, the authors return to the aesthetics of random everyday scenes from the life of the protagonist, who sometimes wants to kill himself, sometimes others, but does not find the courage until the end.
However, since it is a real story, it is easy to get the impression that Lesní vrah only – especially by Czech standards – depicts well-known facts from Wikipedia in a formally bold way. And so, for example, the hero played by Michal Balcar randomly stops at the roadside to greet a former colleague in uniform, so that the viewer learns that the person in question was a policeman.
Kalivoda really remains a mystery to the viewer until the end. But is it a mystery bigger, more mysterious, richer in meaning than it was for news audiences of the time?
When he rides the subway with his Glock wrapped in newspaper, he looks like a huddled, insecure poor guy who’s afraid his snack will fall out of his hand.
In such scenes, the camera emphasizes, for example, a pair of talking guys and leaves the protagonist somewhere in a corner out of the spotlight. Another time at the shooting range, on the other hand, Kalivoda makes a brash gesture at the owner who is setting a target for him in the form of a human figure, shooting at him in cold blood.
It is remarkable that several domestic contributions to the popular true crime genre have been created in a short time, and they all defy conventions. The serial Method Markovič: Hojer and the films Manžela Stodol and Lesní vrah have in common that they do not portray serial killers as monsters or terrifying sociopaths who can be easily renounced and unequivocally condemned.
Špaček’s film goes about this in the most radical way. Despite the remarkable work of cinematographer Oleg Mutu, it ultimately shows the least clear concept. It depicts the tension of a person who has been close to pulling the trigger many times, no matter where he was aiming.
The film’s Kalivoda is a quiet loner who speaks only when necessary, does not say hello, and at first seems like a quiet person. Is his attitude a lack of self-confidence, a slight mental disorder, or simply a certain contempt for people? Hard to say. But in the end, the footage, which is very short, does not give us that much space for this wandering between the offered meanings.
Film
Forest killer
Directed by: Radim Špaček
Vernes, in theaters from April 25.