User reviews

'The Painted Bird' (2019) by Czech director Václav Marhoul is a very difficult film to evaluate. On the one hand, from a cinematic point of view, it is one of the remarkable performances we have seen in recent years - impeccably technical, with many interesting innovations that serve the narrative and messages of the film. It is a film about the Holocaust, an inexhaustible historical and human theme, and more precisely about the destiny of a child in those terrible times - so a story of those with which viewers identify emotionally. Here, however, the issue of this construction also appears. The series of horrors that pervade the screen hardly coexists with the inevitable sensitivity of the spectators when it comes to children's fates on screen. The film is an indictment against a war-torn dehumanised Europe, cruel or at best indifferent to the fate of children separated from their parents by the brutality of war, witnesses and often even victims of the most terrible torture and abuse. There is a complicated history around the film, which adds complexity to the whole edifice and makes it even more difficult to appreciate this film which is both difficult to watch and impossible to ignore as cinematic value and message.

Joska, the main hero, is a Jewish boy on the verge of adolescence, maybe 10-11 years old, who is sent by his parents to an aunt living in a distant place to be saved from deportation. The aunt dies suddenly and the boy embarks alone on a journey home through war-torn Central Europe. On the way he will meet different people, traumatised and impoverished by war. Few will help him, most will exploit, hit, humiliate him. The horrors he will witness and the trials this boy goes through are extreme - from violence and slavery to torture, rape and sexual perversions. Almost the entire repertoire of human cruelty is present in this film. Under these conditions, the boy is in danger to lose his humanity, his sense of good and evil, his appreciation of the value of life, and his identity. Is it still possible for him to recover and return to a normal life after individual traumas of such intensity and proportions? The elliptically beautiful final leaves this question open.

The Europe described by Václav Marhoul contains enough historical hints that allow to locate the story in the film in time in 1944-1945, the last years of World War II, but at the same time many of the scenes take place in a rural setting that could belong to any of the historical periods when Europe was torn apart by wars from the Middle Ages to the present day. Geographical area is treated similarly. The novel that inspired the film is written (in English) by the Polish Jerzy Kosinski, but the producers of 'The Painted Bird' made efforts to avoid a precise location, up to inventing a hybrid language that is used by the villagers in the film, language which combines Czech, Slovak and Polish spoken in central Europe. The cinematography signed by Vladimír Smutný is remarkable, using aesthetically and expressively black and white and the widescreen format of some of Ingmar Bergman's famous films. Much of the film's burden lies on the shoulders of child actor Petr Kotlár, who does not say a word throughout the film, but whose eyes are witnesses to the horrors outside and the suffering inside. The rest of the cast includes a consistent series of portraits, very well made, with realism and naturalism, and played mostly by Czech actors whom we do not know, but also with a few exceptions of celebrities such as Stellan Skarsgård or Harvey Keitel, excellently integrated. As in the masters' films, 'The Painted Bird' is divided into episodes, each bearing the names of some of the human or inhuman people that Joska encounters on his way. Kosinski's novel aroused controversy similar to that now aroused by the film, due to the accumulation of extreme scenes of violence and sex, but also because what was originally presented and promoted as an autobiographical story proved to be rather a synthesis of stories, gathered disparately from the testimonies of several survivors who lived the Holocaust in childhood. In a world where direct witnesses are almost non-existent and where deniers are making their voices heard louder and louder, even works of fiction such as the book and film 'The Painted Bird' must be credible. It is not the description of the extremes that seems problematic to me, but rather their gathering in a single biography. Lack of credibility also harms the emotional involvement of viewers. The temporal and geographical generalisation introduced in the film solves, I think, only partially this problem.

