Malmkrog is a film-provocation by the Rumanian director Cristi Puiu. In effect, the movie is a dramatized essay about war and religion, designed to be as rebarbative as possible. The movie, which doesn't move, is like a pile of dirt shoveled into the corner of an gallery and labeled art: it's motionless, inert, and irritating, although the work raises serious questions about the nature of artistic form and meaning. I'm happy that such works exist, but, normally, accord them a mere glance and move on to something more interesting Malmkrog, which, perhaps, not surprisingly, won Puiu the Best Director award at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival imposes itself on the viewer for three hours and twenty minutes and, therefore, represents an investment of time far beyond a mere glance. The movie is self-consciously designed to be difficult on every possible level and, therefore, can be acclaimed as having a unique, if relentless, integrity or, perhaps, perversity. Puiu is an exponent of "slow cinema"; his films develop through long sequence shots, sometimes five or ten minutes in duration, often staged so as to be intentionally inexpressive. Some of the director's more accessible films have achieved some degree of international acclaim, most notably The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005). Austere as a theorem by Euclid, Malmkrog involves (mostly) five floridly dressed people standing in chilly-looking rooms and making speeches to one another; sometimes, the speeches slip into a sort of icy, hostile stichomythia -- short assertive and barbed exchanges. The characters don't behave like people, but rather are mouthpieces for certain points of view involving religion and conflict. Mostly, their declamations are delivered from statuesque standing positions. There are no close-ups and, often the speakers are either off-screen or turned away from the camera which rarely moves. The late Victorian rooms in which the (in)action is staged, seem naturally lit with windows over-exposed with wan mid-Winter sunlight and the corners of the premises slipping into grey shadow. In one hour-long sequence, there are huge murals on facing walls, 17th century Dutch engravings showing a densely populous harvest of wheat opposed by a big picture of the Biblical flood. Servants soundlessly glide through the scenes. In some cases, the pictorial composition is designed in depth -- we look through a receding series of doorways into ever more remote rooms where, sometimes, a figure flickers in the pale lightless light. (This effect is like Dutch mannerist paintings.) The action takes place in a chalet in the hills in Transylvania. (I notice reviewers like to observe that the film happens in Transylvania, although as far as I can see, the action could be taking place anywhere in Europe around the first decade of the 20th century.) Mostly, the disputants speak French. There is something decadent about the isolated setting, the lush drawing rooms, and the gorgeously dressed speakers -- it's like Pasolini's Salo but without the orgies. Some writers say that the film's compositions are beautiful -- this is inaccurate; Puiu renounces any type of overt beauty as distracting to the point of the film. In any event, non-French speaking audiences can't really admire the film's appearance because the viewers are too preoccupied with reading the torrent of subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The film is a literal transcription of debate presented by dialogue in an obscure Russian book by an enemy of Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Solovyov;s War, Progress, and the End of History: Three Conversations including a Short Story about the Anti-Christ. Solovyov (1853 - 1900) was a close friend of Dostoevsky, so close, indeed, that it is surmised that he served as a model for one of the brothers Karamazov. Uncompromisingly and ascetic, he died a homeless pauper.
To the extent that Malmkrog has a plot, it is entirely discursive. Therefore, to understand the film, we need to summarize it's arguments. There is a brief prelude, as it were, a shot of a snowy forest under grey skies where we see a dark-clad figure that moves erratically, a bit like a mirage. Someone calls the figure from off-screen, naming the distant person as Zoya. The figure runs toward the right and the camera pans to show a pale, pinkish manor house set on a hill overlooking a far-off ice-covered lake and wooded hills Then, a flock of sheep, probably several hundred, appear from the left and swarm around the house. I don't know if the sheep are intended as a reference to Bunuel or signify the unthinking conformity of most people or are merely a visual frisson. (In Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel guests inexplicably trapped at a post-opera soiree are visited by a flock of sheep;in interviews, Puiu admits the debt to Bunuel.) In the manor house, a dignified older lady is telling a man an anecdote about two religious hermits who traveled to Alexandria where they apparently succumbed to the temptations of the flesh. The woman says that one of the hermits flagellated himself continuously and couldn't escape his oppressive sense of guilt, so much so that believing himself lost (we surmise) he returned to Alexandria's flesh-pots. The lady is about to tell us about the other hermit but is interrupted. A general who has been a house-guest is leaving -- he has a three day trip to some place, a motif that echoes the three days in which the hermits brooded about their sins committed in Alexandria.
