 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
| Up and Down
Directed By: Jan Hrebejk Plot
Summary - Review 1 - Review
2 - CURRENT REVIEWS
|
|
| In the dead of the night, near the Czech-Slovak border, two smugglers discover their truckload of illegal Indian immigrants have left a baby behind. [TRAILER] “Up and Down” drops us into a world overrun by an epidemic for which there is no cure, into a decaying society riddled by the pervasive shades of racism. The title of Jan Hrebejk’s (“Divided We Fall”) film is still perhaps its most elusive aspect. For many it may evoke thoughts of melodramas, with their various peaks and troughs. Surely the film’s first movement supports this line of thinking. In the first of a half-dozen subplots, two thugs smuggle immigrants into Germany and then abandon them in the forest. Forgetting to unload an infant, they realize they will need to quickly find someone to take the foreign baby. Meanwhile, Mila (Natasa Burger) is desperate to have a child, but the odds seem stacked against her. She is incapable of conceiving, and her husband, Franta (Jiri Machacek), is an immigrant with a criminal record – due to a fight at a soccer match – which will also make adoption nearly impossible. Naturally, Mila eventually becomes connected with the smugglers and buys the baby, just as the natural mother searches frantically for her offspring. That woman connects with Hana (Ingrid Timkova), a human rights worker and part of an elitist white family. As we then follow Hana home, she is confronted with the tirades of her husband’s soon-to-be-ex, Vera (Emilia Vasaryova), who is clearly terrified of the immigrants she sees sweeping into the country. Even her son has abandoned her, she says, and moved to Australia. There are no real ups and downs here. This is not an alternating picture of euphoria and pain. Instead, Hrebejk has crafted a progression of scenes that amplify the breadth of this world’s racism, swelling eventually into a ferocious barrage of bigotry. And in a stunning final montage, sure to be one of the year’s best, Hrebejk rips back the curtain. Gone are the subplots, characters and façades. In their place is a scathing, transparent attack, Hrebejk and co-writer Petr Jarchovsky decrying all those everyday racists who promote a mindset not far removed from the days of Hitler. Granted, things are more disguised nowadays and Hrebejk uses each of his stories to depict racism in its more subtle and subversive forms. The baby subplot is essential to the film’s climax, where the conflict between embracing outsiders and remaining loyal to a scared and angry German culture reaches a fever pitch. Hana’s subplot, if for nothing else, is spectacular for shedding light on an inverted form of bigotry in her sense of self-righteousness. There’s also that gripping, suspenseful dinner scene where Hana confronts, at great length, Vera’s virulent anger and cold-blooded disdain of the immigrants flooding her country. In all of these sequences, particularly that dinner scene, the actors play their part perfectly. Timkova is defiant, Burger is desperate, Vasaryova is angry and scared, and the supporting cast watches this all play out as quiet enablers. Sure, these fringe characters are often made uncomfortable by what is occurring, but they dare not say anything at the risk of seeming rude. Which comes to, perhaps, the real meaning of the film’s title. On and on these stories go, churning away without any real connections. And then Vera’s son returns to Australia and we suddenly understand. Hrebejk is not trying to bring cohesion to this chaos. The world of Germany is an unfixable mess of racial profiling, suspicion, discrimination and alienation. To escape from its clutches, this character has gone halfway around the world. And returning home he sees again just what a wasteland he left behind. It is the gulf between up in Germany and down under in Australia; between the hopeless slice of hell above and the hopeful slice of heaven below.
Check out Reviews, Commentary, and More at Zertinet.com |
LINKS
TO REVIEWS |
| Movies
@ Zertinet | Oscars @ Zertinet
| Main Site Best Viewed
at 800 X 600 or greater |
|
