"The Cremator" is a once "lost" film from the Prague Spring. An exquisite evisceration of fascism, desire and all things political, the film was hidden in the vaults of FAMU (the Prague Film Academy) as an agricultural film (along with many others) after the Soviet tanks rolled in. "The Cremator" was revealed to the world in pristine condition and with force only a few years ago, and its message is for today. Absurd, frightening and beautiful - the film reminds me not so much of its 1930's, pre-Nazi setting as today's America.
Kafka is never far from "The Cremator" - the central character evokes "The Trial" from the point of view of a willful bureaucrat rather Joseph K., and therein lies its power and clarity: what if we agreed to willful ignorance and xenophobia simply to get ahead and be accepted? Errol Morris's "Mr. Death" is the only Western Film that comes close to examining this issue - "The Cremator" goes deep into the heart of the very human mechanism that made the Holocaust possible - perhaps inevitable, given the forces at play. This is a dark and important film.
Kafka is never far from "The Cremator" - the central character evokes "The Trial" from the point of view of a willful bureaucrat rather Joseph K., and therein lies its power and clarity: what if we agreed to willful ignorance and xenophobia simply to get ahead and be accepted? Errol Morris's "Mr. Death" is the only Western Film that comes close to examining this issue - "The Cremator" goes deep into the heart of the very human mechanism that made the Holocaust possible - perhaps inevitable, given the forces at play. This is a dark and important film.