To be honest I had my doubts about this movie before watching it. A Czech black and white movie that is almost three hours long, it didn't look appealing to me, but after watching it I'm glad to admit I was wrong having those prejudices. The cinematography is stunning, certainly one of the best black and white movies I ever watched. Every shot is well thought of, beautiful work with the contrasts and shadows, dark images that fit perfectly with the very hard story. I get it that some viewers will hate it, it's not an easy movie to watch and not everybody is able to digest some of the brutal scenes. Personally I wasn't really bothered by it, it's just a movie, and those images contributed perfectly to the story. It's a story about constant abuse, the hard reality for some kids, whether you like it or not the war wasn't a nice period to live in, certainly not for a Jewish abandoned kid. Petr Kotlár did a stunning job playing his character, and even if there's not much talking in The Painted Bird you still get drawn into the story, mostly due to the excellent cinematography but also because of that very well chosen cast. Most of the actors are unknown to me, most of them look like they had a hard life (it changes from the usual goodlooking Hollywood actors we're normally bombarded with). Their faces showed the despair, the anger, the evil that was present in every character. If you watch this movie you will come to the conclusion there are no nice people in The Painted Bird. Beside the unknown cast I was surprised to see some very well known actors like Harvey Keitel, Stellan Skarsgård and others. They had smaller roles but were effective, and even if I doubt Harvey Keitel manages to speak Czech it looked all natural. The Painted Bird was a nice surprise to me, never expected that, but it's certainly not for everybody as the cruelty drips from every scene in this movie.

A young Jewish boy and the extreme abuse (quite hideous, alarming at times) and suffering inflicted upon him during WWII by some exceptionally evil and wicked people; slightly loses traction with a few too many frying pan fire cycles to emphasise the point, a shocking experience nonetheless, albeit a very long one. Whether the world still needs this kind of stylisation of the effects of war remains debatable, as does its impact on the memories and emotions already formed over so many years and by so many.

This is like a gift giver that just keeps on giving. Never once throughout the almost three hour run time was I bored. I was captivated from the very first minute right up until the final fade out.

We follow a young Jewish boy trying to survive amidst the chaos of World War II. His luck is horrible and he is subjected to a series of abuses and abusers.

Stay with him, the Painted Bird pays off and will linger in your mind long after you've seen it.

9/10

It's an eastern european movie at its core: raw, uncompromising, brutal, dim, hopeless and honest.

Brutality actually lead to several people leaving the screening I attended to at Venice 76. Here, this movie was labeled as '14+' but I believe it can be easily rated NC-17. The brutality of this movie includes some very graphic gore (although it's mostly present in the first half of the movie) and sexual-related violence (mostly implied but persistent throughout the film). I believe that, as of on-screen depiction of violence, this film probably outranks Schindler's List (although It isn't as vast scaled as Spielberg's film).

Stylistically, this film uses mostly the visual medium rather than conversations to provide information to the viewer. Dialogue becomes secondary at a point where the main character maybe utters a couple of lines throughout the movie, and some of the characters he meets with are entirely silent (Skasgard's character, for example).

The film has a very precise structure: it is made up of 8 chapters, each entitled after a character that the kid meets with, and each chapter reaches a moment when the screen fades to black. After that, a sort-of connective sequence displays the events that lead the kid to change his whereabouts. Among the characters he meets, the audience might recognize Alexander Skasgard, but also Harvey Keitel (in an entirely czech-speaking role) as well as Barry Pepper and german actor Udo Kier.

I wouldn't say that The Painted Bird is a holocaust or ww2 movie, or better, it isn't only that. Thematic elements that relate to either the Holocaust or the War, with the exception of a german plane seen early on, come up only after around one hour in-movie. Before that, whatever happens is mostly related to a strongly rural and superstitious society.

The Painted Bird pays implicit homage to several Eastern European films. The opening sequence mimics the one seen in Jan Nemec's "Diamonds of the Night", a lot of settings remind Elem Klimov's "Come and See" and Tarkovsky's "Ivan's Childhood", the overall fatalist tone reminds strongly of Bela Tarr's films.

It is an outstanding accomplishment, and I sincerely hope that this movie, despite its graphic content, receives enough recognition.

Greetings again from the darkness. Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosinski's 1965 novel "The Painted Bird" has one of the strangest and most controversial histories of any book. Initially celebrated as an extraordinary piece on the Holocaust era, the novel was banned in Poland, and author Kosinski was accused of falsifying claims of it being an autobiographical work. Later he was accused of plagiarism for this book and his 1970 book "Being There" (adapted into a 1979 movie starring Peter Sellers). This story of a young Jewish boy, abandoned by his parents and traveling the Eastern Europe countryside during WWII, is now accepted as a blend of fiction and his friend (director) Roman Polanski's experiences. Czech filmmaker Vaclav Marhoul has turned the book into a stunning viewing experience.

