Movie Review: I, Olga Hepnarová

 

I, Olga Hepnarová ** / *****

Directed by: Petr Kazda & Tomás Weinreb.   

Written by: Roman Cílek and Tomás Weinreb and Petr Kazda. 

Starring: Michalina Olszanska (Olga Hepnarová), Martin Pechlát (Miroslav), Klára Melísková (Mother), Marika Soposká (Jitka), Juraj Nvota (Advocate), Martin Finger (Dr. Hronec), Marta Mazurek (Alena).

 

There isn’t much drama to be found in I, Olga Hepnarová, a Czech slice of European art house miserable. It’s a film whose heroine starts out morose and joyless, and pretty much stays there for the entire runtime as we in the audience wait for her to do the horrible thing we all know she’s going to do – which is the whole reason the film got made in the first place. The film is austere to the extreme – going for a Michael Haneke-esque film, but really, it’s just a tour of none stop misery – until the closing scenes, which take a strange turn. There are things to admire – the rigorous, black and white camera work, the committed performance by the lead actress, Michalina Olszanska – but the film just doesn’t add up to much.

 

Its 1970, in Communist Czechoslovakia and Olga Hepnarova is a miserable teenage girl. The film opens with her trying to kill herself, and failing – and her mother criticizing her attempt, saying she needs a stronger will to pull off something like suicide. She’s miserable at home, and will eventually head to a mental hospital of sorts – where she refuses to take part in the other girl’s lesbian experimentation, and finds herself beaten as a result. When she gets out, she moves into her parent’s one room shack, and starts working as a driver. She also starts exploring her sexuality – she is, in fact, a lesbian and she has a series of affairs – none of which that end well. There are several fairly lengthy sex scenes in the movie, but they are shot in the same cold, deadening style as the rest of the movie. The only moment in the film that seems to be a little lighter is one where Olga walks across the dance floor towards her would be lover – with her jacket open, and topless underneath. She seems to be delighted at her provocation – although who she is provoking is a legitimate question (no one seems to be paying her any mind).

 

Olga grows increasingly miserable through the film – and at one point, writes what is essentially her manifesto of misery – where she blames society for bullying her, and forcing her to do what she does. The film is based on a real case, in which Hepnarova gets into her work truck one morning, and drives through a crowd on a sidewalk – killing 8, injuring 12 more – and then immediately giving herself up, and demanding the death penalty.

 

The closing scenes take a weird turn. Throughout the film, Olga has been portrayed as morose, miserable and cold – but entirely rational. Her motives for killing all those people are stupid and juvenile – but the motives of mass killers usually are. In the closing scenes though, it almost seems as if the film has a different view of Hepnarova – and thinks she is legitimately crazy as she heads towards the fate she wanted, and planned for herself.

 

I, Olga Hepnarova has things to admire. I’ll always love black and white films, and the photography here is used to great effect – giving the film a morose, deadening feel to it. You have to admire the performance by Olszanska who commits to playing this terrible person, but as a true believer in her own martyrdom. Yet, watching the film, I never really understood what the filmmakers were trying to say – what was their ultimate point? What perspective do they have on Hepnarova? All they seem interested in is observing, with no perspective, her short, horrible life. What the film is missing, really, is a reason for this story to be told at this time.