Nearly seventy years on from the Lidice massacre it was about time that a film was made to commemorate the tragedy which remains one of the most chilling episodes in this country’s history. The Nazi reprisal took place in 1942, after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich the Deputy Reich -Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, by Czech partisans. It was Adolf Hitler himself, who gave the order to delete the village situated just a few kilometres north-west of Prague, from maps. The fierce German revenge caused the death of 192 men who were shot on site. The 184 women of the village were taken to Ravensbruck concentration camp, The 88 children were taken to Chelmno extermination camp where most of them were gassed on the day of arrival. Only 17 of the inhabitants managed to return home alive at the end of the war. It is actually rather amazing that it has taken so long for the first Czech film dedicated to the massacre to be produced.
Curiously, the key event in the story, i.e. the attack on Heydrich, is given very little screen time by the director Petr Nikolaev and is thrown into the film with very little context and the episode itself is never really the centre of the directors attention. What is in fact the main focus of the film, is the portrayal of all of the people of the village. One of the strengths of the film is exactly this, since all of the cast, led by the great Karel Roden give excellent performances, in spite of the fact that they are all given in what is essentially a war film many may feel they have seen before.
The film is focussed on the dramatic journey of František Šima played by Roden, who despite disappearing through long parts of the film, forms the thread which holds the film together. The opening scene, which takes places shortly before the German invasion, involves a heated exchange followed by a fight between the protagonist and his son in which Šima accidentally stabs and consequently kills his son. The day inevitably marks a turning point in his life. Although his family maintain their support, he lives the following years in prison touching the depths of desperation, only to ultimately discover after his release in the final months of the war that he has become one of the few inhabitants of the war to have survived the Lidice massacre. The sight of Roden in the closing scenes, trying to battle his internal conflict and come to terms with the tragic irony of his fate triggered by the unintentional murder committed years before is one of the high points of the film which remains ingrained in your mind after the final reel.
As mentioned before, overall the film boasts a range of impressive performances: Zuzana Bydzovská in the role of the forgiving wife of Šima and Ondřej Novák as the second son being two examples. The figure of Vaclav, played by Marek Adamczyk is another one which stands out.
Regarding the depiction of the massacre itself, the scenes pack the necessary emotional punch, particularly in the scene in which the children of the village are separated from their mothers who watch in despair while screaming and scratching at whitewashed windows to catch a final glimpse of them. On the other hand, while the film gels as a whole, the pacing is uneven with a first third which takes too long to take off.
Since the film is the umpteenth cinematic representation of a Second World War reprisal it unsurprising that the main ingredient the film lacks is originality. The direction is efficient but anybody with a vast cinematic knowledge will find war film clichės, among which include the Czech who collaborate with the Germans only to end up killing himself in shame. In addtion to this, foreign viewers who unfamiliar with the story of the reprisal, could find themselves disappointed by the fact that the film concentrates more on the Lidice villagers than on the historical event and the subsequent manhunt for the partisans responsible. It is perhaps for this reason that the viewer will not get a sense of the scale of the episode and just how devastating the impact was nationwide.
All the above is not to say that the film misses the mark. To pick an appropriate point of reference, if we try to draw parallels with Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, a film which explores fairly similar territory, we can say the film withstands the comparisons with the film of the great Pole. That said, it does not really add anything new to the genre either. To make another comparison, Defiance, the 2008 American film while flawed, offered us a completely different perspective by destroying the stereotype of the frightened Jew who end up as a martyr. Those however, who expect neither a fresh interpretation of Nazi genocide nor a genre benchmark, but a decent dramatic film which pays homage to those who died in Lidice, will be satisfied. Perhaps it is even unfair to expect more, since it is the first ever Czech film on the subject and this fact alone makes it a film worth watching despite its flaws. Only time will tell if it has what it takes to become the definitive work on the Lidice tragedy.
By Lawrence Formisano