First time actor Petr Kotlar is extraordinary as the unnamed (until the end) Jewish boy on a journey that might be entitled Dante's Circle of Abuse or Homer's Odyssey of Misery. This is a young boy in need of kindness from strangers, but unable to find much. The film opens with the boy running through the woods carrying what appears to be his pet ferret. He's being chased by a group of sadistic Anti-Semite bullies. It's a chase that doesn't end well. We learn the boy is living with his "Auntie" Marta (Nina Sunevic) on her rundown farm, and we intuit that his parents thought he would be safer here than with them. When the woman dies suddenly and unexpectedly, the boy accidentally burns the house down, kicking off his walk across the countryside. Almost inexplicably, this is the most upbeat segment of the film.

Director Marhoul divides the film into 9 chapters, each named after the person the boy meets and lives with temporarily. I'll recap the following eight chapters with a focus on not giving away too much ... just know that this film is unrelenting in its brutality and bleakness. After Marta's death, the boy stumbles into a village where he is considered cursed and labeled a vampire. The witch doctor Olga (Ala Sakalova) enslaves him until he escapes down river, where he is rescued by a mill worker. The head miller (Udo Kier) is a frightening man who takes exception with his worker (not the boy) gazing lustfully at his wife. Kier's eyes manage to burn right through the black and white film, and soon he turns exceedingly violent towards his wife and the worker, leaving us with an unforgettable visual.

The boy then finds himself at the home of Lekhi (Lech Dyblik) who captures wild birds and regularly hooks up with Ludmila (Jitka Cvancorova), a wild woman who lives in the forest. The boy witnesses two horrific deaths, but not before the sequence which gives the film its title and ensures we understand what happens to outcasts - those who are different. At about the one hour mark, the boy finds an injured horse and walks it into the local village. It's at this point where we hear him speak (kind of) for the first time. A violent Russian invasion of the village results in the Cossacks offering the bound and gagged Jewish boy to the German soldiers as a "gift". Stellan Skarsgard is the veteran soldier who draws the assignment of taking the boy into the woods to shoot him.

When the soldier sends him on his way, a sickly Catholic Priest (Harvey Keitel) takes the boy under his wing and trains him to be an altar boy. All is fine until a parishioner (Julian Sands) with despicable intentions agrees to take the boy in and provide for him. This segment has what may be the most cringe-inducing death scene in the film, after which we find the boy trudging through snow and falling through ice, and crawling towards a cabin where Labrina (Julia Valentova) and a sickly old man live. The boy faces more abuse as he's incapable of pleasing Labrina, which leads to situations he's much too young to understand. Traumatized, the boy's personality takes a turn.

In his next village, an attack by Germans puts the boy in contact with Russian sniper Mitka (Barry Pepper), who leaves him with the real life advice of, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth." Having only recently lost his innocence, the advice hits home for the boy. He ends up in an orphanage where a surprise occurs that causes the boy to lash out in anger ... at least until he observes something that makes him understand the world has been cruel to others, not just him.

Normally, I wouldn't recap or outline the segments of a movie in this manner, but it's crucial to understand what you are about to watch. It's a nearly 3 hour epic of human cruelty and survival instinct. Young Petr Kotlar spends much of the movie taking and witnessing abuse while his face is near emotionless (save for a couple of extremes). Joy is elusive, if not non-existent. The film shows us not all Holocaust horrors occurred in death camps. The atrocities of war and the cruelty of humans result in a film that is beyond bleak at times, but also makes a clear point about how differently people treat those not "like" us, regardless who the "us" is. This point is as evident today as it was during WWII.

Director Marhoul excels in showing, rather than telling ... there is almost no 'telling' throughout the film. Cinematographer Vladimir Smutney makes expert use of the 35mm black & white film to provide images that are stark and brutal like the world the boy sees. The Production Design from Jan Vlasak puts us right in the muck, while the Sound from Jakub Cech is crucial to every scene.

