Stranger than nonfiction

Director Robert Sedláček has fashioned a strange, irreverent comedy featuring various Czech record holders and one ragtag film crew's efforts to locate and document them. The record holders - an assemblage of the oddest of the odd - are largely real, but the "film crew" is peopled by actors. The lines between reality and documentary are hazy (particularly for foreigners unfamiliar with the Czech cast), and when the fictional director (Jaroslav Plesl) utters his criticisms of the movie business and the state of cinematic culture, one suspects he's parroting sentiments near to Sedláček's heart.

It's a strange scenario: Cameras track a fictive filmmaking team as they apply for and fail to receive institutional funding for a film they want to make. In pursuit of alternative financing, they accept an offer from a beer manufacturer to document the surprisingly large number of amateur record holders scattered around the country.

There's the monstrous giant with the record for flipping cars (the team buys a cheap auto from a feckless local to make the demonstration possible). There's the skinhead with the knack for drinking beer underwater and the aspiring record breaker who stops at the store, buys 90 hotdogs and sits down in front of the camera, managing to eat 83 of them before surrendering. There's the world record holder in holding one's breath, the elderly retirees who have logged thousands of consecutive miles peddled on exercise bikes, the guy with the record for stuffing straws into one's mouth, and many more.

It isn't entirely clear which demonstrations are real and which are staged, but the most astonishing are almost certainly the real thing. The unselfconscious dedication to absurdity demonstrated by the fame seekers is truly amazing. It's also more than a little unsettling. The hotdog eater, for instance, resorts to his revolting feat after pathetically following the cameras around trying to convince them he's noteworthy. It's only after he's informed by the crew that he's not interesting enough to warrant their attention that he abuses his body. The cheerful obese fellow who is suspended by his piercings from a crane is more than a little troubling, as well.

It's all very bizarre, and the mock crew's own antics don't exactly act as a normalizing force. Simona Babčáková and Plesl play the producer and director, respectively. When Plesl isn't verbally abusing his dutiful colleague, he's drunkenly climbing into bed with her. Jiří Vyorálek is the team's introspective, brooding and exceedingly alcoholic cameraman, a nihilistic casual philosopher who tears up a hotel room and heaves the television into the parking lot during a particularly bad blackout. Johana Švarcová is a student sound engineer cutting her teeth on the production, blinking at the rest of the crew like a deer in headlights.

The look and feel of The Greatest Czechs doesn't have an equivalent in American cinema. If it existed, it would have to be equal parts Jackass, mockumentary and art-house. It possesses elements of the aforementioned, to be sure, but really isn't anything like any one of them alone. Or rather, they aren't very much like it. The film is an oddity any way you slice it, and the coolness of tone, poor production values and dry, dark sense of humor aren't likely to engender universal appeal. For the phenomenologically inclined, however, it's a must-see.

Note: The film is currently showing with English subtitles as part of a limited engagement at Kino Světozor.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com