Horrorfest 2011: The Cremator

Now we're back in the 60s with THE CREMATOR, a Czech film once banned from its homeland. That's two banishments so far for Horrorfest 2011. Not bad.

THE CREMATOR takes place in Prague in the 1930s on the eve of Nazi occupation. The cremator in question is Kopfrkingl (Rudolf Hrusinsky), a family man who takes his job very seriously while also openly enjoying it. A fan of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Kopfrkingl believes the sooner a dead body can get "back to dust," the sooner it can be free from Earthly suffering, closer to enlightenment, and ready for reincarnation. So, as he pushes the option of cremation on prospective future clients, he argues, why rot underground for years when you cremation can get it taken care of in a little over an hour?

At first Kopfrkingl is portrayed as proud of his family's assimilation in Czech culture -- they only speak the native language at home and the kids go to Czech schools. However, Kopfrkingl's old war buddy from Austria (Ilja Prachar) begins to convince him otherwise -- if the Germans are definitely coming, why not join them? This leads Kopfrkingl, who is already an obsessive when it comes to cleanliness, social standing and overall image, to become preoccupied with his own "racial purity" and that of his family -- what will the political changing tides mean for his half-Jewish wife (Vlasta Chramostova) and his weak, effeminate son (Milos Vognic)? The pathetic thing is, Kopfrkingl doesn't just start to change his mind to save his own ass -- he's also tempted by the "perks" of being a party member, for example, potential access to better whores than he was previously used to.

From the first frame of the film, it is clear that Kopfrkingl is a creep. What's not clear is just how deep his creepiness might go. Rudolf Hrusinsky's masterful performance carries the piece. Here is an insane monster who uses the changing society around him to indulge his own power mad, self glorifying fantasies. He presents himself as cultured but is obsessed with the surface of things. Just one look at his face betrays the front he's putting on and shows him for the smarmy, slimy, cowardly, calculating, hypocritical fraud he is. Perhaps the most unsettling thing about this character and performance is how realistic and believable it is. This is no supernatural monster. This is the kind you might have met before without even knowing it. For about half the movie I was trying to figure out who he kept reminding me of and then I finally figured it out -- Ricky Gervais at his worst. Someone should cast that guy in a horror movie.

Believe it or not, THE CREMATOR is not just a horror film or a political allegory -- it is also a very dark comedy. A lot of the earlier passages exploring the "normal" daily family and work life of Kopfrkingl work not just as a study of a disturbed mind, but also a kind of societal satire, picking apart get togethers and social conventions with a sharp wit. This is one of the genius strokes of the screenplay -- you can laugh at the transparent nature of Kopfrkingl, who thinks he has everyone fooled, while also being freaked out by him, since we, as the audience, know more about him than his friends and family do.

We're told a lot about Kopfrkingl through the way the film is edited. There are lots of jump cuts to images that are either jarring or simply don't fit into the larger context of whatever scene we're in the middle of -- signs that Kopfrkingl's obsessive mind is not only all over the place, but focusing inappropriately on the wrong things at the wrong time. We get glimpses that assure us his sexual urges are unsettling and that his interest in his job is, in fact, just as creepy as it seems to be on the surface.

The film is also meticulously crafted from the screenplay up with smooth, efficient transitions that allow for a perfect pace. You can tell from the way one scene moves into another that it was planned out carefully on the page, and that it was even incorporated into blocking of the action on the set, as a character or prop figures prominently from one scene to the next. Then, the editing snaps it together with a well timed voice over, so we think we're hearing someone speak in one context only to find out they're speaking in an entirely new and different one. All of this both makes the film work effortlessly while keeping the audience on edge.

I'm sure it was obvious even in the late 60s, but public consciousness about the particulars of the Holocaust, thanks in part to Hollywood, is probably even stronger today than they were at the time this film was made. So, it does not take a genius to see some potential connections between our cremator main character and the Nazis' preferred method of body disposal on a genocidal scale. And I assure you, in THE CREMATOR, these connections are not ignored.