The shot changes to a drawing room and a middle-aged woman enters, announcing as a thesis that the "Christ-loving Russian army" had advanced onto the field. The provocative epithet for an army leads to a protracted debate that lasts about one hour. The essence of the debate is whether an army, that is, an instrument of organized violence, can be "Christ-loving". This part of the film is labeled by intertitle Ingrida after the Russian general's wife who leads the conversation and has posed the preliminary question to what seems to be a debating circle of five people, three women and two men. Initially, a young man named Eduoard disputes that Christians can participate in military, organized violence. He makes all the familiar arguments, probably based on Tolstoy's pacifism. (I'm not sure of what exactly he says because I fell asleep for about fifteen minutes during this dialogue.) The General's wife, Ingrida, wishes to clinch her arguments with an example from real life -- she reads for the group a letter received from her husband about a campaign in the Balkans or possibly Armenia. A group of murderous tribesmen, called the Bashi-Bazouks raid a village, murder everyone, and torture people to death. A baby is slow-roasted until the child's eyes melt; the child's mother is tied-up so she has to watch her child's agonizing death -- this is merely one of a series of atrocities that the letter recites. The Russian cavalry with a phalanx of Cossacks pursues the Bashi-Bazouks on their way to massacre the inhabitants of another village. The Bashi-Bazouks are attacked with cannon and cavalry and, despite pleading for mercy, are slaughtered to the last man. This is done in the name of Christ. The Cossacks have to be kept away from the corpses which they will loot. Ingrida compares the violent, rapacious Cossacks to the "good thief" whom Christ blessed on the Cross. Olga, a young woman, argues that the Cossacks are just as bad as the Bashi-Bazouks, the same sort of cruel brigands. Ingrida says that only a fool would fail to make a distinction between looting and roasting babies alive. Olga persists in saying Christ would have pardoned the Bashi-Bazouks (Bashi-Bazouks are Ottoman mercenary irregulars, infamous for their atrocities -- the name means "Damaged Heads" or, something, like "Crazies.') Ingrida now has an ally in the other man (Nikolai). He says that Christ himself couldn't (or wouldn't) use his power to stop Judas or the High Priest. This sets up Ingrida's contention that there is "no middle way" -- one either fights to oppose evil or allows evil to triumph. Compromise with evil is not possible. Bells toll in the distance, reminding us that this debate takes place on Christmas Eve. Soon dinner will be served. Olga faints at the one hour mark and has to be put to bed.
In fact, Puiu engages in a misdirection: extended shots of a maid making a bed don't have anything to do with Olga's syncope. Rather, it turns out that the chalet harbors an elderly, possibly demented, Count, the lord of the household who is bedridden, hemorrhaging, and, apparently, dying. Later, in an interlude designated as II ("Istvan"), we see the old man being bathed, dressed, and carried from this bed that the servant has made to some other place in the house. Olga is absent from the discussions since there is a report that the "Count is bleeding" -- she is probably the old man's daughter or, perhaps, grand-daughter. (And her faint may be due to stress that she is experiencing because of the old man's illness.) Puiu represses establishing information and we don't know the identity of Istvan. In the next section, III ("Eduoard"), an offhand remark informs us that Istvan is the major domo, the foreman of the brigade of servants associated with the country house. In part II, a table is set and the company, now augmented by a sixth person (who is this?) sits at a long table in the dining room. The composition is afflicted by the so-called "Last Supper problem" -- that is, how to depict people sitting around a table: Puiu doesn't solve the problem -- he just has two of his disputants with their backs turned to the camera in the ten minute take that follows. The shot has deep focus, extending from the table into remote rooms. At one point, a little girl appears and runs toward the table only to be stopped by a woman who is pursuing her -- she is, perhaps, the child's governess and there is a brief physical struggle. In this long and inexpressive shot, one of the men tells the story of a man named Miklos who committed suicide because he was excessively polite -- he answered all letters and painstakingly reviewed all books and essays sent to him and was able to bear the burden of his own etiquette only by drinking excessively. (The women, in particular, find this idiotic.) When no longer able to drink, poor Miklos took his own life. The speaker connects the obligation to be polite to personal hygiene -- that is, daily bathing. Then, the topic turns to Miklos' friend, Umberto, a monk and a kind of holy fool. Umberto gave Miklos precepts as to how he should live -- sin 539 times a day, don't repent, abide in God's mercy, and enjoy life, reasonable advice that Miklos obviously didn't accept. The speaker (I couldn't identify him) is about to tell an elaborate anecdote, too long, he admits for the circumstances, but, then, voices are heard outside singing a chorale -- it is, after all, Advent. The six people at the dinner table go outside but the camera doesn't follow them as the singing becomes louder. The rest of part II involves elaborate, if completely opaque, byplay among the servants. Istvan, the boss, berates a serving girl about some tea and, then, orders her to calla butler named Jancsos. The boss makes Jancsos drink the tea -- we suspect it's been poisoned or someone has spit or urinated in it. After Jancsos drinks down the cup of liquid, Istvan hits him twice in the face and says that next time he will be fired. He says the same thing to the cowering serving girl. The servants remove the place-settings at the table and take away the linen. The guests retire out of sight to a drawing room where someone speaking in English praises the benefits of tea. (The servants mostly speak German.) We see the old Count being dressed and bathed.
