The Painted Bird

Movie
Original title	The Painted Bird
Country of production	Czech Republic , Ukraine , Slovakia
original language	Interslavic , Czech , German , Russian
Publishing year	2019
length	169 minutes
Rod
Director	Václav Marhoul
script	Václav Marhoul
production	Václav Marhoul
music	Petr Ostrouchov
camera	Vladimír Smutný
cut	Luděk Hudec
occupation
	Petr Kotlár : the Jewish boy; Nina Schunewytsch : Marta; Alla Sokolowa : Olga; Lech Dyblik : Lekh; Jitka Čvančarová : Ludmila; Udo Kier : the miller; Stellan Skarsgård : Hans; Harvey Keitel : the pastor; Julian Sands : Garbos; Júlia Valentová Vidrnáková : Labina; Barry Pepper : Mitka; Alexei Kravchenko : Gavrila; Petr Vaněk : Nicodem;

The Painted Bird ( Nabarvené ptáče in Czech ) is a film drama by Václav Marhoul that celebrated its world premiere on September 3, 2019 as part of the Venice Film Festival . It is a film adaptation of the eponymous novel by Jerzy Kosiński . As part of the Český lev award ceremony in March 2020, the film received awards in ten categories, including best film and Marhoul for best director .

action

After the Germans attacked Poland in 1939, a six-year-old boy from a sheltered Jewish home was sent to the country by his forward-looking parents and entrusted to an older foster mother in the hope that he could survive there. When the woman dies, the boy is on his own. He wanders through the countryside, from village to village, but his journey develops more and more into an odyssey on which he experiences an extraordinary brutality emanating from ignorant, superstitious peasants and on which he witnesses the terrible violence that emanates from the ruthless Russian and German soldiers. The people he meets believe that the boy with the black hair, dark eyes and olive skin has the evil eye. When the war ends, the boy has changed forever.

production

Literary template

The film is based on the novel The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński

The film is based on the novel The Painted Bird by the Polish-Jewish writer Jerzy Kosiński from 1965, which was published in 2011 in a German translation by Herbert Roch under the title The Painted Bird .

In his novel, Kosiński tells of a Jewish child who finds shelter with a Polish Catholic. He introduces the rural people in Poland as primitive villagers who are guided by the lowest sexual instincts. Ultimately, once while helping out as an altar boy in church, weakened by beatings, oozing wounds, hunger and fear, the boy drops the missal, whereupon he is grabbed and thrown into the cesspool. He then decides to join forces with the evil one immediately. The novel tells of the boy's growing rudeness and moral neglect. Kosiński tells his own life story in the novel, but he was repeatedly accused of not writing an autobiography, but telling one sadistic monstrosity after another and not experiencing the violence described in the book himself. To do this, he relied on secondary literature, in other words, he lied. Under pressure from the allegations, Kosiński called his book "autofiction" in a later edition. In 1991 the writer committed suicide.

Staff, film titles and sponsorships

It was directed by Václav Marhoul , who also wrote the screenplay based on Kosiński's novel. The book and film title The Painted Bird refers to an incident when the boy found accommodation with the old bird catcher Lekh. When he just paints a black bird with white paint for fun and then releases him back to his flock in the sky, he is instantly picked to death in the air by his conspecifics because they think he is an enemy. In an interview with Radio Dixie, Marhoul stated that even if this one is of the same kind, he just looks different, and the boy in the story looks different from everyone else. The director does n't want The Painted Bird to be understood as a film about the Holocaust or a war film .

The film received funding from the Czech State Fund for Cinematography and Creative Europe Media. The Czech Film funded the project with 992,308 euros. The Polish Film Institute had refused funding twice.

Cast and filming

Petr Kotlár plays the nameless Jewish stray who is only shown as a boy in the credits. Marhoul shot the film over several years, so you can see Kotlár aging as the film progresses. Ala Sokolova plays the wandering shaman Olga, the German actor Udo Kier the psychotic miller, Tim Kalkhof an SS officer, Harvey Keitel the Catholic priest and Julian Sands Garbos, one of the members of his parish. Barry Pepper took on the role of the Russian soldier ( sniper Mitka), Lech Dyblik plays the good-hearted old bird catcher Lekh, and Jitka Čvančarová the nymphomaniac Ludmila. Actor Alexei Kravchenko took on the role of officer Gavrila, with whom the boy befriends in a Soviet army camp. Stellan Skarsgård plays the good soldier Hans. Nina Schunewytsch as farmer Marta and Petr Vaněk as Nikodem can also be seen in other roles . Most of the dialogues are spoken in a fictional Slavic Esperanto, Inter- Slavic , but also a little Czech, Russian and German.

The shooting took place on 105 days in spring 2018 in Volyn in the Ukraine, in Prague, in Świebodzice ( Dolnośląskie ) in Poland and in Slovakia. The cameraman was Vladimír Smutný , who shot the film in black and white in 35 mm format. Jan Vlasák created the scene, Helena Rovná created the costumes .

publication

The film celebrated its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival 2019 , where it competed for the Golden Lion . It started in cinemas in the Czech Republic on September 12, 2019 and in Slovakia on September 19, 2019. In September 2019 the film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Special Presentations. In early October 2019 it was presented at the London Film Festival and then at the Warsaw International Film Festival and the Cologne Film Festival . At the beginning of November 2019 it was shown in the official main competition at the Minsk International Film Festival “Listapad”. It is due to hit cinemas in the UK on March 27, 2020.

reception

Reviews

The film has so far won over 81 percent of Rotten Tomatoes critics and achieved an average rating of 7.6 out of a possible 10 points.

Guy Lodge from Variety believes that the gorgeous black and white photos in 35 mm are suitable for illustrating a world that is marked by strong black and white polarities of good and evil. The Painted Bird delivers a vision of a war-ragged society in which all survivors were reduced to anonymous, animal beings who show neither feelings nor empathy.

The Hollywood Reporter's Deborah Young writes that the brave young hero is abused by both men and women. Although he was first saved from the Gestapo by a sick old priest, the pedophile Julian Sands, in whose clutches he ended up, tortured him relentlessly. Fortunately, Marhoul does not show the worst violence directly or let it happen in the background, which leaves the viewer's imagination free. Some of the black and white photos of the wasteland of the devastated Eastern Europe remind Young of Soviet masterpieces of horror such as Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev or Elem Klimov's Come and See . The decision to take black-and-white photos in 35 mm format brings depth into the often joyless images that are occasionally illuminated by fires and snowstorms, and production designer Jan Vlasák awakens the villages with their thatched huts and stone churches with the vibrancy of a fable Life, so Young.

Christoph Petersen von Filmstarts thinks that the horror in the film is far too masterfully and breathtakingly staged for one to simply elude it and sums it up: "A film that not only drives out belief in humanity, but also in the most beautiful Black-and-white pictures that you can only imagine, literally smashed, hacked, fucked up and then burned the remains. " Whether you want to see it or not, everyone has to decide for themselves, says Petersen, but the film will probably leave no one indifferent.

Gross profit

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the film was able to gross around 580,000 US dollars worldwide.

Awards

The film was submitted by the Czech Republic as a contribution to the 2020 Academy Awards in the category Best International Film and was shortlisted in this category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in mid-December 2019 . The Painted Bird did not make it into the five nominated films. In addition, Marhoul's directorial work is in the preselection for the European Film Awards 2020 .