What is a family? A
mother, a father and a child? Two children? Three? A dog? A cat? A
funny uncle? A demented grandmother? A live-in girlfriend or
boyfriend? What if one or more of the persons we talk about has some
issues? Physical, emotional, intellectual or mental? What if that
someone cannot or would not understand someone else? Is it still a
family because of blood relation and/or living agreement? According
to Rok Biček’s (known for Lux prize-nominated fiction
feature Class Enemy) documentary, a family is much wider
concept than its church or state-sponsored concept.
Biček composed his
104-minute piece of deadly serious cinema verité from 120 hours of
material filmed over the course of 12 years, following his subject
Matej Rajk from early teens to mid-20’s in different
familial contexts. The amount of material might seem huge, but
divided with the time spent with Matej, his nuclear family and his
two girlfriends ant their families later on, it is not that much.
The filmmaker is not
“cheating”, commenting or adding anything to the context, since
his film consist only of pretty raw-looking long takes from a
hand-held camera operated by the director himself, so every camera
move or choice of the song played in the background is a result of a
mix of good instinct and pure luck. Biček’s only intervention was
choosing the takes that would get in (the film started as a student
documentary short) and arranging it into smooth-running, compelling
narrative with usually non-linear editing that he did himself with
the help of Yulia Roschina.
Such a project might
prove to be quite a task even as a work of fiction (parallels have
been drawn with Richard Linklater’s magnum opus Boyhood).
It might seem easier to do it as a documentary (at least cheaper),
but one needs to be patient enough for the pieces to fit in and the
story to close in a natural way. No matter how sensible, the subject
has the right to lose the trust in filmmaker, to lose interest and to
quit the whole thing anytime he wants. And Matej Rajk is far from
reasonable: he is stubborn, under-educated, self-proclaimed
alpha-male who had a hard life and invented a number of quite
effective defense mechanisms not letting anyone to get near him.
He grew up in a
special needs family as the “most normal one” among them. His
parents and his brother are intellectually challenged in different
degrees and compared to their status, Matej’s learning disabilities
and behavioral disorders (it has never been disclosed, but seems like
some form of ADHD) make him the most functional one. Biček’s
initial idea was to film them all, with a focus on Matej’s brother
Mitja, but Matej proved to
be other kind of interesting.
We actually meet him
in a delivery room, witnessing the miracle of birth of his daughter
Nia. At the time, he lives
with his girlfriend Barbara
at her father’s home. Soon enough their relationship turns sour and
Matej goes back home to his mother and brother. Nia’s visits are
arranged and seem to run smoothly, as he turns to be a loving and
moderately responsible father. But when Barbara has another child
with another man and when Matej starts dating then severely underage
Eli (her mother seems fine
with it), things get not just complicated, but also ugly, it becomes
a proper custody battle with threats, lies and manipulations.
We see the “type”
of Matej’s girlfriends: they come from broken homes so they fall
for his charm and for a certain amount of time they feel safe with
him, so they stay. We also get those relationships are doomed for
failure once when they see through his not that carefully arranged
mask. He might act like the smartest and the most capable person in
the room, but he has a lot to learn about functioning in the real
world. However, the central (deteriorating) relationship here is the
one between him and his daughter since she gets more and more
attached to her mother and her new family unit.
Rok Biček does not
judge here. He does not even explain some potentially interesting
details. We do not get any background for Matej’s lost front teeth.
We do not get to know why he had left the high school (he was good
with computers) or why he does not have a driving license. All he
does is presenting life in its harshest, but also the most complex
form. Sometimes it is unnecessarily cruel (like the shooting of the
dying dog), sometimes it is hypnotizing, sometimes deeply humane, but
all the time it all feels so real.
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