LFF 2020: Shadow Country
lff 2020Hindsight is the thread that runs through Shadow Country, the latest film by Czech director Bohdan Sláma. Instances of compulsion whether it’s an act of revenge or crime are rendered even more tragic as the audience knows the outcome and the legacy such things leave behind. One character, seeing his village decimated, proclaims “I never imagined it like this”; the response is “then how did you imagine it?”, fittingly short-sighted in a tale where few see the bigger picture.
This war epic charts the tumultuous lives of the inhabitants of Tust, a small Czech village close to the Austrian border. Originally a part of Bohemia, the settlement became Czechoslovakian territory in the late 1920s, with this geographical flexibility becoming a fixture in its history. The narrative starts in the late 1930s, just as the Third Reich is preparing to monopolies Central Europe; Tust, with its close proximity to Austria, is naturally one of the first places to be consumed.
This creates a dilemma amongst the ethnically mixed population, with the villagers given a choice regarding their national allegiance. Those with German heritage can reap the rewards of the partnership, declaring themselves Austrian for the benefits of more land and steadier income, whilst the native Czechs are provided with very little except their own pride. Naturally, this leads to friction; the ethnic Germans, now armed with a perceived feeling of superiority, regularly degrade their counterparts, whether it’s via physical assault or the vandalization of property. As the war intensifies and the Nazis grow more influential, eligible men are drafted to fight; simultaneously, the Czechs are slowly excised, whether it be in arrests or presumed genocide.
In typical Second World War films, this period would either be the starting point or the bleak end, but for Shadow Country, it’s merely the midpoint of a decade-long struggle. Even with victory for the Allies, Tust, presented in gorgeous monochrome cinematography, is still beset with the same problems of partisanship, only with the roles now reversed. The Czechs, vindicated and buoyed by their freedom, act against their former oppressors, irrespective of how far their devotion to the Nazi party went.
It’s a bold move from Sláma and screenwriter Ivan Arsenjev, exploring the dangers of narrow-minded nationalism and groupthink, regardless of whether the cause is just. The challenge for filmmakers when occupying this middle-ground is ensuring they don’t render themselves voiceless, but the very nature of the subject matter here makes that a non-factor. Ordinarily, retribution against Nazi sympathizers is as close to fair game as possible, but Sláma does the groundwork to show these characters as victims of circumstance as much as anything.
Naturally, there are cretinous opportunists - rest assured, they get their comeuppance - but the majority are disadvantaged, impoverished workers who have continuously been backed into corners by forces larger than themselves. Marie (Magdaléna Borová), a luckless housewife, initially declares herself to be Czech, but is later cut adrift due to her husband’s differing choice. Conversely, Josef (Csongor Kassai), a Jewish resistance fighter and concentration camp survivor, morphs into the very thing he rallied against, ultimately showing that power can corrupt even the most principled of individuals.
These are the only characters granted a traditional arc, with the ensemble serving its ideas and themes rather than creating emotion. Though it never piles on the misery, this approach does blunt some moments late in proceedings; rather than being emotionally invested in the lives of people, the sadness derives from the inevitability of it all, but it does occasionally feel like a historical document rather than an immersive portrait. It is no doubt an intentional ploy by Sláma, reducing the characters to different sides much like the internal logic of the film. In that specific time and place, they’re nothing more than pawns on a chessboard, maneuvered by unseen forces and subservient to preconceived national ideals, failing to realize it’s the very thing that initiated this tragic chain of events. Hindsight, after all, is a wonderful thing.