Section III ("Eduoard") is shot with conventional Hollywood mise-en-scene. The sequence involves a long monologue about the Slavs and Russia's role as a buffer for Europe against Asia. (The Russians are said to have a "deposit" or "sediment" of the Asiatic in their souls.) Eduoard asserts that soon all the world will be European -- even the Tibetans will be "European Tibetans". This will usher in a world of perpetual peace and prosperity. European values must prevail, the speaker says, and he asserts that barbarism is succumbing to European civilization. The camera cuts between speakers and auditors and, sometimes, there is a standard shot-reverse shot approach to the dialogue. The speakers are shot in Plan Americain compositions and so they are readily visible and their features clearly available to the lens. The discussion begins with a topic line: "can the Turks be brought into Europe?" As is the case, the conversation is diverted onto a variety of subjects including the Boer War -- the speaker sides with the British against the Boers who are inadequate representatives (he thinks) of European values -- and the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. All religions are said to have been welcomed and endorsed at the Chicago exposition. The women generally voice opinions in favor of diversity; Eduoard's burden is that, under the leadership of Slavic Russia, all the world will become a European utopia. But there are some sinister portents. On several occasions, we hear a primitive gramophone playing nearby, a sound of tinny, recorded music that the guests can't interpret and that seems uncanny to them. After an extended burst of this offstage sound, we hear loud voices, a quarrel and shouting. The guests rise from the table and run into the adjacent room where chefs in their white aprons and toques are dashing about. Pistol shots ring out and there is gunpowder smoke in the air. The guests are shot and fall to the carpet in this apparent insurrection. The screen fades to black and, then, we see an austere wintry landscape, cold and cheerless, without any light at all, monochrome with a lone figure as in the opening shot, clad in black and vibrating in a kind of Brownian motion in the remote distance. We see other figures appear as two couples in the frozen garden, these people shown in an extreme long shot. The dead guests seem to have been resurrected in this frigid landscape. It's legitimate to wonder exactly where this action is taking place -- are the guests in some sort of Hell or Purgatory? Are they all dead? Have they been dead from the beginning.
A title tells us that the next section is IV ("Nikolai"). We see the dying count hefted on men's shoulders and carried like some kind of moribund emperor through the chalet's rooms. Nikolai, who is developing symptoms of obsession, argues with Olga that progress is illusory. After 1800 years, Christianity has not developed sufficiently to save Judas Iscariot from damnation. Nikolai says that evil is active and a real presence in the world, not merely an absence of the good. During this section, we hear remote atonal singing, listless and off-key. Ingrida, the General's wife, says that the only progress in 1800 years is that the caliber of shells capable of being fired by artillery has increased. The curious aspect of these discussions is that Olga is not present -- nonetheless, Nikolai purports to speak for her and, then, refutes the arguments he makes on her behalf. There is some talk about the Anti-Christ and, when it is announced that dinner is served, one of the company remarks that those who have "turned the other cheek" as required by Gospel have always been murdered.
Section V is entitled "Olga". This sequence is shot fairly conventionally with shot and reverse shot film grammar. The five debaters are now seated at a table and they are served four or five courses by silent servants while the discussion continues. In this part of the film, Nikolai is the main speaker, now addressing Olga directly. She seems completely indifferent to Nikolai's attacks and gazes at him blandly -- either she is supremely confident or brainless. Her responses to Nikolai's increasingly agitated monologues are short and, often, non sequitur. The film implies that there is something going on between Olga and Nikolai that underwrites the frantic vehemence of Nikolai's ripostes. (Perhaps, they have been lovers; or, perhaps, Olga has rejected an erotic invitation made by him.) Nikolai, whom we have thought to be an unbeliever, seems determined that someone show him that he is wrong -- it is as if he is making desperate arguments about evil in the world in the hope that Olga will refute what he says. The discussion revolves around a parable reported in three of the Gospels involving a faithless steward who has been given authority over the Master's vineyard. The steward kills emissaries of the Master sent to check on the vineyard, including, at last, the Master's own son. Olga says that the parable is obviously about the rejection of Jesus by the Jews to whom he had been sent. Olga says the parable doesn't prove much of anything and argues that the core of the Gospel is in the Sermon on the Mount. She asserts that where people behave kindly toward one another and live in peace, the Kingdom of Heaven has been established on Earth. But Nikolai is anxious to show that earthly life is a nightmare over which Evil presides. He says that Evil always prevails and announces a strictly Manichean view of existence -- Evil is co-equal with Good and, for this reason, the world is a battlefield. And since all men die, and death is evil, the power of wickedness prevails in human existence. Olga says that men should do good in accord with their consciences. But Nikolai says that conscience may also be evil or the dictates of an evil Master. Ivan the Terrible did good but was evil himself. Therefore, an Evil Master can encourage Good in the world. This argument seems to actually frighten the five disputants into silence, although they have also finished eating their desserts.