The film is a joint project of Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine, as Poland refused to participate. It had quite the festival run last year, including some high profile walk-outs during the Venice Film Festival. It's one of the rare movies that every cinephile is thankful to have seen, yet as human beings, we would likely never want to watch again. Murder, abuse, suicide, torture, bestiality, rape, violence, cruelty, slaughter, pedophilia, incest, war atrocities ... these aren't topics we typically seek out, and they thankfully aren't topics that all show up in a single movie very often! There are a few moments of compassion if you watch closely, but mostly it's a reminder of the cruelty of humans when the structure of society collapses, and hope is hard to come by. As Edwin Starr sang in his number one hit in 1970, "War, good God. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing."

I am totally blown away by the sensitivities of audiences that go see Marvel movies where everything is blown up and destroyed and that's exciting but when a real art film comes out and it shows rapes other things that are difficult to watch but important to the plot and it's freak out time Because of this so-called PC correctness acting is forgotten everything is real and it's not it's not real it's made to look real so that you understand what the director and perhaps the screen writer and author is trying to say this is not a holocaust film per se the author did not even intend it to be 100% that it's a film depicting how life can unfurl in certain times of bleak history and how that can actually rebirth into a tale of man's every day existence The "violence" is necessary to relate the story.

Heavy. It's a series of chapters displayed by a photography both stunning and merciless. Human beings here are foundamentally cruel (with a couple of exceptions) and cruelty flows from the oppressor to the oppressed. The movie reminds us about that. The ending has being discussed, but I think that, just maybe, the protagonist can still hope for a better future.

Vaclav Marhoul's film of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "The Painted Bird" has already been described as one of the great films about the horrors of war and with a child at its centre has drawn comparisons with both "Ivan's Childhood" and "Come and See" but this terrible film, (terrible in its depiction of the terrors our young hero endures), surpases them both in some ways though many will find it an almost unendurable watch. The setting is Eastern Europe, the period sometime during World War Two and The Boy, (nameless throughout and superbly played by young Petr Kotlar), is the child literally abandoned with nothing and forced to survive in the harshest of landscapes.

He's an infant Candide in the worst of all possible worlds and each encounter he makes is more terrible than the one before. Sometimes, and perhaps mercifully, these encounters are so extreme as to transcend reality. Surely nothing 'real' could be quite as awful as this and while we may be in the middle of the 20th century these people and this landscape is positively medieval. Shot in luminous black and white by Vladimir Smutny the film does indeed have a terrible beauty; this is one of the most visually arresting black and white films ever made and it is one of the most effective of horror films with a bleakness that is certainly overpowering.

A plethora of 'named' actors, (Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgard, Harvey Keitel, Julian Sands, Barry Pepper), may be there to give the film international appeal but outside of a select art-house audience I can never seen this being 'popular'. There's only so much misery a person can take and, at close to three hours, the horrors of "The Painted Bird" seem neverending.

I'd been excited about this film for many months. No cinema near me could show it as most were closed due to Covid-19, and I then read it would be going straight to sales and streaming. I don't like streaming so, I bought the Blu-ray. The day it came I watched it that evening, and I couldn't look away. Most of you will look away at certain scenes, but I encourage you to try and endure it. The film is another look at the horrors and affects of WWII on Eastern Europe, with a small, almost completely voiceless boy at the centre of it all. He literally walks from place to place and meets the most horrendous people, some of whom are nice to him, and some who are really not.

Jerzy Kosinski wrote The Painted Bird in 1965, and apparently said it was autobiographical, but it was later determined that it was a fictional story. So, don't take this as a true story, though I have no doubt that some of the horrific or similar things you see in the film more than likely were happening to somebody.

The film is shot totally on black and white and looks beautiful. I've watched it three times now. I don't know how, it's a tough watch. But worth it.

I can't say on here what hasn't already been said, so I'll keep it brief: Cinematography? Beautiful, Story? Not so much. Dialogue? Nope, Violence and cruelty? Off the scale. Just don't watch it on a date.

