The 56th Chicago International Film Festival runs from October 14th to the 25th, 2020. Most of the films will be virtually streamed throughout those dates. Some other special presentation films will be projected live at the ChiTown Movies Drive-In located at 2343 S. Throop St. in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. You’ll also be able to livestream filmmaker Q&As as part of the price of your ticket. Download the festival program to purchase tickets and get more information.
Agnieszka Holland is a solid veteran filmmaker who is happy to work across many genres. Born in Poland, she did her film studies in Prague. She’s probably best known for her early 90s films Europa Europa (1990) and Olivier Olivier (1992), and her 1993 version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. She’s also a television veteran as well, having directed episodes of The Wire, The Killing, Treme and the highly praised Czech-language Burning Bush (2013).
Our film today, Charlatan (Šarlatán) (Czech Republic, 2020) is a fictionalized biography of Jan Mikolášek (Ivan Trojan), a renowned horticulturalist and healer who drew throngs of afflicted people to his rural clinic for therapeutic counsel outside of conventional medical practitioners. He has learned an exacting and effective diagnostic technique; the visual examination of urine samples to identify various pathologies, their likely origin location in the body, and which herbs and physical treatments are called for to heal the affliction. He diligently learned this from his mentor, Mülbacherová (Jaroslava Pokorná), a terse but gracious woman who drew the same long lines of patients before him but rarely took payment. Mikolášek isn’t as altruistic as she was, but Holland and Czech writer Marek Epstein insist he’s no swindler, either. Holland gives us a portrait of a genuinely committed healer who never wants to do anything else with his time or life. Making no distinctions between rich or poor, or Nazi, or Communist or labor unionist, Mikolášek treated all comers, somewhat humorlessly but devotedly, starting from treating his own sister’s gangrenous leg in the 1930s to having his career cut short in 1957 with the death of another loyal patient, Czech president Antonín Zápotocký. Without his patronage, other ambitious Communist officials decide Mikolášek is too independently admired by too many people to be of any constructive use towards the party’s own narrow goals, and he’s arrested.
Mikolášek has a devoted assistant, František Palko (Juraj Loj) who eventually becomes his lover as well. (The script from Czech writer Marek Epstein is very good, clearly well-researched, but there’s a fair amount of fictional speculation here as well; Mikolášek’s marriage was not a happy one, and Palko, also married, lived at the clinic for years.) The trauma of his early military experiences figures into his demeanor as well. He’s supremely confident in his own abilities, bristles at any potential criticism, and can be cruelly dismissive in his dealings with both patients and authority. The film throws a lot of sometimes incongruent information at you; the narrative hews convincingly loyal to its fascinating protagonist, but leaves space for you to draw different conclusions. A very good film by a smart, artful and honest pro; not a great one, but well worth seeing.
The very talented Iranian director Mohammed Rasoulof continues to contend with issues of potential incarceration in his homeland. In 2010, he was imprisoned for a year after having been sentenced to six. (This was ostensibly for shooting film without a permit,) In 2017, they confiscated his passport, making travel impossible. In 2019, his 2017 film, A Man Of Integrity, was found to evince “participation in social and political activity,” and he was charged with “gathering and collusion against national security and of propaganda against the system”. This charge was under appeal until March of this year, when he was, again, sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, and a two-year ban on any filmmaking activity. He has filed another appeal, and refuses to hand himself over for incarceration due to the Covid-19 pandemic. During all of that, he still managed to create There Is No Evil (Sheytan Vojud Nadarad) (Iran, 2020), which won Best Film (the Golden Bear) at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival. There’s an instructive interview with Rasoulof here.
While he certainly doesn’t promote or condone executions in Iran, There Is No Evil doesn’t directly address the issue of capital punishment so much as it addresses how unchecked authority renders its own citizenry complicit in immoral decisions the authorities themselves have made. Rasoulof tells us four stories in his film; in “There Is No Evil,” Heshmat (Ehsan Mirhosseini) is an even-tempered nice guy, a good husband, father and son, spending his non-working time devoted to caring and providing for his loved ones. The occupation that allows him to do this in relative middle-class comfort…? The second story, “She Said, You Can Do It”, follows a soldier named Pouya (Kaveh Ahangar), who has been conscripted into his mandatory two-year military service, as are all young Iranian men – failing to complete this service generally means no passport is issued, jobs are difficult to land, and a host of other disadvantages. But, typically, some conscripted soldiers also carry out penal executions, and Pouya, in line to do just that, is desperate to avoid having this shameful act on his conscious. “The Birthday,” involves Javad (Mohammad Valizadegan), who has earned a three-day pass from his military service to visit his love, Nana (Mahtab Servati) and her family to celebrate Nana’s birthday. But the celebration is overshadowed by another tragedy that has befallen the family, one that has unexpected consequences for Javad as well. And in the final episode, “Kiss Me,” we meet a family – Bahram (Mohammad Seddighimehr), his wife Zaman (Jila Shahi) and their daughter Darya (Baran Rasoulof) – for whom a past decision, concealing a shameful truth, has traumatic repercussions twenty years later.
Rasoulof’s film, despite the seriousness of the subject matter, isn’t particularly dour or defeatist, but he doesn’t shy away from strong medicine, either. He’s most interested in the general goodness and common-sense morality that most people conduct their lives with. It’s only the faceless institutions that govern the shapes of our lives that narrow our options in the world, and often create intractable necessities that train us to act contrary to our better natures. This is the overriding motivation for most of Rasoulof’s recent films, and it’s sadly understandable that Iran’s ruling religious regime doesn’t like that idea being reinforced. Do what you can to support Mohammed Rasoulof’s work – he’s a terrific filmmaker who richly deserves it, and, as a bonus, the films themselves, including this one, are excellent.
Periscope In The Bathtub 