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Ján Sverák’s foreign-language Oscar-winning film Kolya (Czech Republic, 1996) is central to understanding the tensions marking Europe’s migratory dynamics of the post-Cold War period.

The film is set just before the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The protagonist, Louka, is a middle-aged cellist based in Prague. His career has been adversely affected by the defection of his brother to the West, and he is relegated to playing at funerals and trying to make ends meet in various other industrious ways. He genuinely hates the Russians, who have been occupying the country since 1968, but agrees to a marriage of convenience to a Russian woman who seeks to migrate (especially as he will be able to get a car out of the deal). Soon after the wedding, however, the new wife continues migrating westward on to Germany, leaving behind her five year old son. Louka is stuck with Kolya, of whom he must reluctantly take care.

In the key sequence of the film, Louka arrives home with the boy and is intercepted on the staircase by his landlady who insists that he displays the Czech and Soviet flags to mark the anniversary of the Soviet victory in WWII, a request with which Louka grudgingly complies.

The hanging of the flags triggers a discussion between Louka and Kolya (conducted in Czech and Russian and relying on word-play mischief) about which one of the flags they prefer, the Soviet or the Czechoslovak one, with Kolya referring to the red flag as ‘ours’ and the Czech one as ‘yours’. The exchange takes place while Louka is kneeling down to untie the boy’s shoes and pull up his socks – symbolically, bending in front of the little Russian (a symbolic bow in front of the colonizer) — while simultaneously mumbling disparaging comments over the Soviet empire-type presence in the Czech Republic and deploring the his fellow-Czechs, whose lives are controlled by the Soviets.

Normally, all exchanges on topics related to Soviets, flags, and loyalties would be heavily ideologically charged and therefore dangerous. Given the fact that Louka’s dissident statements are made in front of an innocuous boy, however, one cannot take them seriously. For this scene, the fearsome Homo Sovieticus is turned into a diminutive boy whose socks need pulling up. In a way, Kolya is as much a Russian invader as the Soviet military in Prague. Yet in the film this presence is no longer dreaded and not even mocked, but related to in a condescendingly friendly and even fatherly manner.

Up until then, Louka’s anti-Soviet remarks would only be whispered and could badly endanger him. In Kolya, however, the daunting colonizing shadow of the Soviets has vanished, and Louka is faced with a diminutive innocuous lad in need of assistance. The trepidation with which people in the Soviet Bloc lived for decades is derided. The condescending friendly gesture of Louka’s fixing Kolya’s socks allegorically celebrates the emancipation of those oppressed by the Soviets. In the context of 1989, the overbearing Soviet presence has evaporated, the (Soviet) occupier is substituted by a fragile (Russian) human being, and liberated East Central Europeans can finally behave as themselves and act as generous and friendly people.

The underlying postcolonial dynamism may not be overtly manifested, yet can easily be revealed in the process of closer analysis, especially in films featuring migrants that have been set on the move as a consequence of the radical social shifts of 1989. Kolya, for one, discloses subtle postcolonial tensions by modifying yesterday’s Soviet coloniser into a youngster who simply cannot be loathed or defied but should instead be taken care of. On the other hand, yesterday’s exploited colonial subjects, one of which is the Czech Louka, can no longer stand proudly against the coloniser. They are expected to take up the unsolicited opportunity to make dependable fatherly decisions to ensure the coloniser’s wellbeing, a newly acquired authority that they do not even know what to do with.

© Dina Iordanova
11 July 2008

Tags: Central European Film, Czech cinema, European cinema, Post-communist cinema

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 11:22 pm and is filed under East Central European cinema, European cinema. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.