I couldn't get into this one. Comparing this to other films about kids experiencing the horrors of war, it can't help but pale to "Come and See", but every war film I've seen does, so I won't hold that against this film. What I will hold against it though is how cold I was left throughout it. In spite of how much misery the boy experiences and witnesses in the film (physical abuse, rape, suicide, animal cruelty, pedophilia, bestiality, antisemitism, etc.), the impact it had on him remained too vague for those scenes to stick with me in any lasting way. A lot of this falls on Kotlár since neither his acting nor his physical appearance make any changes throughout the film. Rather, he just keeps the same blank expression on his face and looks the same at the end of the film as he does in the opening. Even the retaliation angle in the second half of the film, while it's one of the more promising elements of the film, didn't click with me as well as it could've due to the reasons listed above. Technically speaking though, the movie is pretty good. Some of the larger-scale gunfights looked cool and, in spite of what I said up above, a couple of the disturbing scenes left a decent impact on me (that's to be expected with a movie like this though). Also, while fair criticisms could be made that the black and white photography looks too pretty and doesn't pair well the disturbing content shown in the film, I enjoyed how it created a contrast between the two. Finally, it was also cool to see Aleksei Kravchenko (star of the aforementioned "Come and See") in this film, perhaps as a nod to the film. Overall though, the film sort of just came and went and was pretty forgettable.

I don't have a lot to to add to the many excellent reviews here, but I'll point out a salient feature that struck me: Silence.

The film largely proceeds with sparse dialogue. The protagonist, played by the remarkable Petr Kotlár (with only one film to his credit), rarely speaks or even acknowledges questions with a nod or a shake of his head. His dark eyes tell and reveal nothing - they're even interpreted as those of a vampire by a village shaman - yet still quietly convey to us something deep.

Without a distracting soundtrack, the film proceeds with quiet, muted (i.e., black and white) landscapes and horrors. Silence is almost always broken with violence (which there is a lot of, but none is gratuitous) or grief. Even when we learn the boy's name, it's not from being spoken.

That's the surface story. The deeper story is one of abuse and violence by cloistered villages and isolated, deeply-troubled, and suffering individuals. Their acquiescent silence makes them complicit in the monstrosity of humans not only during the war, but in their ordinary lives - an indictment of the human condition overall.

I can't recommend this film enough, even for reasons beyond my interpretation. It's a troubling film, but a must-watch.

I was skeptical at first. In today's arthouse cinema, a trend can be observed that is becoming increasingly popular. A number of films in recent years basically offer a best-of the most beautiful frames of film classics without managing to tell anything profound with it; in the worst cases, this is then also linked to extensive references to all sorts of psycho analysis, mythology etc. (The Lighthouse would be the ultimate example). I am critical of this trend. Through their knowledge of film history, directors like Robert Eggers have become imitators, they work like curators whose only task is to compile the greatest works they are aware of. These approach results in overloaded yet empty works. The important thing in art, though, is to copy no one. Films are not great because they are "like Bergman", "like Tarkovsky", or because they embody all kinds of C. G. Jung theories, but because they find unique ways in using the medium to throw their insights about the world to the screen or - even better - pose important questions.

I was expecting the same with The Painted Bird. And indeed, at many points the film seems to only refer back to great classics; there are some more than obvious Andrei Rublev references; some very obvious Marketa Lazarová references; the scene where the boy is running away from the German soldier Hans is a clear adaption of several similar scenes that have become trademark shots of Hungarian director Miklós Jancsó; and not least, director Václav Marhoul has copied Kurosawa's effective way of making backgrounds dynamic with blowing dust. Marhoul clearly knows his craft, but his urge to copy his role models weakens the impact of the truly overwhelming masterpiece that The Painted Bird is.

In some reviews, it sounds as if the film was an utter exploitation film, letting brutalities follow cruelties follow abominations. The opposite is true. The Painted Bird is extremely disciplined in deciding what to show and what not; with a Bressonian rigor it only shows the absolute essentials necessary to understand the action. What is so hard to endure while seeing this film is not the brutality of the image, but the radicality of art one is exposed to. Nothing in this film invites you to commiserate; just like Bresson's Balthazar you don's actually see the boy suffer at any moment (his appearance is neutral throughout the whole film, and no stylistic device such as music, use of slow motion etc. tries to achieve an "immersive" effect for the viewer). In many ways, this film corresponds to Brecht's alienation effect: the whole action is presented in such a way that the audience is hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances is meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, in the audience's subconscious. The effect is intensified by the peculiarly non-natural way everybody speaks, using a Slavic Esperanto, "Interslavic".

