MARCH 21, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 7

I feel like I'm lying on an empty floor. It's cold and hard and it hurts my shoulder blades a little. I try to roll onto my side, but my belt digs into my hip and the rivets in my jeans dig in for good measure. I've been knocked down there, I think. No, I went there voluntarily. Nothing seems injured, nothing physical anyway. I'm doubting everything except that I know it's uncomfortable down here. Yet when I roll back to lie face up again and examine the swirling pattern in the ceiling paint, the floor seems a little less cold and a little less painful. It's refreshing but it still hurts. The pleasure comes by contrast to the pain, however minor, as it always does, but it has never been so palpable when it puts you in a barren room and leaves you wondering how you got there. Milos Forman's film, Loves of a Blonde, reminds us of these moments where we think the pain is in discomfort, but really the pain is in knowing what brought us here.

Life always seems more exciting on film. The economy of storytelling allows us to skip the "boring" moments and propel us ever forward. Few filmmakers dwell on the moments between action. Few filmmakers show their characters in the monotony of sitting, of traveling, of waiting. There is a human experience in each of these instances, however, all of which get passed off and tossed aside for the sake of speed. Drama can be in the quiet moments of deep thought. They can be humorous, endearing, painful, and a shot never has to be fired for us to be anxious or excited. Loves of a Blonde is a study of these moments in quiet desolation and personal devastation.

Andula, a girl from a factory town, goes to a dance put on for the military soldiers on leave. While the film centers on this girl, much of it steps away from her to deal with the universal awkwardness of courting. Three plain-looking soldiers try, and try hard, for the affections of Andula and her two friends at the dance, but so much stands in their way. Their boorish behavior is the key factor as they sit for an uncomfortably long time in an uncomfortably empty dance hall, waiting in near-desperation for the skeptical girls to return from the bathroom. Self-preservation underscores their debates as the men squabble about leaving, about staying, about how to take advantage of them, about everything but how to get over their collective loneliness.

They'll wait them out, they seem to decide, and we realize that this is a microcosm of dating's failed attempts. The persistence hunt is a trial of endurance, but so often it is a pursuit of folly. Here, the men can't give up on all they've invested- time, money for liquor, the difficulty they went through to even get the girls to sit with them for so long, and an evening to forget their solitude. So, they keep pursuing. Their loud, oafish debating is endearing and funny. This humor, shaded in the sad realities of life, informs the bittersweet tone that is indicative of Forman's style, and the lasting impression of Czech New Wave as a whole.

The movement in the 1960s was varied in tone and subject matter, and should never be whitewashed. The Academy-recognized and Criterion-promoted American imports of Milos Forman and Jiri Menzel lead us to assume that the entirety of the Czech New Wave is characterized by this hushed and tender comedic style. This may be the lasting impression here, but the true common thread was filmmakers' subversion of the controlling Czech government. Like Menzel's Closely Watched Trains, most authority figures, the three soldiers included, are depicted as inept, simple-minded, but woefully good-intentioned. In Loves of a Blonde, the soldiers send a bottle of wine to the wrong table of girls, only to have the waiter take it back to give to Andula's group. The men were doomed from the start, but they are nothing if not persistent.

Loves of a Blonde is often, and inaccurately, categorized first as a comedy. The delicate humor never seems thrust forward though, and it envelops the tenderness of Andula's quest. The long, unflinching takes allow the audience to experience the action and the moments between them. Nothing ever feels as if we are watching the funny scene to balance the dramatic scene, to streamline and economize the story. Everything blends together into an uncomfortable vision of reality. It is how Forman sees the world, and though it hurts to think about the soldier's blind lusting, it hurts more to think about what sad state of events brought these sullen soldiers to get drunk in a now-empty dancehall. It is as if they had awoken from the cold floor, too. Yet they know how they got here, they just don't want to say.

For morose Andula, the question is just as important. None of the soldiers are worthwhile. Instead, she's taken with the scrawny but oddly suave piano player, Milda, in her flailing need for love. She resists the older and uncomfortable soldiers, and she resists Milda. Dating is always a game, a fight of tug-of-war, but she's ready to give up the fight, just a little at first. It's a persistence hunt even for the charming pianist, but Andula's tired and she's tired of running. Milda aggressively, but somehow sweetly, seduces the hesitant but willing Andula. Guard down and all, she finds a place for her stilted love in a depressing factory town, and she is naively liberated.

Later, Andula shows up unexpectedly at Milda's door in Prague. He's out playing piano and his overbearing mother opens the door. Andula's exhausted and exposed, looking desperately for Milda. His suave facade evaporates and any mystique he had has suddenly vanished. With Milda's mother there, he isn't even in the room but he has never seemed so young. Andula's love-stricken long face shows her youth as well. It is here, in the apartment that we truly feel the humorous and heartbreaking moments in-between shine through.

When Milda finally comes home, he discovers Andula sleeping on the couch and does a poor job of covering his displeasure. It runs in the family. Milda's mother is angry and drags her irresponsible son into their room to sleep in their bed instead of on the couch with Andula. Andula is silent, maybe speechless, as she listens to Milda and his parents toss in bed. The camera is stationary, hanging over the foot of the bed, running for what seems like forever as Milda's mother scolds him. Milda's answers are nowhere near a defense for Andula's unannounced visit, and we feel his backsliding as much as Andula as she listens from outside the door.

Forman shows us yet another scene of monotony that simultaneously hinges on crucial emotion. It is wonderful to watch this family, this overbearing mother and oafish father, toss and yell in a too-small bed. The mother's stiff actions and relentless badgering is innately humorous, and hearing the excuses of a kid to his parents feels utterly real. Yet in the next room, on the other side of the door, is a girl who has lost all hope. In coming to Prague, she couldn't have trusted her impulsive emotions any more, and they abandoned her on the cold, hard floor with strangers.

The entire sequence plays on as real life, or at least a heightened adaptation of real life. We cannot cut away from the inevitable pains that we experience. We are forced to live through them, and sometimes they run long, and sometimes they only seem long. For Andula, she will get over her young folly of pursuit, but not before enduring a long night that at every moment begs to cut to the next scene. It can't, and we are better off for staying on the floor with her. We are made uncomfortable, but we are charmed by Forman's skill of mixing tone. The subtle, though occasionally overt, humor warms us and protects us from the devastation underneath as we wonder what sorry state of events brought us here as well.