Larks on a String

For a film addressing matters of political oppression, state sponsored disappearances and forced labour camps, one wouldn’t be blamed for thinking they’re in for a trying time with Jiri Menzel’s Skřivánci na niti (Larks on a String, 1969/1990). Though daring enough to address the Stalinist era head-on, in true Menzel fashion, we are met with an astute political critique veiled in breezy humour and romantic optimism. Filmed in 1968, Larks on a String began production during the leadership of Alexander Dubček, who, after two decades of oppressive communist rule, introduced reforms which led to a brief period of liberalisation known as the Prague Spring.¹ As the grip of media censorship loosened, Czechoslovakia saw a boom in artistic expression which allowed Menzel and his New Wave cohort to make their films freely, only to be quashed by the introduction of the Warsaw Pact of August ’68 which kept Larks on a String hidden for twenty years. Finally released in 1990 after the fall of communism at the Berlinale Film Festival, where it took home the Golden Bear for Best Film, Larks on a String remains a timely tale of rebellion under oppressive forces and the small acts that illuminate even the darkest of times.  

The film opens with a panoramic wide shot of a sprawling steel manufacturing factory. From this distance, the factory stands as a proud, well-groomed machine, emblematic of fruitful industrialisation where streamlined processes produce positive contributions to its nation. Menzel lets us linger on this vista for a few moments more before plunging the viewer amongst the wreckage of the junkyard. These few opening moments already disrupt the illusions of the regime, setting the scene for the ongoing frictions between political agitprop and its starkly contrasting reality. Apathetically laying about the rubble, where nearby a poster reads, “Why shouldn’t we be glad to work when we are working for ourselves,” are former members of the bourgeoisie who, now that the working class have taken control of the state, are forced to labour in the junkyard where the objects being smelted down ironically include typewriters, a tool for man’s expression, and crucifixes, man’s right to religious devotion. The members include a professor of philosophy, a lawyer who believes in the right to defend, a musician, a hairdresser – because what socialist citizen should waste their time vainly tending to their appearance when they could be working – and an Adventist cook who won’t work on Saturday’s for religious reasons, all of whom pose a threat to state ideology. Just like the piles of detritus about them that will be repurposed into shiny new steel, so too is the aim of the new ruling class, to re-purpose its people into shiny new citizens of a bright socialist future.

If the will of the socialist regime was to shape its citizens into a homogenised, uniform group, then Menzel’s political conviction was most certainly for the will of the individual to prevail. Menzel’s work, and that of the Czech New Wave at large, was in direct opposition to the sanitised works of Social Realism whose primary function was to serve state ideology and present “highly optimistic depictions of Soviet life” that favoured the interest of the collective over the individual.² As romance in the corporeal sense was seen as a self-serving pursuit, relationships in Social Realist cinema tended to be purely practical, if not asexual. The love between a man and woman was solely to reproduce and create a family that will uphold the pillars of socialism, nodded to in Larks on a String in the comic scene where two characters marry by proxy, the officiant telling them that the state will support the couple to “contribute to the building of socialism,” speaking nothing of the pleasures and joy of love. As such, much of the film’s subtle rebellion lies within its conversational, episodic segments and its treatment of desire, the characters’ seemingly simple everyday actions demonstrating a refusal to adopt the simplistic ideologies thrust upon them. They play cards, share meals, recite poetry and discuss Emmanuel Kant as well as religion and God, all exemplary of the sort of independent thinking the regime is trying to eradicate. Though bodies are hidden under shapeless overalls – a further attempt of the regime to desexualise men and women – the protagonists of the film greatly desire human connection, with Menzel managing to imbue the film with an underlying air of intimacy. In a particularly touching scene, the female workers join the men in forming a human chain to lighten their workload. Taking off their gloves, they coyly caress the hands of their fellow inmates and steal longing glances. Similarly, in a later scene, the group stands around a campfire huddling together in the rain with hands outstretched toward each other, demonstrating a love that is both romantic and fraternal, accounting for Menzel’s optimistic sensibility and enduring humanity, that to feel love is a form of resistance against the oppressor and that “community and solidarity assert themselves as a response to repressive powers”.³ 

While another filmmaker may have taken a more one dimensional, us-against-them approach to the film’s supposed antagonists, Menzel’s ability to extend compassion to those in positions of power speaks to his rejection of over-simplification, primarily shown through his portrayal of the prison guard Andel (Jaroslav Satoranský). When we first meet Andel he is relatively detached, dutifully fulfilling his role of camp guard. He faces trouble in his home life. His relationship with his Roma wife, though approved by the state and its principles, gives way to cultural and personal differences leaving them unable to consummate their marriage which forces Andel to search for personal fulfilment elsewhere. Though able to provide him with a wife, a modern home, and “meaningful” work, his disillusionment with the state ignites the turning point for his character, encapsulated in a sequence where he finds a portrait of a guardian angel affixed to a piece of scrap metal in the yard. In the culmination of his melancholy, it is clear that the reality of his situation has hit home, that though he is bestowed an albeit tokenistic freedom within his community, he is still confined to the same constricted reality as those that he guards; present amongst the same squalor as his political prisoners whilst higher-ups come and go as they please, his situation mirroring those he is supposedly hierarchically above. The hard truth is obvious, that for Menzel, under communism everyone becomes a prisoner, even those on the “other side”. 

Writing on the Czech New Wave, film historian Peter Hames summarises the essence of Menzel’s works aptly, that “ideology is something to be endured…heroism is accidental, and ordinary people will survive.”⁴ Though Larks concludes on a decidedly bleak note, one can’t help but feel this statement resonate. Even as the workers descend into the depths of the coal mine, they resolutely look up to the dwindling light above them. Though the present is still plunged in darkness, there is an inextinguishable hope for what is to come.  

Skřivánci na niti/Larks on a String (1969/1990 Czechoslovakia 96 mins)

Prod: Karel Kochman Dir: Jiří Menzel Scr: Jiří Menzel, based on the novel by Bohumil Hrabal Ed: Jirina Lukesová Phot: Jaromír Sofr Prod Des: Oldrich Bosák Cos Des: Dagmar Krausová Mus: Jirí Sust

Cast: Rudolf Hrušínský, Vlastimil Brodský, Václav Neckář, Jitka Zelenohorská, Jaroslav Satoranský, Vladimír Šmeral

Endnotes