The company adjourns to a drawing room where the characters stand like statues on plinths, located about seven feet from each other. (I question whether this sort of staging suggests that this extended sequence shot was made during COVID and the scene was designed to keep the speakers apart from one another.) This section is called "Madelein" -- which turns out to be the name of the feisty dark-haired woman who responds sometimes cynically to the arguments of the others but, who like Eduoard, doesn't really take sides. Again, Nikolai is the primary interlocutor. He announces that Evil is defeated only by the Resurrection. Further, he reveals that he is staunch believer in a personal resurrection. This is the answer for him as the prevalence of death and evil in the world. Curiously, Olga, who is a rationalist, doesn't believe in a personal resurrection -- she denounces the idea as wishful thinking and myth. At this point, it seems that Olga and Nikolai have changed places with respect to their arguments-- Nikolai is a believer and Olga seems to be a skeptic. Nikolai says that he has in his room a 30 page story about the Anti-Christ written by a monk named Pansophius. (The others remark that Nicolai's room is full of wonders like Ali Baba's cave.) Nikolai departs to get the manuscript that he proposes to read. He walks toward the camera and disappears off-screen. The others discuss the fact that since the 1870's, the light has faded from the world. They means this literally: the light cast by the sun has changed and there is less clarity in what can be seen and the world seems dimmer and less radiant. Olga is not involved in this final colloquy and is not within the frame. Someone says that the world is no longer limpid and that the Devil's tail, a kind of pollution, casts its shadow over everything. With this observation, the screen goes black and the film ends.
I viewed the movie is three sittings and found it tolerable and even interesting. But it's too long for its pay-off which is negligible and, therefore, the movie will not be to most tastes. In interviews, Puiu has said that the film is crammed with small details that rupture continuity or that are otherwise meaningful but that it would take "three viewings" to notice most of these things. Very few people are going to watch this movie three times -- most will not get past the first hour or so. Puiu notes that a framed picture shows the great mathematician Euler and that another picture on the wall shows "The Seven Bridges of Koenigsberg". The mathematical conundrum posed by the seven bridges of Koenigsberg was devised by Euler -- but Puiu doesn't explain what this topological puzzle has to do with the theological and political arguments posed by the film. (The riddle is whether there is a path over the seven bridges that doesn't require any bridge to be crossed twice --- this turns out to be surprisingly profound and complex problem in topology.) Puiu also notes that the story of the Anti-Christ which is part of Solyvyov's source material is about thirty pages and mostly comprised of prophecies that history has proven to be correct -- at least so the director maintains. But he says that instead of filming Nikolai reading the story, he simply depicts it in the revolution that occurs at the end of Section III. In the source material, the lady that Puiu calls Madelein is simply denominated "the Lady". Puiu says that he has named her after Proust's madeleine. But, again, he doesn't explain why Proust is relevant in any way to the movie. Puiu says in interviews that he was a product of materialist Marxist- Leninist education and that he was raised to find ridiculous the piety of his grandparents. But when the Communist regime collapsed Puiu discovered that the only people who had persistently and heroically opposed tyranny in Romania were the Christians many of whom were tortured and killed for their opposition. This fact drove Puiu to read the Russian novel or treatise. And he has read the book many times thereafter, professing a certain obsession with it. The picture looks realistic on the surface, but it's obviously not documentary in any respect and the events portrayed could not occur in reality -- no one could be so continuously eloquent and listeners would not be so patient as shown in the film. The people in the movie behave as if enchanted and the chalet is a domain of fantasy, an idealized setting where ideas of the sort raised by the film can be endlessly, if fruitlessly, debated. The movie begins with an anecdote promised but not told and ends with Nikolai venturing off-screen to find a manuscript that we will not see him read. (/And, in between, someone promises an anecdote that is never stated.) The film seems to suggest that debate on the subjects of religious and political violence, good and evil, and the meaning of death are by definition interminable and can not be brought to any conclusion. Nikolai"s argument that Evil is only defeated if we are personally resurrected seems dramatized when everyone is shot and, then, appears unscathed as if the violent insurrection never occurred in the first place. But it's unclear what sort of resurrection is intended here since the intervening shots are icy and geometric and look like out-takes from Last Year at Marienbad. And the fact that somewhere in the house, the old Count is bleeding to death doesn't exactly provide solace to the viewer.
I've watched the movie so that you don't have to. Probably, this is the sort of indeterminate film in which every viewer extracts his or her own, necessarily incomplete, meaning.
