Seeing Movies Through Binoculars

Nedd Willard

Radionotte, a film made in the Italian part of Switzerland was able to touch me deeply and renew a flagging sense of hope for human beings no matter how lost, foolish, or sleepless they may be. The plot is simple. Two women and a man relay each other all through the night talking on the radio and comforting whoever phones in. Insomnia, loneliness and feeling not understood are the most common themes of the people who phone in. Yet this programme takes place on the first night of spring with a full moon.

Since the radio commentators invite visitors to the studio, some are daring enough to come. Two of them are middle aged rustic men who make and sell bird whistles and, aided by a comfortable amount of alcohol, want to serenade the night via the radio. And they do.

The film also explores the sleepless days and tormented nights of the radio speakers themselves. But never do you meet or see someone you couldn’t like or sympathise with.
There are truck drivers, one young man who wants to compulsively explain himself to every attractive woman no matter how little she wants to listen.
There is a transvestite who since he-she cannot find a paid job on stage plays various roles in real life with an unsuspecting supporting cast.

Yet charming as I found this film to be, the gentleman seated next to me, a professional film critic for a German language publication, found everything wrong in it and nothing good. For example, he explained, “when the truck driver’s vehicle emerges from the tunnel he has passed from Italian speaking people to German speakers, yet they all still speak Italian.” It seems there were numerous other mistakes and lapses in the film that I had overlooked and that he carefully pointed out.

Because of these technical faults, that were not absent from other young film maker’s work, this gentleman could find nothing precious in such a film that depicts lightly, but with a touch of deep sadness, the strange way we try to live our lives and the many ways in which we fail.

Change of scene: A strange pilgrimage in Slovakia.
Two young men riding a horse cart through a cornfield. They see a man ahead of them running to hide into the field. “He’s afraid we are trying to turn him in to the police!” laughs one of them. The camera shows us what is lying in the back of the horse cart, a young woman stabbed to death.

Yet the next thing we learn is that one of the young men actually does accuse the murderer, a handsome gypsy who has stabbed his wife to death for her infidelity. We see a village of gypsies, poor, overrun with young children, where part of the village mourns the death of the woman while the other half awaits vengeance.

Vengeance takes the form of a trial of the gypsy. One of the men in the cart is a lawyer and it is he who decides to reveal the murderer and let the law take its course rather than promote a gypsy vendetta. However, the other brother, a student of philosophy, berates him for doing so, since he is interfering in the traditional way of life of those misunderstood people, the gypsies. This brother has violent drunken moods and is expelled from university after which he becomes increasingly dirty, drunk and wild.

In sharp contrast, the lawyer brother is offered a post as assistant to his favourite professor, a specialist in human rights. He marries a vivacious young girl who soon gives birth to their child. The crux of the movie comes when this young lawyer who, by retracting his accusation and testimony, is sent to jail for perjury while the murderer is set free.

Meanwhile, the philosophy major has acquired a young punk girlfriend who soon tires of their impoverished vagabondage and leaves him. He last encounters her seated in a Mercedes, obviously the kept woman of a wealthy German businessman. No better is the wife of the law student who deliberately becomes a demi-prostitute in a late-night bar and screams her contempt of the husband, who is tortured by her neglect of their baby.

The final scenes shows the former young lawyer in jail, separated from his child, and the wild longhaired philosophy student running mad through the countryside screaming “Freedom!”

The projection of this film was followed by a discussion with young people about human rights and respect for traditional cultures such as that of the gypsies. But this film carries a treacherous message and not the one claimed by the filmmaker of “tolerance and respect for other cultures.”

The film actually infers that we must not interfere if it is customary for men in certain cultures to kill the women they suspect of treachery. Following that logic, this would be sufficient reason for allowing any traditional practice to continue. Thus, slavery, mutilation of young girls, or any number of acts that cause injury or death, usually to the weak and unprotected, should not be criticised or condemned, nor prosecuted by the law.

Surely, the basic principle of any humane philosophy must rest on the sacred character of life. And there is more than enough of a dangerous slide today towards brutality and the rule of force for us to enshrine and further this simple concept as our foundation for human rights.

Another very strange element in this film that was written and produced by a woman, Drahomira Vihanova, is the bitter portrait of the three women. One is an adulteress, and no explanation of her acts is even hinted at, one becomes a kept woman, and the young lady who has become a mother prefers to live as a part-time whore and drunken slut.

In sharp contrast, the cruel and bizarre acts of the gypsy and the philosophy student glorify the strong bonds of male friendship. Finally, the title of the movie, The Pilgrimage of Peter and Jacob, implies an arduous journey to a holy place and it is hard to see in what way either of the two brothers is proceeding to any high and sacred spot.

However it must be admitted that the filmmaker manages to illustrate her various messages with great intensity. Also, the film was brilliantly filmed in rich colours. The director is expert at using all the tools of cinema and her next film will certainly be worth watching.

In any case, whatever individuals see and like or dislike in movies, what counts most is the quality of the movies shown. For 2001, the Festival Tout Ecran maintained its high standards once again. Each year more local people in Geneva crowd in to see them and we can only hope that next year they will be joined by more members of the international community.