In this regard, The Painted Bird is the absolute opposite of Come and See. Come and See wants to reach the viewer's affects and emotions, its lurid and sensational approach has rightly led to criticism. The Painted Bird, the much more mature of those two films, wants to reach the viewer's intellect; in the end, it is a deeply human film, reminding every viewer that they are able to SEE what humaneness is, even if the film itself is cold and does nothing to affect the viewer's emotions.

In terms of plot and shocking sequences it reminded me a lot of the classic Come And See. Both films tell the story of a young man that tries to survive the horrors of WW2 in Eastern Europe. But Painted Bird is a lesser film because it's cinematography and big Hollywood names in the cast. Although the cinematography is stunning and the big stars do a decent job, these does give the film a more glamorized feeling which does not fit the overall tone and subject matter.

A million ways to abuse a jewish child in east Europe through the events of WWII. Maybe this would be the plot summary this movie needs. Its been a month i saw this movie at the very first screening in Venice and ... oh man... this movie is really unique. I never saw anything like this movie. It will take all your energy and after three hours of horror-rollercoaster you will sit there and ask yourself: What did i just watch? Did you just watch one of the most beautiful and solid cinematography of this year? Yes, you did. Did you just sit there 3 hours and experienced more disgusting horror you can take? Oh yes, you did. Do you want to watch this movie again? No way! Are you happy you experienced it? Yes, you did.

For me it is a movie every cineast has to see, because it will be a mark to reach for every european war movie thats coming. Yes, it will go down in history as the movie, that made half of the audience leave, but the other half has a story to tell and every other person will experience their own story of leaving people by watching this movie. What i most like about this movie: You can talk about it for hours and hours, and although it was not my favorite movie in Venice, it is the one i like to talk about the most.

Go and Watch it! And after you did: Never do it again...

Too be honest, you have to be a tough person or sado-maso to endure almost three hours torture. Those too much horrible scenes I haven't seen since Lordan Zafranovic's movies "Pad Italije" and "Okupacija u 26 slika". It is very difficult to look at some of them and even sometimes you will close your eyes, because you don't want to see a bad things. On the other hand, photography is perfectly done and it is the fact why you will stay to watch it.

I had already read the 1965 novel THE PAINTED BIRD, and it most certainly stuck with me, so when I heard a film adaptation was coming out, I HAD to see it. I'm not sure if any of you have seen Asia Argento's film adaptation of JT Leroy's THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS (starring the Sprouse twins) - this is basically the same movie, only it takes place with a Jewish boy during World War II rather than during contemporary times in America. It's like that movie at it's core but then mixed the aesthetics and vibes of, like, Schindler's List, and sometimes it even feels a bit like The Witch. In summary, it's about an orphaned boy wandering aimlessly trying to find a proper caretaker for himself but every single adult who takes him in is an evil person who abuses the child one way or another. Clearly, the relentlessness of the subject matter and the commitment to world-building entirely around it causes a lot of people (most people really) to despise both of these movies. However, it is clear to me that these were created as cathartic pieces of art - though it's doubtful that this ever happened this relentlessly to any child, by so many different people, it is POSSIBLE, but that's irrelevant because the film functions as a surrealist interpretation of the aloneness, the helplessness, and the inescapable claustrophobia that some children do feel as they struggle to find the footing in their developmental existence. The 3-hour runtime does cause the film to feel a bit redundant at points, but that's really the movie's only flaw, and in the end it's a rewarding viewing - all of the performances are dynamic, brave, and many of them are frightening or at the very least jarring. There are are small roles from Harvey Keitel, Barry Pepper, and a very important actor to me, Julian Sands - in probably his creepiest appearance ever. The environments and cinematography are both impressive - gorgeous but effectively bleak to match the tone. What it comes down to is that this is a beautiful film about the ugliest thing. It's not for everyone - just looks at the reviews, you could say "people hate it" - that's what the reviews show, but the truth is there is a lot to marvel at and praise here. People just can't handle certain levels of darkness in art. The most interesting part of all of this is that both books THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS and THE PAINTED BIRD were originally marketed as autobiographical memoirs when they found success, then both were shunned when it was revealed that they were actually entirely fictional. THE PAINTED BIRD is the original HEART IS DECEITFUL - I just never realized it until now. Take from that what you will.

