Film appreciation: To See The Sea
For fans of Czech cinema, the name and figure of auteur Milos Forman looms large. An Oscar winner twice over (for in 1976 and in 1985), he was a leading member of the Czechoslovak New Wave — directing films such as , Czechoslovakia's 1969 best foreign language film nominee — before moving to Hollywood.
It would seem natural enough that any Czech filmmaker who came after Forman would aspire to be like him. And so it is for the filmmaker at the centre of , the debut directorial feature of 28-year-old former teen idol-turned-filmmaker Jiri Madl that's set in his picturesque hometown of Èeské Budìjovice.
Tomas Hrobsky (Petr Simcak) also would dearly love to go and see the sea; and this yearning is understandable because the Czech Republic is a landlocked country and Tomas is just 11 years old.
Given a digital SLR camera on his birthday by his parents, Tomas goes about making a movie about his family and tries to persuade his best friend, Croatian immigrant Haris (Jan Marsal), to not only help him but also to do the same. Although Haris is happy to assist Tomas with his project, he is reluctant to shoot footage in his own home. Tomas doesn't think much about it but says quite a bit about the difference in their domestic situations of the two boys.
Starting off precocious and cutesy, initially comes across as a fun film for children by children, whose most major woes involve their not being favoured by their soccer team's coach and not getting as much playing time as others.
But the further one gets into the film, the more it becomes apparent that director-scriptwriter Madl — who briefly appears on screen in footage from — has aimed higher than that.
For while this film may depict events from the viewpoint of the young (in particular, the pre-adolescent Tomas and Haris), it soon becomes apparent that their lives are very much affected by that of the adults around them, and involve issues that need a modicum of maturity to understand and handle.
On a technical note: is shot so as to appear that it was was filmed as well as narrated by Tomas, with the assistance of just Haris. To actually believe this, however, would be unfair to the production's real crew. In particular cinematographer Edita Kainrathova, who should be congratulated for having made the first Czech feature shot entirely on a digital SLR camera.