Although a compelling story no matter how depraved. The animal cruelty is just horrendus.

"The Painted Bird" (2019 release from the Czech Republic; 169 min.) brings the story of a young (Jewish, we later learn) boy, never mentioned by name and simply known as "the Boy". As the movie opens, the Boy is running in the woods holding a pet, only to be brutally attacked by other boys, who also burn his pet alive. The Boy returns to home, home being a remote place with his aunt somewhere in Eastern Europe in the late stages of WWII. When his aunt dies (and he accidentally sets the place on fire), he is forced to find his way, but to where? This is the start of a long journey. At this point we are less than 15 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this is the big screen adaptation of the book of the same name. I haven't read the book, so I cannot comment how closely the film sticks to the book. To say that the book, and now the film, have been controversial would be the understatement of the year. The film is brought in chapters, each called for the person(s) in care of the young boy, maybe 9 or 10 years old: "Marta" (his aunt) start things off. The first hour of the movie is surreal and shocking on many levels, as the boy endures cruelty upon cruelty, Along the way we also watch animal cruelty, spousal abuse, and worse. Cheerier times are far away. Yet as we endure this, we also become strongly attached to the survival journey and fate of the boy: what will become of him? The movie is shot entirely in B&W, reflecting the gloomy atmosphere of remote Eastern Europe. There are some spectacular acting performances, none more so than the boy who plays the Boy, but also keep your eye out for Harvey Keitel, yes THE Harvey Keitel, playing a priest who takes the Boy under his wings for a while. BEWARE: there are a number of disturbing scenes in the film, and to say that this isn't for the faint of heart would be the understatement of the year. Yet if you can handle it, you are in for a WILD and moving but bleak tale of a young boy's WWII survival drama, the likes of which you surely haven't seen before.

"The Painted Bird" premiered to controversy and critical acclaim at the same time at last Fall's Venice Film Festival. It opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and I couldn't wait to see it. The theater is adhering strictly to CDC guidelines in this COVID-19 pandemic. Not that it mattered as the Friday early evening screening where I saw this at turned out to be a private screening, as in: I was literally the only person in the theater. If you are in the mood for a grim and bleak but extraordinary tale of what trying to survive WWII might've looked like for a young Jewish boy, I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (if you can), on VOD, or on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

The smeared bird is like an expelled individual. The most uncomfortable movie in the whole history! ! ! God and man are angry! Comparable to "Lake Eden"! Why is the little boy Joska so miserable! ! ! Repeatedly touching all kinds of bad guys in the world, suffering from the evil of the world, tortured by hell. The heavy black and white images make the blood look like flowing oil stains, and the feces are also weakened by the dirty feeling.

Having finally seen Václav Marhoul's talked about THE PAINTED BIRD, I can't help but feel quite disappointed by an eventually pretentious film that neither justifies its reputation nor its overblown runtime.

First of all, THE PAINTED BIRD lacks any real depth. It spends almost three hours showcasing a young Jewish boy's journey through an unspecified region in Eastern Europe during World War II, but there is absolutely no impact to the severe change the protagonist goes through as the film maintains an irritating distance to this character from the beginning. I also found the lack of any historical foundation and a sense of time increasingly annoying - the war basically acts as a mere backdrop to a series of cruel scenarios with lots of misplaced cameos.

The extreme violence somehow manages to be completely ineffective and mostly comes off as voyeuristic, nihilistic and at times even unintentionally comical. While I appreciated some of Marhoul's decisions and casting choices throughout the film (the scene with the young woman in her shack or the appearance of Aleksey Kravchenko f. e.), others felt completely out of place and contradictive to the bleak and serious tone - namely the use of the Wilhelm scream during a village raid and the casting of Barry Pepper as a sniper (*wink* *wink*). The film also contains a lot of scenes with characters being silent for no reason other than it trying to be contemplative and artsy.

Despite those harsh words, THE PAINTED BIRD is not a terrible film. But it's also in no way noteworthy and most of the time just try-hard filmmaking that is far from genre masterpieces like Elem Klimov's COME AND SEE.